If you’ve ever second guessed yourself, hated yourself or harmed yourself because you weren’t a certain number on a scale.  If you’ve ever been humiliated because of your size or praised when you shed kilograms in a hope to fit in and be good enough.  If you’ve ever deluded yourself that living a life of deprivation makes you somehow more virtuous, more desirable, more worthy - then you’ve absolutely landed at the right episode.

Virgie Tovar started life as an effervescent, confident child who adored her body until the word, the insult, the denigration of being FAT was poured all over her like a torrent of shame.   Well, she’s taken back the word.

Virgie is a fat activist; podcast host of Rebel Eaters Club; the author of 'You Have the Right to Remain Fat' & 'The Self-Love Revolution: Radical Body Positivity for Girls of Color’; and she’s one of America’s leading experts and lecturers on weight-based discrimination and body image.

Virgie received the Yale University’s Poynter Fellowship in Journalism; famously started the hashtag campaign #LoseHateNotWeight and in 2018 gave a ground-breaking TedX talk on the origins of the movement.

Virgie’s making a real difference in a world that tells our children every second of their lives that they’ll be more acceptable in society if only they tweak this, or shed this, or enhance this.

This is Virgie’s story

BUT BEFORE YOU GO

Find out more about Virgie here

Listen to Virgie’s Podcast here

Follow Virgie on Twitter

Follow Virgie on Insta

Buy Virgie’s remarkable book “The Self-Love Revolution: Radical Body Positivity for Girls of Color” here

Buy Virgie’s remarkable memoir “You Have the Right to Remain Fat” here

Find out more about Tam here

Follow Tam on Insta

Follow BRAVE JOURNEYS on Insta

Join the conversation and chat about the episode here

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CREDITS:

Creator, Host & Executive Producer: Tammi Faraday

With thanks to my special guest: Virgie Tovar

Audio Editor: Zoltan Fecso

With very special thanks to George Weinberg. 

BRAVE JOURNEYS acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we record this podcast on, the Yaluk-ut Weelam Clan of the Boon Wurrung who are part of the Kulin Nation. We pay our respect to their Elders, both past, present and emerging and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cu