The Self-Love Revolution by Virgie Tovar

Author:Virgie Tovar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: body image;girls of color;racism;sexism;fatphobia;body positivity;beauty standards;virgie tovar;the body is not an apology;you have the right to remain fat;body dysmorphia;anorexia nervosa;bulimia;eating disorders
Publisher: New Harbinger Publications
Published: 2020-04-15T00:12:04+00:00

Write About It

What are the things your family does well when they communicate with you? What are things you’d like them to stop doing? What new traditions do you want the people who come after you to inherit? What’s an old tradition you don’t want to pass on?

8:

Why Isn’t Confidence Enough?

One time I spent $14.95 on a book that was supposed to teach me the secret to being irresistible to boys.

I had a really big crush on my classmate Ashneil. He had a great face. He was the fastest runner. He had the best turtlenecks. He was best friends with Joey, who was, like, so stone-cold cool. Looking back on it now, Ashneil was what you might call a total dirtbag. He only liked skinny girls and he was really mean to me. But I loved him. I thought it was totally normal that he hated me. Everyone hated me because I was fat, so Ashneil’s hate didn’t stand out. I thought it was my fault that he was mean to me, so I was able to forgive him again and again, no matter what he said. One time he even punched me in the arm and I convinced myself that I deserved it.

I believed that once I became thin (which never happened) his abusive behavior would stop and I would become his dream girl. And he would be my dream man.

I fantasized about us getting married and having babies and walking around hand in hand, showing everybody how cute we were in our matching turtlenecks. I dreamed of helping him pick out his favorite socks. I dreamed of giving him shoulder massages when he came home from school stressed out.

Okay, so most of these dreams were pretty sexist. Like, I don’t need to help a grown man pick out his own socks, and men can use their income advantage over women to pay someone to massage them when they are stressed out.

But back to the book. The $15 secret? Confidence.

The book said that confidence would make me irresistible. My interpretation: it would make me Ashneil’s girlfriend overnight.

The little book guided me through how to walk like I was confident and talk like I was confident. It guaranteed me that once I did all these steps, the man of my dreams would be begging for my phone number.

I did all the steps, but guess what? They didn’t work! It turns out that I was still living in a culture that oppressed me because of my size, gender, and race (confidence can’t cure oppression, unfortunately), and Ashneil was still super rude to me. I never became skinny, but I did stop having crushes on jerks. It turns out it’s better to change who you have crushes on than trying to change yourself. New rule: people who punch people and verbally abuse them are not good crush material.

As I got older and went to college and then got a job, I saw the same thing over and over. A lot of people

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