Virgie Tovar

My sad little girl brain remembers exactly what it feels like to risk everything and get rejected. It happened so many times for me during childhood and then later in my early dating years. I’ve created elaborate systems of avoidance, emotional self-control and pre-emptive rejection. And frankly, girl, I’m tired of it. It’s a lot of goddamn work.

This week I have been thinking a lot about home, and how home shapes the way we feel about our bodies.

There are a lot of places where fat people don’t feel safe because of fatphobia. What does it feel like to feel safe in your fat body?

Shade is a resiliency tool constructed and wielded by those who have been forced to survive systems of unfairness. Shade isn’t polite, but everyone knows that the high road is over-sold to oppressed people! I knew I had to begin my own complete anthology of fat girl shade. And I thought I would start the chronicle here with Take the Cake. This tale is one from the vault, and it starts in high school.

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

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

Would you date a fat fetishist? It always feels complicated to answer this question, but I promise an honest one by the end of part two.

Solidarity strategies are possible. They happen all the time — though often less frequently in the realm of romance, unfortunately.

What I’ve noticed, as a fat feminist, is that self-identifying as a feminist or an activist bears a different social cost depending on your body size.