Virgie Tovar

I’m a fat brown girl from an immigrant family. I grew up learning that no one would ever love me because I’m fat. I was taught that I have to work twice as hard to get half as much. If someone looks at me weird or says something rude to me, I always see it or hear it and I have a massive (exhausting) anxiety/adrenaline rush/aggro response/comedown cycle. I feel like I have to fight to maintain dignity and humanity every, single day.

Fat positivity creates room for fat people to be seen with full humanity — not as failed thin people, but as complete and precious.

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.

“Chill” is, I think, a coded word that describes an environment where low expectations, low commitment, and zero accountability are considered normal.

It’s taken me a long time to write about this topic because I’m not an eating disorder specialist or clinician.

Would you date a fat fetishist? It always feels complicated to answer this question, but I promise an honest one by the end of part two.

This week in Babecamp we were talking about Sarai Walker’s novel Dietland.

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

I do conference calls from wherever I am at the moment. I answer work emails on the train, while I’m waiting in line for tacos, and (for better or worse) when there is a lull or awkward moment at a party.

What does it mean to want this body? What does it mean to fight for this brown, fat feminine body? In this culture, it means revolution.