Virgie Tovar

If you asked me to guess what was going through her head, I would say she was in shock that a fat lady would wear a tight skirt, belly in full sight. This feminist act of taking up space, tacitly but clearly making room for myself in a fatphobic culture, is a bold-but-crucial move if you’re my brand of fat babe.

We wrote this article while driving from Yachats, Oregon to the northernmost tip of Oregon with a little Airstream named Bambi hitched to Jen’s car. We decided we wanted to share the three biggest lessons we’ve learned from roadtripping together:

The wound of codependency leaves a haunting question in its wake: Do I actually matter? Diet culture’s answer to fat people is: no.

[CN: fatphobia] I tell her I have an idea. She loves my ideas, my schemes, our witchcraft. We talk about feeling crazy, because that’s what the culture does to women who really want something, anything...

I thought I’d make a list of regular things that become “radical” (in the culture’s eyes) when you’re doing them while also being fat.

For the past two weeks, I’ve met up with my friend Caya in the Mission for acupuncture and pupusas/pizza/both. #HighlyRecommend 

I told you I never wanted to speak to him again. I offered that we work together to rid him from our lives. I thought we had both made the realization that he was garbage, but in reality, only I had.

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.”

I saw my boobs as a way to get me into the secret world of feminine desirability, so I played them like they were my winning hand. I created an entire story about my sexuality that centered my breasts because they felt like the only normal — or maybe extraordinary — thing about my body. I think I hoped that I could use them to get some precious ween (obvi), but also to get MORE.

There is not a single path to self-love, and so you must become an engineer of that process. We have to feel lots of uncomfortable things.