Last week we celebrated International Women’s Day by highlighting the names of what was just a small portion of our colleagues and the powerful voices we admire in the eating disorder and body positive community! It sparked a wonderful conversation about diversity and empowering marginalized voices. BALANCE thanks all who joined the conversation. We are excited to continue celebrating many more beyond International Women’s Day by kicking off our ‘Feature Friday’ blog series.

We are launching it today with the inspiring Virgie Tovar! We thank our colleague & friend Christy Harrison for suggesting the brilliant Virgie to feature this week (You can listen to Virgie on Christy’s Podcast Food Psych here)

Virgie Tovar

Author, activist and one of the nation's leading experts and lecturers on fat discrimination and body image.

Virgie Tovar is an author, activist and one of the nation's leading experts and lecturers on fat discrimination and body image. She is the founder of Babecamp, a 4-week online course designed to help women who are ready to break up with diet culture, and started the hashtag campaign #LoseHateNotWeight. She pens a weekly column called Take the Cake. Tovar edited the ground-breaking anthology Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love and Fashion (Seal Press, November 2012) and The Feminist Press will be publishing her forthcoming book of non-fiction, You Have the Right to Remain Fat(August 2018; now available for pre-order). She holds a Master's degree in Sexuality Studies with a focus on the intersections of body size, race and gender. After teaching "Female Sexuality" at the University of California at Berkeley, where she completed a Bachelor's degree in Political Science in 2005, she went onto host "The Virgie Show" (CBS Radio) in San Francisco. She is a former plus size style writer for BuzzFeed. Virgie has been featured by the New York Times, Tech Insider, MTV, Al Jazeera, NPR, Yahoo Health, the San Francisco Chronicle, Huffington Post, Cosmopolitan Magazine Online, Bust Magazine, and French language magazine Madame Figaro. She lives in San Francisco and offers workshops and lectures nationwide.

Check out her powerful Ted Talk here on the importance of Losing Hate, Not Weight:

Fat shaming is one of the last bastions of unchecked bias in this country. As the weight-loss industry continues to grow, so too do rates of eating disorders, body dysmorphia and food anxiety. Is this what a healthy nation looks like? Virgie Tovar, fat activist and recovering dieter, advocates hate loss over weight loss.

You can follow Virgie on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram. Keep up with her amazing work and future projects on her website VirgieTovar.com

Thank you, Virgie, for being a fierce voice in encouraging women to ditch dieting and find peace with their bodies!

Feature Friday: Virgie Tovar