Virgie Tovar

When we both moved to San Francisco in our 20s, she moved to a wealthy neighborhood and I moved into a neighborhood where old men had phone sex on the pay phone at the laundromat. Our friendship threatened her world in a way that it didn’t mine. The people I knew had neither wealth to protect nor any desire to play at that game, and so their lives were inspired by a freedom I adored. The kind of freedom that allows you to talk about shitting and fucking over dinner.

This week I have been thinking a lot about home, and how home shapes the way we feel about our bodies.

I think there’s a special kind of burden placed on stigmatized people to pretend that everything is A-Okay. Would I be smiling if I was oppressed? Heck no.

Last week I was sitting anywhere between nineteen and thirty-seven feet from Kevin Bacon.

Fat girl trauma, brown girl trauma, sexist trauma, class trauma. It’s time to start seeing our gifts, or handout an invoice for fat girl emotional labor

I just spent the weekend at adult fat camp — admittedly, a very different kind of fat camp than I used to dream about all those years ago.

A lot of people don’t know this, but fat activism has been around in the United States since the 1960s. Yes, it’s true!

The wound of codependency leaves a haunting question in its wake: Do I actually matter? Diet culture’s answer to fat people is: no.

The other day I was having coffee and ice cream with my friend. We were talking about who we follow online.

I came to realize that even though I was certainly a bona fide member, that some fat people were far more acutely marginalized than me.