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.

To me, being a spinster is a lot about prioritizing myself, my needs and my desires over the culture’s needs and desires for my life.

Bodies of all sizes do amazing stuff all the time. Don't let fatphobia hijack your body's right to exist in all its vast complexity.

My favorite thing about this trip was that I spent my time in Vienna with fat feminists by my side every single day.... Occasionally, our bellies bumped into one another and then rebounded for just a second, like balloons. The familiar physics of fatness multiplied by two or three. I felt like we spoke in shorthand, the language of shared experience.

Why do men text me about their dicks all the time? Do thin women get this many texts about penises?

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.

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.

You deserve someone who loves your body, who makes you feel safe, who makes you feel sexy. Never date someone who doesn’t love your belly!

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.

Health is the banner we have raised in defense of weight loss surgery, The Biggest Loser, putting children on diets, shaming our friends and family members, fat jokes, weight-based workplace discrimination, and heavily processed low-calorie meals with no nutritional value.