Amy

“From the amount of space that male undergraduates take up to the manspreading I witness during my commute, my fat body is frequently attacked on the grounds that I am not beautiful enough to exist because apparently that is my job as a woman. I think about the condescending comments I get from men online who tell me that they honestly think I’d be so beautiful if I lost weight—as if that were the goal of my life or my politics.”
― Virgie Tovar, You Have the Right to Remain Fat

“What we must realize is that it’s not thinness that is being eroticized. What is being eroticized is the submission thinness represents in our culture. Thinness is a secondary characteristic. The true commodity is the willingness of women to acquiesce to cultural control. Controlling women’s body size is about controlling women’s lives. This claim to control is based on fantasies of masculine superiority bolstered by the culture. This control does not just apply to thinness.”
― Virgie Tovar, You Have the Right to Remain Fat

“Dieting is a practice of fatphobia. Dieting is the result of unresolved fatphobia. We become terrified of what it would mean for us to be fat because we understand fundamentally how poorly fat people are treated. We transpose that bigotry onto the fat itself, rather than placing the blame where it belongs: on the culture that created and promotes injustice and fat hatred. We thereby, perhaps unintentionally, end up blaming fat people for the bigotry they are experiencing. Even though fatphobia is culturally pervasive and treated as if it’s a totally normal part of everyday life, it’s important to recognize that it is a form of bigotry that really harms people and that must be eradicated.”
― Virgie Tovar, You Have the Right to Remain Fat

“We are taught that men are the key to happiness and fulfillment. We fear that without heterosexual marriage and childbearing we cannot become people who matter or “real” adults. It is this nexus of desire and fear that is the breeding ground for self-destructive behavior like dieting. Rather than being taught that you deserve love simply because you are a person, you are taught that love is something people must earn through particular socially sanctioned methods. For many women, that method is weight control.”
― Virgie Tovar, You Have the Right to Remain Fat