[00:00:00] Emily Race-Newmark: Welcome to This is How We Care, where we look at what it means to embody care, not as an individual practice, but a collective one, and to see what kind of world emerges from this place. Thank you for being here. I am your host, Emily Race.

[00:00:14] Emily Race-Newmark: Today we are joined by Virgie Tovar. 

[00:00:17] Emily Race-Newmark: Virgie holds a master's degree in sexuality studies with a focus on the intersections of body size, race, and gender. Since 2011, she has non judgmentally taught people about the harmful effects of weight based discrimination and the benefits of celebrating body diversity.

[00:00:32] Emily Race-Newmark: Virgie is an author, a lecturer, and leading expert on weight based discrimination and body positivity. 

[00:00:38] Virgie Tovar: I come from a multi-generational fat family. So everyone in my family is a bigger person and my ancestors are bigger people. Like I just look at pictures and I'm like, my body looks like my lineage.

[00:00:53] Virgie Tovar: My mother is Mexican and my father is Iranian and I grew up with her family and so I really only have access to my ancestors from that line. But it's like really obvious that I have this heritage. I think it's really funny because I grew up with this language of like, "Oh, I come from a family of people who struggle with their weight." And I don't see it that way anymore. I'm like, "I come from a heritage that's really cool and it's unfortunate that it's been so disparaged." But I'm like, "It's my legacy. It's part of my legacy." And I think, like I had this idea for a long time that I wasn't supposed to look like my family? Which I think if you come from a larger bodied legacy or lineage, that's how you're taught to think by the culture.

[00:01:40] Virgie Tovar: You're taught to have this belief that you're not supposed to look like that, that it's shameful to look like the people you come from. And obviously there's a racial component to that too, as a person of color.

[00:01:51] Virgie Tovar: I was not taught shame about my body until I entered school. 

[00:01:55] Virgie Tovar: For me, the experience of being shamed about my body was very shocking. I remember really internalizing the sense of failure, the sense of shame and specifically that I was not wanted. 

[00:02:08] I was introduced to fat phobia by boys, which is not that uncommon. And in the past few years, I've really been able to understand that the layers of what I was being taught, not just that I was fat and that was bad, but that specifically I was a fat girl. And that, that meant that I would not make a fit girlfriend or a fit wife. And that boys felt that this was a punishable offense. 

[00:02:34] Virgie Tovar: The way that the sort of emotional abuse really took shape was really around desire. So I was learning misogyny and rape culture at the same time that I was learning fat phobia, like specifically it's like, "Oh, you're fat, that's bad because I don't desire you and I get to punish you until you become my idea of a desirable girl." And of course we're children, so there's not even really an understanding of sexuality per se but there was a clear tone. I could feel it. I remember being able to feel that there was a component of sexual failure or gender failure that was very baked into the shaming. I think it's like learning all of that at the same time and feeling like I could solve all of it through becoming a thin person. Which at that time, and still in our culture, is proposed as a simple, straightforward process [ Laughter] that is possible both short term and long term, none of that's based in science, right?

[00:03:41] Virgie Tovar: It's not like folks who study weight, it's not they don't know it. It's just like an open secret for a long time. it was like, "Oh, wow, almost every single patient, I was one of them, who was being prescribed weight loss was ultimately, not long term staying a smaller size." And we're often developing all of these really bad habits around body image and restrictive eating and all of this.

[00:04:08] Virgie Tovar: I really, really want to drive home that weight loss for a larger bodied person in general, and I don't want to speak for everyone, it's about trying to stop abuse. 

[00:04:19] Virgie Tovar: It was really about escape. I thought I could escape my abusers and my abuse through changing my body. 

[00:04:28] Virgie Tovar: I'm already developing disordered eating patterns as a child that really develops and exacerbates over time. And then, there were a few moments in the story where things started to change.

[00:04:39] Virgie Tovar: I was introduced to feminism in college. I'm starting to begin to understand that my body is mine. And I'm mostly experiencing this through sexuality and trying to take sexual autonomy. But all of a sudden I have supportive women friends, which is really big. And there's a lot of focus on deprogramming female competition.

[00:05:00] Virgie Tovar: Which means all of a sudden I'm in a group of women friends who are critically examining the competition culture and weight loss is about competition, what one rendered through misogyny and all of that. 

[00:05:13] Virgie Tovar: Then I just so happened to date a fat-positive person. Total fluke. I didn't know I could ask for that. Didn't think I was normal. Really thought that I should be thin. And I just so happened to meet someone who just didn't believe in any of that and saw that as really silly.  He was like, "Yeah, I don't think there's anything wrong with you. I think you're really hot." And that was really surprising. I had dated and had sex, things like that, but there was always a presumption that I was supposed to lose weight. It was like, "Okay, you're fine, okay-ish now, but ultimately, the whole goal is to get you as thin as possible." That was always there, almost a silent contract.

[00:05:51] Virgie Tovar: And then with him, he changed all that. 

[00:05:53] Virgie Tovar: He helped me reconnect my relationship with food. We would cook together and he would just literally walk me through cooking. And I would just be shame spiraling, shame spiraling, terrified, debilitated, pasta, cheese, all the stuff that you're like, that's "off limits" when you're a person who's dieting and you're in a larger body and all that stuff. It was like terror. The idea of eating a dessert would completely send me into a panic. Again, because of the neural pathways I had developed in understanding that every bite of food that I take is one step closer to the abuse. And every bite I didn't take, in my mind, was one step further from the abuse.

[00:06:38] I was also with him when I started grad school. I was interested in how being in a larger body impacted gender in women of color. I researched that in grad school and it landed me straight into fat activism. And it totally changed my life. 

[00:06:54] Virgie Tovar: I met people who were fat and they were like, "There's nothing wrong with being fat. Fat's awesome. Fat bodies are great. All of the science about this is wrong and stupid and racist and old. You don't have to diet and there's nothing wrong with you.' It was similar to the feminism experience in college, being brought in by a group of people who had a very strong point of view and were interested in changing the culture.

[00:07:18] Emily Race-Newmark: I was connected to Virgie through Kelsey Blackwell, who we interviewed in season one to talk about decolonizing the body and somatic practices.

[00:07:27] Emily Race-Newmark: I was personally interested in interviewing Virgie after diving into her TED talk and purchasing one of her books, The Body Positive Journal. On a personal level, I have gone through my own journey of unpacking where there's been harmful narratives around body, eating, in the culture that I've grown up in, and a couple years ago I had checked myself in to an intensive outpatient center for disordered eating, which was a completely eye opening experience to realize how embedded into the fabric of our culture a disordered relationship with food and our bodies was. It wasn't just a individual problem that I was facing, it was one that many, many people around me were also struggling with, whether they realize that or not. 

[00:08:09] Emily Race-Newmark: As I began to follow this path of freeing myself from some of these inner narratives and behaviors that were really rooted in self hatred and wanting to just be accepted and loved by others, I grew very curious about how we even got here collectively and what other kind of world might be possible where our relationship with ourselves and our bodies and the food that we eat may be pleasurable, for example. 

[00:08:33] Emily Race-Newmark: One thing that I love about this conversation, and so much of the knowledge that Virgie had to share, was the humanity in her lived experience, that really adds color on a level that I think any of us could relate to, regardless of our own relationships to our body, to food, our body size.

[00:08:50] Emily Race-Newmark: She's so immersed in this world, not only through her own journey, but through a research lens, through a culture change lens that she really offers a unique perspective on what else might be possible when it comes to body positivity in a culture that celebrates bodies of all sizes and types.

[00:09:06] Emily Race-Newmark: This conversation was originally recorded on October 6th, 2023.

[00:09:10] Emily Race-Newmark: Without further ado, let's hear from Virgie. 

[00:09:13] Virgie Tovar: I fundamentally think that the human destiny, is to thrive. There's this part of me that could get into this weird, physics argument about energy and vibration and how when humans thrive, their vibration is higher and for me, my cut within that is weight loss and dieting and fat phobia really kills that. It kills that relationship to the body, which is really the vehicle of executing and creating our destiny.

[00:09:38] Virgie Tovar: Fatphobia is a form of discrimination against larger bodied people. And it's a set of beliefs, but it's also a set of actions. Right now it's hard to see fatphobia because it's hidden in the language of health and beauty, morality also.

[00:09:58] Virgie Tovar: The impacts of fatphobia are really immense and devastating. 

[00:10:03] Virgie Tovar: The first one that comes to mind is the wage gap. There's a wage gap between plus-size women and straight-size women. The estimate is anywhere between around $9,000 and $19,000 a year of loss due to fat phobia and weight discriminatory practices in the workforce. Over a lifetime, that's just a massive amount of money.

[00:10:25] Virgie Tovar: And when researchers have gone in and tried to figure out , why is there this disparity? Ultimately what they found was there was a role that employers played. There was also a role that individuals experiencing weight discrimination played in that phenomenon in that. In general, plus size people are funneled into lower paying, less visible, care or labor oriented jobs. And thin people are funneled into more visible, higher paying, client facing often desk jobs.

[00:10:58] Virgie Tovar: One of the stereotypes is that plus-size people are lazy and sedentary. If we look at the labor reality, that just isn't the case. It's actually likelier that a thin person would work at a desk and sit all day than a plus-size person. That's an outcome of fat phobia. 

[00:11:14] Virgie Tovar: Another outcome is that, if you're in a larger body and you're a patient, you're less likely to get preventive care. Literally, they've done the research and shown that doctors just won't even give the test to the plus size patient, even if they're asking for the test or presenting symptoms that are in alignment that would require a test. 

[00:11:30] Emily Race-Newmark: I want to give a shout out to the Ted Talk that you talk about what it looks like in the health system, which is extremely fucked up. 

[00:11:35] Virgie Tovar: Yeah.

[00:11:36] Virgie Tovar: I think the other thing that's just cuckoo banana balls is I'm just like, "Okay, like everyone out, like literally not just everyone else." Who's in quote unquote the "first world" provides universal healthcare. Most other countries, even impoverished countries, provide it—universal health care. 

[00:11:56] Virgie Tovar: There's stuff that we've been told about "Oh, that's just not possible." And I'm like, "Well, we've got a really big data set here. It's not like no one's ever done this." we're literally behind the curve globally. So there's that. 

[00:12:08] Virgie Tovar: It's really dark humor, but one of the things I find hilarious is when people are like, "Oh, you know, weight loss is really about health." And I'm like, I'm just like, "I can't believe it. I can't believe you're bringing that up in a culture where we don't even have universal health care."

[00:12:24] Virgie Tovar: I can't believe that the public health department has the nerve to be doing public health interventions in communities while they incarcerate the parents of the children they're trying to teach how to shop at a farmer's market while they're refusing to give them health care. It's a dystopian nightmare joke.

[00:12:45] Virgie Tovar: I also really find it funny when individual people are like, "Oh, I'm just worried about your health." I'm like, "Are you an advocate for universal health care? Because If you aren't, I don't actually think you care about my health." [Laughter] I would love it if you were an activist for universal healthcare. I would love it. If you were a person who sent out bags of tea and encouraged people to spend an hour to just drink tea, literally that would be more helpful than this unscientific weight loss thing that we're all supposed to be doing for our health. 

[00:13:15] Emily Race-Newmark: You talked about the intersections of body size, race, and gender, in your own personal story. Can you define how those things are woven together and why it's important to look at them together? 

[00:13:26] Virgie Tovar: I think my immediate thought is the BMI, the BMI was invented in the 1830s by a Belgian mathematician, adolphe Quetelet. I want to highlight mathematician. This was not a physician. 

[00:13:38] Virgie Tovar: So Adolphe Quetelet basically brought in a bunch of British soldiers, and he decided that he was going to weigh them and create a bell curve out of the data of weighing the soldiers. 

[00:13:50] Virgie Tovar: On the one hand, you're like, "Sure, sure, sure, at this point it's so normalized to be weighed." But I want to take you into the metacognition space of like, it's kind of weird that some Belgian mathematician was like, "I'm just gonna weigh a bunch of soldiers and add up those numbers and make a bell curve." It's a little bit odd. 

[00:14:09] Emily Race-Newmark: Yeah. 

[00:14:10] Virgie Tovar: And that's foreshadowing for where the story is actually going. In the sense that he creates this bell curve. Which is fine. You can look up the number of worms in the sand on different days and do a bell curve. A bell curve is something very simple to do. But what he ultimately does is he ends up assigning value to different parts of the bell curve.

[00:14:32] Virgie Tovar: So he's like the median, and median is literally where we get the word "medium" from. It's the dead center. He assigned the median the title. He's like, "This is the ideal body." And all the bodies that deviate are non ideal. Ultimately here's the punchline is his work ends up becoming the undergirding for eugenics. Because a lot of this weird measuring of humans and trying to deduce things about their qualities and their morals is eugenics. 

[00:15:03] Virgie Tovar: And the BMI is what we still use today to determine health. It is like the number one tool used by physicians to determine what your appointment is going to look like, what they're going to give you, what they're not going to give you, whether you're going to leave an appointment with a prescription to restrict food and try to lose weight. 

[00:15:19] Virgie Tovar: I think what's important to understand is that the time in which the BMI was developed, and going back to eugenics, this is a moment of high colonialism. This is a moment where white men are making the case through science and medicine that they are superior to every other kind of human on the planet. And using that information as a justification to enslave, to extract resources and to commit genocide on what's now U. S. land. 

[00:15:48] Virgie Tovar: So understanding that the BMI is part of this case building thing that was happening. 

[00:15:56] Virgie Tovar: Some people would say, "Yeah, okay, but that was over 150 years ago. That isn't relevant today." and I'm like, "Okay, sure. But let's think about when the BMI is used, what does it do?" It ultimately decides who's going to get care, who's not. If you're in a zip code with a higher BMI, your school is going to start getting government money to start teaching you how to "eat", and how to lose weight. You're going to be the one who gets the public health dollars. Your neighborhood is going to be the one where if there's a bus shelter, there's going to be ads about weight and eating and stuff like that. So ultimately, it is still being used as a way to determine who gets what and who is considered what. 

[00:16:39] Virgie Tovar: That's just one example of that intersection. 

[00:16:42] Emily Race-Newmark: As we're talking about fat phobia, I'm like, "Whoa, there's a really old voice that I don't even know where I heard it, but as a kid of like Oh, we whisper when we say the word "fat". So then there's the programming like, "Oh, even the word fat is bad." I don't know if you wanted to add anything to that. But I just wanted to elevate that also seems to be in there somewhere.

[00:16:58] Virgie Tovar: We've been taught that it's an impolite word. That was the first word that I had to re learn and re adopt when I got really interested in this activism. But I don't, for example, think that someone has to come full circle on the word fat to make an impact in their own life and in the culture. 

[00:17:17] Emily Race-Newmark: Hey, Emily here, taking a quick break to let you know that if you're liking what you're hearing so far, there's some wonderful bonus content from Virgie that you can get at our Patreon. 

[00:17:28] Emily Race-Newmark: As a Patreon contributor, you are helping to fund the production of this podcast. So, thank you, thank you, thank you. As an expression of our gratitude, you will receive extra bonus content such as: Virgie speaking to how fatphobia has affected her career directly; the deep dive that she has been taking into the bridal industry through Fat Girl Gets Married; what "body positivity" really means and what this movement is about; and some more information on the history of the medical industry, how its oppressive patriarchal ties are still affecting us today.

[00:18:00] Emily Race-Newmark: Thank you so much for being a part of our community and supporting conversations like this one. 

[00:18:04] Emily Race-Newmark: Let's get back to Virgie now as she shares more about her vision for the world.

[00:18:08] Emily Race-Newmark: Let's now get into the dreaming space. If you could wave the magic wand and create anything, what would you like the world to look like? Or how would you like to experience that? 

[00:18:17] Virgie Tovar: I want to start with a tiny vision, a little itty bitty microcosm, and actually there are moments in the world we have now where people break through, in the way that like, we're living in a culture where certain norms and rules are at play, and then there's people who break through and show us when something else is possible. 

[00:18:36] Virgie Tovar: I had one of those moments where I witnessed that happening recently when I was getting coffee at of my favorite little places in San Francisco. I watch this plus-size woman, when she was crossing the street to the coffee place. She was wearing a crop top, and she didn't have a bra on, and her belly was out, and she had these amazing sunglasses, and this cute outfit. And all of that was just giving me all the good feelings.

[00:19:02] Virgie Tovar: But specifically, she was kind of sauntering. She was taking her time. 

[00:19:07] Virgie Tovar: And honestly, this isn't true of all fat bodies, but a lot of fat bodies have different temporality. They move differently because we're jiggling, going back to physics, we're like jiggling, which is like a side-to-side motion as we're walking forward. So there's a different temporality to bigger bodies. And I felt like she didn't feel any sense that she had to hide that. As a fat person you're taught to hide that. I was like, "Whoa, she's like a portal to another time, a future that I will, I think I'll get to see in my lifetime." 

[00:19:40] Virgie Tovar: She had this beautiful big dog and she met her friend who was also fat and they were just having a coffee. And the other thing I loved was there was no performativity. There was no sense of like, "I have to be performing a certain level of joy, or a certain level of tidiness, or a certain level of elevated conversation." Which I think a lot of marginalized people and fat people in particular feel like they have to do in a place where you're eating and drinking in public. I just felt like that was it. They were relaxed. They were just being themselves.

[00:20:15] Virgie Tovar: I loved it. They were a little microcosm in that world. 

[00:20:19] Virgie Tovar: But I think the greater vision really is a world where our nervous systems are not on edge all the time, no matter what size you are. It's safe to be in a body and it's safe to not have a shirt on or have a bra on or whatever thing you want to do. Where it's safe to have a body and really where it's a delight to have a body.

[00:20:40] Virgie Tovar: What's amazing is it's visually very different than the culture we have right now for the most part, but I can feel the difference. It's just that sense of the nervous system down regulating. 

[00:20:52] Emily Race-Newmark: Yeah. It is the nervous system. I recently had an experience where I became aware of like, "Oh, my nervous system is not at ease in these situations and here it is I can notice.' That was one of the things that I was tapping into sensorily as you were describing that. Thank you for that very visceral, beautiful image. 

[00:21:08] Virgie Tovar: Yeah. 

[00:21:08] Emily Race-Newmark: Is there anything around the care piece and whether that's caring for our own bodies or the collective body that you wanna speak to in your vision? 

[00:21:15] What's interesting is in that vision, there's a few generations before the part I'm about to tell you is it can materialize. But in that world, we've never been introduced to diet culture, to fat phobia, to weird ideas about food and health and body.

[00:21:29] Virgie Tovar: We are children who have natural, gorgeous, magical relationships to the world and our body. And we become adults who don't ever have that interrupted. So we know how to take care of ourselves because that's humans' birthrights. Humans know how to do that. It is the culture that steps in and steals that from us.

[00:21:51] Virgie Tovar: So in that world care isn't even like, I don't want to say it's not a word, but it's not this intentional practice that takes money and time, it is fully integrated into how we live., 

[00:22:04] Virgie Tovar: As a fat kid, like, I learned to stop moving when I learned fat phobia, I learned that people did not want to see my body moving. And so I stopped moving. I stopped playing on the jungle gym. I stopped playing on the bars. I stopped playing tag. I stopped trying to climb trees and all this stuff. And now as an adult I'm having to reintroduce movement through a healing trauma informed lens where it's not weight loss focus. And I'm like, "I knew how to do that, you guys, the culture took that from me." 

[00:22:40] Virgie Tovar: just think about a world where your relationship to movement as a child, which is natural, intuitive and pleasure focused, it doesn't ever go away because no one interrupts it, you know?

[00:22:51] Emily Race-Newmark: Yes, that is it. The innate ways in which we move our bodies, I would assume feed our bodies, water our bodies, whatever the thing may be. 

[00:22:58] Virgie Tovar: Yeah.

[00:22:59] Emily Race-Newmark: Yeah. Beautiful. 

[00:23:00] Emily Race-Newmark: I look at our healthcare system and it literally brings a fire inside of my body. I'm like, "This needs to burn down and we need something new." 

[00:23:07] Virgie Tovar: feel similarly about health care. It's interesting because in my vision, there's a lot of presumptions about policy that doesn't exist right now. And one of it, of course, is we need access to universal health care.

[00:23:17] Virgie Tovar: I lived on and off in New Zealand for a few years and one of the things I learned in New Zealand , because they have some of the most incredible benefits to their citizens, they really are a cradle to grave culture. Anyway, they're like, " Some things just don't belong in a referendum." they just don't put anti humanitarian things on a ballot. They're like, " there's a baseline of what every human being needs and it's our job as a country to provide those things for the citizens." 

[00:23:47] Virgie Tovar: As an American, you're like, "Oh, it's so cute." But it's also just like, "Great." You're like, "They're voting on the color of something. Okay, great." You don't want it to be purple. You don't want the national anthem to have this thing in it. Okay, great. We're not talking about like, do you want to not have medical care? 

[00:24:01] I think the United States needs a real leveling up on that and understanding that we don't need to put all these things on up for referendum. If human beings need medical care, we have to provide those things. 

[00:24:12] Emily Race-Newmark: I want folks to be able to walk away with something that they're going to put into practice and embody some of this beautiful knowledge that you've parted on us.

[00:24:19] Emily Race-Newmark: redo this line

[00:24:20] Emily Race-Newmark: So the first is an action that someone could take if they pause the podcast right now. What would that be?

[00:24:25] Virgie Tovar: I think jiggling. The power of jiggling is really amazing. It's this very specific kind of movement that we've been taught not to do because it's a children's thing and it's a fat thing. I'm like, feeling our fat jiggles, it's so scary, right? It's supposed to be. I actually find that it's a little bit like if your body and your spirit were a snow globe, it's shaking it up. It brings up really cool stuff. And it's fun. 

[00:24:48] Emily Race-Newmark: Beautiful. Amazing, Virgie. Thank you so much for everything you've studied, you've lived through, you've catalyzed into this conversation and more. Your impact is so profound. I'm so grateful to be in conversation with you. Thank you.

[00:25:00] Virgie Tovar: Oh, thank you for having me!

[00:25:02] Emily Race-Newmark: If you want to hear more from Virgie, subscribe to her substack, Fat Girl Gets Married, follow her on Instagram @virgietovar, or check out her bonus content over at our Patreon.

[00:25:13] Emily Race-Newmark: Thank you for all the ways that you are supporting this podcast, whether it's through Patreon contributions, listening and leaving reviews, sharing episodes with the people in your life, or subscribing to our newsletter and Instagram to be a part of the conversation. 

[00:25:26] Emily Race-Newmark: This episode was produced by me, Emily Race, co-produced by Kimberly Hester, with audio and music by Eric Weisberg.