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

image credit: Virgie Tovar via Instagram

Take The Cake: Love Letter To The Fat Babe At The Club

I hadn't been to a club like this one — the kind full of straight men who are probably homophobic and at least a little coercive, who smell like Old Spice deodorant and have enough disposable income to keep an open tab (the kind of men I'd been taught were "a catch") — for a very, very long time. I tried to remember exactly how long. A decade? More?

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@virgietovar on Instagram

Take The Cake: Here’s A Blank Invoice For Your Fat Girl Emotional Labor 

Fat girl trauma, brown girl trauma, sexist trauma, class trauma. It’s time to start seeing our gifts, or handout an invoice for fat girl emotional labor

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Um, yuck.

Take The Cake: 'This American Life' Is Really Bad At Talking About Fat

Though there was useful commentary, deeply personal stories, and some incisive observations, my problem with the episode is that it ultimately repeats a harmful framework:
Fat people (nearly all women) were on trial and up for observation (their privacy already considered non-existent) — not the fatphobic bias that had so clearly shaped their lives.

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"After trying to avoid completely ceasing communication with both my mother and grandmother, I realized I had come to the end of another road."

Take The Cake: Breaking Up With My Family, Part 2

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.

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image credit: Virgie Tovar via Instagram

Take The Cake: 3 Reasons I Don’t Use The Word “Bully”

The word “bully” makes us think we’re talking about a tiny handful of anti-social individuals when in fact we’re talking about a group of people.

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Take The Cake: My Fat Freelance Life — I Work Where I Want

I do conference calls from wherever I am at the moment. I answer work emails on the train, while I’m waiting in line for tacos, and (for better or worse) when there is a lull or awkward moment at a party.

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image credit: Virgie Tovar via Instagram

Take The Cake: 3 Tips For Normalizing How Your Fat Body Moves, Looks & Feels

Bodies of all sizes do amazing stuff all the time. Don't let fatphobia hijack your body's right to exist in all its vast complexity.

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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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My parents wanted our family to be in high-threat mode because it kept us closer.

Take The Cake: Breaking Up With My Family, Part 1

More than lip service to an unlikely situation, I needed accountability from my family. Small things that required less bravado, but more work. Just before Christmas, I experienced the moment that made our breakup crystallize.

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image credit: Virgie Tovar via Instagram

Take The Cake: The Hardest Part Of Writing You Have The Right To Remain Fat

To many who have experienced the gruesome reality that is diet culture I know 'You Have The Right To Remain Fat' makes complete sense.

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