As a Plus-Size Woman, Here’s How I Protect My Mental Health From Diet Culture
Hi there.
Welcome to my diary, friend.
No, you won’t hear a peep about my sex life. You won’t be entering a catalogue of my weird, petty obsessions. You will, however, find something that might make you feel a lot better as you move through the world. My name is Virgie, and I’ve worked in body positivity as a plus-size woman for almost a decade, helping to educate people on the harmful long-term effects of weight-based discrimination and to recover from body shame. I’ve written books and essays, and I host a podcast and lecture all over the country on these topics.
As you may know without expert-me telling you, living in our diet-obsessed culture can be brutal if you’re fat (also if you’re not, but it’s way worse if you’re fat, a woman, and especially a BIPOC woman, as I am). The world (everyone from “experts” on TV to random Internet trolls) feels free to criticize my body, treat me like a tax liability, make presumptions about how I eat and live and refuse me medical care because of bias about my weight. But I learned many years ago that my body is not a problem and I am 100% done feeling sorry for taking up space.
Now that we’re better acquainted, back to my diary. At the request of Good Housekeeping, I documented two weeks worth of pro-diet or anti-fat messaging and moments I was made to feel like crap about my body, and I