Virgie Tovar

Two weeks ago, I was in West Lafayette, Indiana. I flew into Chicago at around midnight, and I was picked up by new friend and hostess, Mel.

As I’ve begun to teach other people about how to break up with diet culture, I offer everything in my personal artillery. And I’m proud of that. I love that. However, I’m always quick to remind them that fatphobia isn’t their problem to fix because they — WE — didn’t create it. Our job is to heal ourselves and to live life on our own terms.

What does it mean to want this body? What does it mean to fight for this brown, fat feminine body? In this culture, it means revolution.

Like many women and girls, I was taught that confidence is a commodity that we can use to attain romantic and sexual attention from men. We spend a lot of money and energy trying to capture that elusive sense that we are worth a damn. But for me, healing has become my primary focus and it has led to major shifts in my sense of self, more clarity about what I need, and a deeper relationship to my desire.

Hi, my name is Virgie and I’m a fat girl who loves food. During my years of restricting I thought about food more than I thought about most things.

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.

I understand the connections between the violence that leads to police shootings and the violence that leads people to starve themselves. I know with complete certainty that diet culture is a manifestation of the state’s expectation of assimilation and of social control, both of which are manifestations of institutional violence.

See the way that I show up in the world. Honor that and this girl's heart. See my magic. Love me without agenda. Take no joy in the moments I am weak.

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.

There are a lot of places where fat people don’t feel safe because of fatphobia. What does it feel like to feel safe in your fat body?