Virgie Tovar

As much as I love the idea of family, I actually like not being married, and I actually like not being a mother right now.

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.

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.

*/

Fat positivity creates room for fat people to be seen with full humanity — not as failed thin people, but as complete and precious.

One of the things I have done for myself in adulthood as part of my healing process is make a strong claim to fatness femininity.

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?

Fatphobia morphs into a conversation about looks because fatphobia targets women. The bigotry is masked through this gendered decoy.

Jealousy is such an interesting thing to me. As immediate and intense as it feels when it hits, it has always struck me as a secondary — a smokescreen for something else.

By the time you read this, Babecamp Jamaica will be over. My 57 mosquito bites will have just stopped itching.