You Have the Right to Remain Fat

Description

Growing up as a fat girl, Virgie Tovar believed that her body was something to be fixed. But after two decades of dieting and constant guilt, she was over it―and gave herself the freedom to trust her own body again. Ever since, she’s been helping others to do the same. Tovar is hungry for a world where bodies are valued equally, food is free from moral judgment, and you can jiggle through life with respect. In concise and candid language, she delves into unlearning fatphobia, dismantling sexist notions of fashion, and how to reject diet culture’s greatest lie: that fat people need to wait before beginning their best lives. Virgie Tovar is an author, activist and one of the nation's leading experts and lecturers on fat discrimination and body image. She is the founder of Babecamp, started the hashtag campaign #LoseHateNotWeight, and edited the groundbreaking anthology Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love and Fashion (Seal Press 2012). Virgie has been featured by the New York Times, MTV, Al Jazeera, NPR, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Huffington Post, Cosmopolitan, and BUST. Title Page......Page 1 Copyright Page......Page 2 Contents......Page 3 Introduction......Page 4 What Are Fatphobia and Diet Culture?......Page 7 Restriction Doesn’t Work: It’s Not You......Page 12 Dieting: Family, Assimilation, and Bootstrapping......Page 15 Dieting Is a Survival Technique......Page 18 Internalized Inferiority and Sexism......Page 21 Bros Thinness: Heteromasculinity and Whiteness......Page 28 Fatphobia Is the New Language of Classism and Racism......Page 34 What Early Fat Activism Taught Me......Page 40 In the Future, I’m Fat......Page 45 I Want Freedom......Page 48 You Have the Right to Remain Fat......Page 52 Notes......Page 54 Acknowledgments......Page 56 About the Author......Page 57 Also by Feminist Press......Page 58 About Feminist Press......Page 60