Virgie Tovar is 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. She is the founder of Babecamp, an online course designed to help people break up with diet culture.
Virgie started the hashtag campaign #LoseHateNotWeight and gave a TEDx talk on the origins of the campaign. Tovar edited the anthology Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love and Fashion and she is the author of You Have the Right to Remain Fat, which was placed on the American Library Association’s Amelia Bloomer List, and The Self-Love Revolution: Radical Body Positivity for Girls of Color.
Her podcast, Rebel Eaters Club is available on Apple, Spotify, and Stitcher. In 2018 she was named one of the 50 most influential feminists by Bitch Magazine. 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. Check out Virgie's website: www.virgietovar.com
In her interview with Mistake Club Virgie talks about beauty standards and how they affect our body image, she introduces a very interesting perspective about body image and genders and explains why in her opinion body image is a feminist issue. virgie reminds us to appreciate our body for what it does for us and not abuse it for what it's not. She also talks about fat-phobia and how it plays out in our society in the way we treat fat people. Virgie end her interview by calling out NO to body shaming. I couldn't agree more, you never know a person's story and should always be kind to one another. Watch Viegie's video below.