Virgie Tovar

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

The other day I was having coffee and ice cream with my friend. We were talking about who we follow online.

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.

I don’t drink much, and embarrassingly I don’t even know how to smoke, but I do have a tendency to use experiences the way addicts use substances, because I learned addictive behavioral frameworks growing up.

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.

Recently there’s been an uptick in fatphobic derailments, and I thought it would be helpful to share them as well my responses to them.

This week I went to a networking event and had feelings about it. This is the story of those feelings. 

I've gone into Lane Bryant about 68 times in my life, and each time I'm lucky to leave with a faux-snakeskin belt or wide-shaft boots in an on-trend style. Most of the clothing, however, is draping, muted, and made up of superfluous yards of fabric covered in condescending ruffles and flowers. Imagine a fat baby going to a funeral for her former fat self and you've got Lane Bryant's general look.

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.

There had only been room for a persona - a sunshiney child-parent. My mother and grandmother had always fixated on my childhood. It finally made sense how the happiest time of their lives could be my darkest.