Virgie Tovar

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

Health is the banner we have raised in defense of weight loss surgery, The Biggest Loser, putting children on diets, shaming our friends and family members, fat jokes, weight-based workplace discrimination, and heavily processed low-calorie meals with no nutritional value.

So, recently I started dipping my toe back into the poisonous dump site that is straight dating. Deep breath.

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.

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.

I am currently in Los Angeles trying to forget that the election happened.

I just spent the weekend at adult fat camp — admittedly, a very different kind of fat camp than I used to dream about all those years ago.

Last week I was sitting anywhere between nineteen and thirty-seven feet from Kevin Bacon.

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

There is not a single path to self-love, and so you must become an engineer of that process. We have to feel lots of uncomfortable things.