Virgie Tovar

A cake related fatphobic incident is that moment when it's time to eat cake, and an otherwise joyous experience gets ruined by a moralizing impulse.

I became aware that my body creates static in establishments dedicated to amazing food. As a fat person, I’m not supposed to be there. The fat body is the body of the undeserving poor, an aggressively unwelcome reminder of the world just outside the gorgeously appointed, impeccably designed restaurant.

We forego doctor visits because we know with near-total certitude that we are going to be told to lose weight. That we don’t need care — we just need to “cut back.”

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.

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.

Man in 36D who fat-shamed our flight attendant, what happened to you? What (or who) shaped you into someone who could take so much from others?

I was taught that weight loss was self-care, but then I did a bunch of research and realized dieting is actually the patriarchal destruction of my body.

I’ve dated people of all sizes, income levels, and personality types. I only get questions when I’m dating someone whose status is seen as “above” my own.

Read Part 1 here.

It all started with a text from my roomie, Kori: "I am manifesting lying out, and getting some sun on my cooch."