Virgie Tovar

Virgie Tovar

Bio

Virgie Tovar, MA is an author, activist and one of the nation's leading experts and lecturers on fat discrimination and body image. She is the editor of Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love and Fashion (Seal Press, November 2012) and the mind behind #LoseHateNotWeight. She holds a Master's degree in Human Sexuality with a focus on the intersections of body size, race and gender. After teaching "Female Sexuality" at the University of California at Berkeley, where she completed a Bachelor's degree in Political Science in 2005, she went onto host "The Virgie Show" (CBS Radio) in San Francisco. She is certified as a sex educator and was voted Best Sex Writer by the Bay Area Guardian in 2008 for her first book. Virgie has been featured by the New York Times, MTV, Al Jazeera, the San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, Huffington Post, Bust Magazine, Jezebel, 7x7 Magazine, XOJane, and SF Weekly as well as on Women’s Entertainment Television and The Ricki Lake Show. Her most recent speaking engagements have included University of Washington, Earlham College, Hollins University, University of California at Berkeley, University of California at Davis, California College of the Arts, Sonoma State University, and Humboldt State University. She lives in San Francisco and offers workshops and lectures nationwide. Find her online at www.virgietovar.com. And on instagram. 

Virgie Tovar Articles

Take The Cake: Diet Culture And Police Violence

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.

Read...
image credit: Virgie Tovar via Instagram

Take The Cake: Stop Shaming Indirect Communication

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.

Read...
Photo credit: Marcela Pardo

Take The Cake: Fat People Deal With Fat Oppression In Different Ways

2. Fat People Are In Survival Mode. I then moved onto a very basic reality: fatphobia is unjust, fat people are oppressed, fat people are being forced every, single day to navigate fatphobia while attempting to keep their dignity, heart, and spirit intact.

Read...
I saw myself and I knew there was nothing that fatphobia or my inner asshole could do to take away the beauty and the magic that was right before my eyes.

Take The Cake: How Being Photographed In My Underwear Changed The Way I Saw My Body

After years and years of fatphobia-induced body dysmorphia, it’s hard to actually just see my body with anything approaching objectivity. But when I finally looked at the photos of myself in my underwear, I knew there was nothing that fatphobia or my inner asshole could do to take away the beauty and the magic that was right before my eyes.

Read...
Before this trip, when I thought “Vienna,” I didn't think “plus-size paradise.” But holy shit. Image: Virgie Tovar.

Take The Cake: Fat Babes In Vienna

My favorite thing about this trip was that I spent my time in Vienna with fat feminists by my side every single day.... Occasionally, our bellies bumped into one another and then rebounded for just a second, like balloons. The familiar physics of fatness multiplied by two or three. I felt like we spoke in shorthand, the language of shared experience.

Read...
image credit: Virgie Tovar via Instagram

Take The Cake: Would You Date A Fat Fetishist? (Part 2) 

If you like the idea of being with a fat fetishist, I think you should do it. If you hate the idea, then don’t. If you want to experiment with it, try it.

Read...
I will admit that nude hot springs are often the domain of thin white people. Kori and I are both melanin-blessed 250+ pound femmes. Image: author.

Two Fat Babes At The Naked Hot Springs

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

Read...

Take The Cake: Loving My Extended Adolescence (Or Something)

In the wake of America's "crisis of adulthood" and in the middle of a city known for Peter Pan Syndrome, I find myself feeling that I too have gotten an extension on my adolescence. It has become a time for me to heal, center myself in a way I never could in childhood, and figure out what I want for my life.

Read...
Rock those short-shorts, no matter your size.

Take The Cake: Short Shorts + Jiggly Thighs Forever

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

Read...
image credit Virgie Tovar

Take The Cake: 3 Examples Of How Children Experience Fatphobia

Even children experience fatphobia. Children deserve to be treated with care and responsibility, free from the stigma we grew up knowing.

Read...