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

Take The Cake: Revisiting the Fat Liberation Manifesto 46 Years Later

A lot of people don’t know this, but fat activism has been around in the United States since the 1960s. Yes, it’s true!

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"Why was it so hard for me to see my own desire?"

Take The Cake: I Like Being An Unwed Mother Of Zero Children

As much as I love the idea of family, I actually like not being married, and I actually like not being a mother right now.

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image credit: Virgie Tovar via Instagram

Take The Cake: Cleaning My Closet Taught Me 3 Things About Fat Girl Scarcity

Fat Girl Scarcity — the sense that we are not enough or that we don’t have enough — permeates the life of a person in a marginalized body.

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Something like 80 percent of men expect their partner to be thin; tell me that isn’t an “excessive and irrational commitment.”

Take The Cake: Thin Fetishism Is More Common Than Fat Fetishism

The other night, I was eating capellini with asparagus and shrimp with a new friend/Babecamp Jamaica alum.

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image credit: Virgie Tovar via Instagram

Take The Cake: 3 New Rules For Re-defining Success Without Weight-Loss

I was taught that weight loss was self-care, but then I did a bunch of research and realized dieting is actually the patriarchal destruction of my body.

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Take The Cake: Secret Relationships With Fat Women

When we both moved to San Francisco in our 20s, she moved to a wealthy neighborhood and I moved into a neighborhood where old men had phone sex on the pay phone at the laundromat. Our friendship threatened her world in a way that it didn’t mine. The people I knew had neither wealth to protect nor any desire to play at that game, and so their lives were inspired by a freedom I adored. The kind of freedom that allows you to talk about shitting and fucking over dinner.

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“I’m not discussing my weight or how I eat today.” - Virgie Tovar

Take The Cake: 4 Body Boundary Tips For The Holidays

My boundaries around how people can talk to me about my body are very clear. I’d like to share with you four body boundary tips for a better holiday.

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Take The Cake: Networking While Fat

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

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image credit: Virgie Tovar via Instagram

Take The Cake: (Re)Discovering My Love Of Food After Dieting

Hi, my name is Virgie and I’m a fat girl who loves food. During my years of restricting I thought about food more than I thought about most things.

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Femininity as we know it is about smallness — metaphorical and actual. Fat women defy the core tenet of femininity, which is: be small. It doesn’t matter if we “chose” this power or not.

Take The Cake: Dear Fat Girl, Do You Know How Powerful You Are?

My unique capacity to see the vile underbelly of “normal” life made me an important witness to the reality of cultural failure. My inability to pass as a “regular lady” had helped build a road out of the stifling reality that so many of us face — that women’s lives are mapped out of for them before they even embark on their life journey.

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