Virgie Tovar

It all started with a text from my roomie, Kori: "I am manifesting lying out, and getting some sun on my cooch."

Sharon is so intensely interesting to me in The Sinner. We get to see a fat woman who is over thirty exercise extraordinary sexual power.

On Sunday night, I went on a Christmas tree hunting expedition.

I think there’s a special kind of burden placed on stigmatized people to pretend that everything is A-Okay. Would I be smiling if I was oppressed? Heck no.

Fat people are not obligated to be disproportionate emotional laborers. They get to be angry, frustrated, and even difficult, just like everyone else.

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.

I thoroughly appreciate that there is a primary focus on self-love, but I also feel the painfully deep silence around the healing power of loving — and dating and sleeping with — other fat people.

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.

Every inch of skin that can experience a breeze is urgently needed in Jamaica. This makes choosing the tank top and short shorts so much easier. It takes the thinking out of wearing very little clothes for me, and being scantily clad is still an exercise in vulnerability.

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!