Virgie Tovar

A couple of weeks ago I got an email that contained a question I never thought I’d be asked.

It takes a lot of ongoing effort, labor, and love to fight for justice and to question the culture. People in the “choir” opt out of fitting in or playing nice. We dedicate a lot of time to being conscientious citizens.

I’m a fat brown girl from an immigrant family. I grew up learning that no one would ever love me because I’m fat. I was taught that I have to work twice as hard to get half as much. If someone looks at me weird or says something rude to me, I always see it or hear it and I have a massive (exhausting) anxiety/adrenaline rush/aggro response/comedown cycle. I feel like I have to fight to maintain dignity and humanity every, single day.

I told you I never wanted to speak to him again. I offered that we work together to rid him from our lives. I thought we had both made the realization that he was garbage, but in reality, only I had.

To him, perhaps, my fat feminine body was acceptable to sexualize. I can’t say I learned a foolproof way of avoiding going on a date with a clean eater.

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

The other day I was having coffee and ice cream with my friend. We were talking about who we follow online.

I understand the connections between the violence that leads to police shootings and the violence that leads people to starve themselves. I know with complete certainty that diet culture is a manifestation of the state’s expectation of assimilation and of social control, both of which are manifestations of institutional violence.

I became aware that my body creates static in establishments dedicated to amazing food. As a fat person, I’m not supposed to be there. The fat body is the body of the undeserving poor, an aggressively unwelcome reminder of the world just outside the gorgeously appointed, impeccably designed restaurant.

Dieting is a socially sanctioned method of mentally high-tailing out of whatever is going on and keeping you entirely in your head, laser-focused on your next bite, your scale, your plate.