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

It's good to be body positive and body proud. (Image Credit: Instagram, Virgie Tovar)

Take the Cake: Fat Fury, Fat Love — Claiming 'Fat Space' In Activist Communities

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

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You are the proverbial light. You are the world’s treasure.

Take The Cake: For The Queers Who Died Because The World Called Our Bodies Disposable

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.

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Fatness, femininity and hair! Photo credit: @virgietovar on Instagram

Take The Cake: Fatness, Femininity, And My Pink Bangs

One of the things I have done for myself in adulthood as part of my healing process is make a strong claim to fatness femininity.

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image credit: Virgie Tovar via Instagram

Take The Cake: I Accidentally Went On A Date With A “Clean Eater”

To him, perhaps, my fat feminine body was acceptable to sexualize. I can’t say I learned a foolproof way of avoiding going on a date with a clean eater.

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Image: Virgie Tovar

Fat Girls Deserve Intimacy, Too

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.

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image credit: Virgie Tovar via Instagram

Take The Cake: 3 Powerful Romantic Solidarity Strategies Between Thin & Fat Women

Solidarity strategies are possible. They happen all the time — though often less frequently in the realm of romance, unfortunately.

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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.

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Via @virgietovar on Instagram: "Thursday, you will not kick my ass."

Take The Cake: Ugliness Is A Myth

I was introduced to the concept of ugliness when I was five years old. It was, for almost all intents and purposes, the totality of who I was. Fat was me. I was fat. I was taught that fat is the opposite of everything that is feminine, moral, and beautiful. Just like ugliness. But even though I still live in the awful world that made my traumatic childhood possible, I know for certain that ugliness isn’t a physical reality, it is a cultural fabrication. I truly believe that we are born with the capacity to see beauty in all things, and it is through the dispiriting reality of our cultural education that we lose that ability.

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image credit: Virgie Tovar via Instagram

Take The Cake: Fatphobia Isn't About Looks

Fatphobia morphs into a conversation about looks because fatphobia targets women. The bigotry is masked through this gendered decoy.

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If sugar is the problem, then why stop at sugary drinks with this soda tax? Why isn’t there an éclair tax or a tiramisu tax?

Take The Cake: Soda Tax Is Bigotry Masquerading As A Public Health Initiative

The double standard of the soda tax is glaringly absurd, but grounded in a long history of selective regulation and bigoted attitudes.

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