Virgie Tovar

It's okay to hate Thanksgiving. After years of gritting my teeth I finally gave myself permission to choose what I wanted to do.

This year has been a real paradigm shift year for my arm fat, and I’d like to offer you 4 reasons to join me in public wobbly ecstasy: free your arm fat!

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.

Ali Abbassi’s ‘Border’ movie ultimately reminded me of what happens when we meet someone who reflects our power back to us.

Truthfully, I really want to be able to walk into every new interaction with the hope — the expectation — that everyone knows how to treat everyone else with full humanity. But the culture’s gonna have to do a lot better before I emotionally disarm. Until then, it’s probably a good idea to expect pursed lips and side eye from me.

I have come to learn that most of the things I hate are things I can manage (if not eradicate) with boundaries, introspection, a sense of my needs as valuable, and the language to articulate what is happening.

I was introduced to the concept of ugliness when I was five years old. It was, for almost all intents and purposes, the totality of who I was. Fat was me. I was fat. I was taught that fat is the opposite of everything that is feminine, moral, and beautiful. Just like ugliness. But even though I still live in the awful world that made my traumatic childhood possible, I know for certain that ugliness isn’t a physical reality, it is a cultural fabrication. I truly believe that we are born with the capacity to see beauty in all things, and it is through the dispiriting reality of our cultural education that we lose that ability.

I am currently in Los Angeles trying to forget that the election happened.

I wanted the photos to record exactly how I looked and felt in those moments – double chin and all. I’d like to encourage you to take the leap!

Fat girls have less latitude in every arena – clothing is no exception with high school dress codes. Fat women’s bodies are constructed as “outlaw” bodies.