Today, Kathy continues her conversation with Virgie Tovar, MA, on bodies and girls and women of color. To listen to part 1, please click here.
Virgie Tovar is an author, activist and one of the nation’s leading experts and lecturers on weight-based discrimination and body image. She is a contributor for Forbes where she covers the plus-size market and how to end weight discrimination at work. In 2018 she was named one of the 50 most influential feminists by Bitch Magazine. She is the founder of Babecamp, a 4-week online course designed to help people 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. Tovar edited the anthology Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love and Fashion (Seal Press, November 2012) and she’s the author of You Have the Right to Remain Fat (Feminist Press August 2018), which was placed on the American Library Association’s Amelia Bloomer List, and The Self-Love Revolution: Radical Body Positivity for Girls of Color (New Harbinger Publications 2020). Her podcast, Rebel Eaters Club, is NY-based Transmitter Media’s first original production and is available on Apple, Spotify and Stitcher. She holds a Master’s degree in Sexuality Studies with a focus on the intersections of body size, race and gender. She has received two San Francisco Arts Commission Individual Artist Commissions as well as Yale’s Poynter Fellowship in Journalism. Virgie has been featured by the New York Times, Tech Insider, BBC, MTV, Al Jazeera, NPR, Yahoo Health and the San Francisco Chronicle. She lives in San Francisco.