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: Virgie Tovar

Take The Cake: How Patriarchy Is A LOT Like Chuck E. Cheese

One of my favorite ways to help people conceptualize patriarchy is by asking them to imagine a Chuck E. Cheese.

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image credit: Virgie Tovar

Take The Cake: Why Is Rejection Scarier When You're A Fat Girl?

I want to tell you something about me: I’m an obsessive person.

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Take The Cake: The It Remake Got Everything Right Except Its Treatment Of Fat Characters

I have seen the same tropes of fat people for the entirety of my life. Personally, I am so ready for a remake on what fat people are capable of doing and being.

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image credit Virgie Tovar

Take The Cake: 20 Ways To Be Fat Positive (No Matter What Size You Are)

Fat positivity creates room for fat people to be seen with full humanity — not as failed thin people, but as complete and precious.

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Why Is It So Hard To Imagine Our Lives After Dieting?

Dieting isn’t just a practice; it’s a way of life. What do we do when we don’t have any more calories to count and we have to deal with the wide-open space left in their wake?

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The 3 Levels of Fatphobia are intrapersonal, interpersonal, and institutional.

Take The Cake: The 3 Levels Of Fatphobia

The 3 Levels of Fatphobia are intrapersonal, interpersonal, and institutional. Yes, everyone is affected by fatphobia. But the follow-up question is: How?

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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.

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I felt super cute in a dress that exposed every inch of my big, wobbly arms, and that felt like a total triumph. But it reminded me of the limitations of cuteness as a measure of freedom. Image: Virgie Tovar/Instagram.

Talking About My Activism In Front Of The Elders Who Made It Possible

A historian told me once to always be suspicious of anyone who used the word "progress" to describe the unfolding of events from past to present and from present to future. History is full of instances of change, she said, but it’s important to remember that change isn’t the same as progress.

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Fatphobia comes in all shapes and sizes (Image Credit: Virgie Tovar via Instagram)

Take the Cake: That Time I Got Accused of Causing Diabetes

October is a busy month for me. It’s one of two peak periods for lecture bookings on university campuses.

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"I’ve learned how to give myself just a little tiny bit more space. I’m not living in a minute-to-minute, food-inspired soap opera in my own head, and each step away from that has given me just enough perspective to start to heal."

I Wasn't Addicted To Food. I Was Addicted to Dieting.

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.

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