by Virgie Tovar

About Virgie Tovar

Virgie Tovar (she/her) is host of the podcast Rebel Eaters Club. Her podcast examines food and culture with an intersectional feminist lens. She is the author of You Have the Right to Remain Fat and The Self Love Revolution: Radical Body Positivity for Girls of Color. In 2018, she was named one of the fifty most influential feminists by Bitch magazine. She has been featured by the New York Times, Tech Insider, BBC, MTV, Al Jazeera, and NPR. She holds a master’s degree in sexuality studies with a focus on the intersections of body size, race, and gender.

Fat

book Keywords for Gender and Sexuality Studies

Fat is largely understood and used in the United States as a slur. It’s usually used to hurt or judge someone or to speak badly or pityingly of them. Few people use the word with love, affection, or respect. People go to extraordinary lengths to stay as far away from this word as possible: fasting, refusing to eat delicious things like ice cream or maple donuts filled with espresso Bavarian cream, living with body shame and hatred, or pushing their bodies to exercise past the point of enjoyment. In fact, it’s estimated that in the United States, forty-five million people go on a diet every year. That’s a little more than one out of every ten people. Many—maybe even most—people who diet do so primarily because they are afraid of being considered fat.