Virgie Tovar

I have seen the same tropes of fat people for the entirety of my life. Personally, I am so ready for a remake on what fat people are capable of doing and being.

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.

I just spent the weekend at adult fat camp — admittedly, a very different kind of fat camp than I used to dream about all those years ago.

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.

I have come to learn that most of the things I hate are things I can manage (if not eradicate) with boundaries, introspection, a sense of my needs as valuable, and the language to articulate what is happening.

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.

You were taught not to invest in yourself. You were taught to invest in the culture, which is bolstered by patriarchy, racism, etc..

Read Part 1 here.

I spent most of last week in a southern California heat wave.

Fat Girl Scarcity — the sense that we are not enough or that we don’t have enough — permeates the life of a person in a marginalized body.