Jul 2

Jul 2 NWP Episode 275: Fat Discrimination and Oppression by Diet Culture with Virgie Tovar

In today’s episode we explore the topic of fat discrimination and oppression by diet culture with author of You Have the Right to Remain Fat and expert on body justice and fat activist, Virgie Tovar.

In this episode we discuss:

Virgie’s story of how she became an expert in fat discrimination and sexuality studies
What is fat phobia and how to recognize it
How diet culture is a form of oppression
Ways that diet culture is bigotry
How we can be better allies for fat acceptance
What is internalized inferiority and ways to recognize how you may feel inferior in your everyday life

Virgie Tovar is the author of You Have the Right to Remain Fat and one of the nation's leading experts and lecturers on fat discrimination and body justice. In 2018 she was named one of the top 50 most influential feminists by Bitch Magazine. She is the founder of Babecamp, a 4-week online course designed to help women who are ready to break up with diet culture. She started the hashtag campaign #LoseHateNotWeight and in 2018 gave a TedX talk on the origins of the campaign. She is a contributor for ForbesWomen and Bedsider. Her new book, FLAWLESS: Radical Body Positivity for Girls of Color,comes out in March 2020 from New Harbinger. She holds a Master's degree in Sexuality Studies with a focus on the intersections of body size, race and gender. In 2018 she was the recipient of the Poynter Fellowship in Journalism at Yale. Virgie has been featured by the New York Times, Tech Insider, BBC, MTV, Al Jazeera and Yahoo Health. She lives in San Francisco.