Virgie Tovar

I know that not everyone has the same appetite for The Vent, but when it comes to doing work around diet culture and fatphobia, venting is a powerful tool. For people who are in the process of healing from diet culture, we are often wading through an enormous ocean of misinformation, gas lighting and dirty ol’ lies. Without access to venting, our emotions and thoughts occur in sort of a vacuum where we can easily talk ourselves out of what may well be very astute analysis.

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.

October is a busy month for me. It’s one of two peak periods for lecture bookings on university campuses.

Fat people often get so little attention that feels positive. When someone offers exploitative attention or exploits fat people it can feel really good.

Jacob (boyfriend) lives walking distance to a See’s Candies. This means that half the week I live walking distance to a See’s Candies — which, if you're me, is a little like living next to Disneyland.

Earlier this month I flew into JFK for the Glamour Women of the Year Awards (WOTY, for short) and took selfies with Gabourey Sidibe!

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.

As much as I love the idea of family, I actually like not being married, and I actually like not being a mother right now.

One of the things that has become exceedingly obvious to me is how our current cultural attitudes toward fat people are steeped in bigotry.

I’ve been ashamed of my indirect communication style for a really long time. Recently I realized that I was done feeling shame for the way I navigate.