Virgie Tovar

It’s important to recognize that tiny or unsupportive seats (no matter how beautiful) send a silent but powerful message about who has the right to sit down. This message has strong ripple effects for a community that is already facing quite a bit of discrimination.

I think a lot of us are probably walking around with mild PTSD, anxiously calculating risk and making plans about what and who to avoid.... Even though I’m no longer technically walking the halls of junior high, I am living in a fitness-obsessed city that doesn’t feel as safe as it ought to considering almost everyone is over age 13.

The politics of food are the politics of class, and the subtlety of those politics creates a kind of deniability that makes it hard to discern the rules of engagement. One’s success in ascending the ladder is marked by fluency with these invisible boundaries.

I know that not everyone has the same appetite for The Vent, but when it comes to doing work around diet culture and fatphobia, venting is a powerful tool. For people who are in the process of healing from diet culture, we are often wading through an enormous ocean of misinformation, gas lighting and dirty ol’ lies. Without access to venting, our emotions and thoughts occur in sort of a vacuum where we can easily talk ourselves out of what may well be very astute analysis.

On Sunday night, I went on a Christmas tree hunting expedition.

If you like the idea of being with a fat fetishist, I think you should do it. If you hate the idea, then don’t. If you want to experiment with it, try it.

What horrible thing is going to happen this year? Is my aunt going to touch me or someone else inappropriately or make sexual innuendo? What terrible thing is my mother going to say to my aunt about her internet boyfriend who steals chicken from my grandparents’ garage freezer in the middle of the night?

I don’t drink much, and embarrassingly I don’t even know how to smoke, but I do have a tendency to use experiences the way addicts use substances, because I learned addictive behavioral frameworks growing up.

To many who have experienced the gruesome reality that is diet culture I know 'You Have The Right To Remain Fat' makes complete sense.

The other night, I was eating capellini with asparagus and shrimp with a new friend/Babecamp Jamaica alum.