Virgie Tovar

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!

So, recently I started dipping my toe back into the poisonous dump site that is straight dating. Deep breath.

To him, perhaps, my fat feminine body was acceptable to sexualize. I can’t say I learned a foolproof way of avoiding going on a date with a clean eater.

One of my favorite ways to help people conceptualize patriarchy is by asking them to imagine a Chuck E. Cheese.

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

Leaving Louisiana means going back to a place that’s colder — climactically and culturally. My chub rub will appreciate the cool down, but I am not looking forward to returning to a place that’s so dry. There’s something about New Orleans, so hot and haunted, that pushes me into my body and the precious tenuousness of my humanity.

This is a love song for those who showed me there was a thing called freedom, and it wasn’t closed-legged, and it wasn’t passable, that it was expensive and gaudy, and I wanted it, and I didn’t want it.

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

Dieting is a socially sanctioned method of mentally high-tailing out of whatever is going on and keeping you entirely in your head, laser-focused on your next bite, your scale, your plate.

Fat people, we do not have to acquiesce to our culture's normalization of hierarchy. We do not have to turn the other cheek. Joy does not come at the expense of your dignity, of your humanity.