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- In this video, we'll be
discussing diet culture,
disordered eating, and
fat activist Virgie Tovar,
and in order to make sure
that we are all on the same page here,
we are going to start
with a video of Virgie's
that I'm sure many of
you are familiar with
called "Take the Cake."
If you're not familiar with this video,
it will give you a very good introduction
to who Virgie is, but
as a trigger warning,
please view this meme,
because this video is a lot.
(laughs)
So, this video is about
what Virgie calls a.
- CRFI, a cake-related fat-phobic incident
is that moment when it's
time to eat delicious cake,
and it's interrupted by
a moralizing impulse.
- And of the many, many things
that are wrong with this video.
(static crackles)
- Person who's cutting the cake,
almost invariably a woman,
must do some disproportionate
amount of labor
in order to accommodate
their need to feel superior.
- Mm-kay, so now that I've
properly re-triggered myself
in watching, the most problematic
and toxic thing that
Virgie is pushing here,
and something that's very common
within the fat acceptance
movement in general,
is that trying to control your eating
in any way, shape, or
form is disordered eating
fueled only by some deep-seated
hatred of your appearance.
So here is a post from her Instagram
from a few days ago.
"Dieting is not a sign of success.
"It is a sign of woundedness."
And part of the caption reads,
"My current response to
people dieting equals,
"I hate that this person
is wounded by fat-phobia.
"I hate that we live in a culture
"that makes people feel like
something is wrong with them."
First off, I'm not gonna sit here
and say that diet culture doesn't exist
if, by diet culture, we are referring
to the value that we currently place
on being thin as a society,
and the tendency for
many, if not most, women
to spend their entire lives,
dissatisfied with their body,
flitting from one diet to the next.
This is an undeniable fact.
More people have eating
disorders than ever before,
and I'm sure there are millions of people,
men and women, quietly
struggling with their bodies
who don't quite fit the ED category.
I agree with her here,
and I think everyone agrees
with the basic premise
that people should be
accepting of their bodies
no matter what size they are,
but then she kinda gets
into this whole bit.
- [Virgie] Controlling
how much you eat is part
of what it means to be
a, quote, good woman.
This kind of behavior is a way
for people to keep other people in check
through food moralizing,
surveillance, and policing.
These are the mechanisms
that are at the core
of diet culture and weight control.
- Is she really saying
that the only reason
someone would ask for a smaller piece
of an incredibly
underwhelming-looking cake
is to keep up appearances,
to show others that
you are indeed dieting,
and you care about the
way your body looks?
Our first response might be to think
that, you know, no, no, no,
that's not what she means,
but as we look deeper into her content,
it really does seem to mean just that.
Here's something that she posted
on Instagram not too long ago,
with part of the caption reading,
"Someone asked me what I
thought of Overeaters Anonymous.
"Answer, I don't believe there's
such a thing as overeating.
"We don't need more control
"in our relationship
to food, we need less.
"Eat what you want.
"Eat when you want.
"Eat where you want.
"Eat as much as you want."
People are dying out here, okay?
You can't just say stuff like that.
So, the reason I showed
you that is to demonstrate
that it's not conjecture
or hyperbole to say
that Virgie believes
in making zero attempts
to control your intake of food,
and insists that, if you do,
it's because of your
internalized fat-phobia.
Okay, so that we can
be properly infuriated
by the audacity of this to begin with,
let's consider Virgie's audience.
Virgie Tovar is not preaching
to people who want to lose
20 pounds of vanity weight.
She's speaking to women, including a lot
of young and vulnerable girls
who have spent the majority
of their lives struggling
with their weight and who
are potentially very obese,
women who have presumably tried
a million fad diets in their lifetime,
who, you know, maybe have trouble
with binge eating, and who are turning
to her content to try and find a way
to make peace with that situation.
To those people, her message is,
if you so much as ask for
a smaller slice of cake,
you are a vain tool of patriarchy,
and you're not body-positive,
and you're basically engaging
in disordered eating.
That's what her message is
to those vulnerable women.
- [Virgie] The idea that
you can position yourself
as superior to others through self-control
and self-denial is super sexist.
CRFIs have a history of
creating a hierarchy among women
and ultimately maintaining
misogynist expectations.
- First off, how is asking
for a smaller slice of
cake in any way, shape,
or form unreasonable?
Maybe this person has a history
of saying yes to every
crappy office party cake
and any other craving they happen to have,
and they're in the midst
of teaching themselves
how to have more control over food,
a skill that will greatly
benefit them long-term,
or maybe this person wants
a big-ass slice of cake,
but they're practicing self-denial
because they hate the way
that it makes their body feel,
so they're fighting their craving
to do what's really in
their best interests,
and asking for a little less
to spare themselves a
sugar crash, headache,
or stomachache a few hours later.
Point is, it's not always
self-denial to turn down cake,
and it's not always fueled by the desire
to be a size two.
There are plenty of solid reasons
to not want to eat cake
that have absolutely nothing to do
with the way that you look.
I can't believe that's something
that even needs to be said.
And yeah, many of the best reasons
to say no to cake have to do
with health and longevity.
It always blows my mind
that the discussion of
health in any way, shape,
or form is something that's
basically not even present
in the healthy at every
size movement discussions.
Listen to the definition of
health Virgie gave a magazine.
- To me, health is about loving my body,
eating without shame,
and promoting a world
where every single person lives a life
with dignity and respect
regardless of size or health status.
- Yeah, that's nice and all, Virgie,
but it actually has nothing
to do with bodily health.
Take body weight out of the discussion.
How is loving your body
running it to the ground
with addictive nutrient-devoid food?
If you care about something,
you take care of it the best way
that you possibly can, and
the single greatest tools
we have at our disposal are
our nutrition and exercise.
Telling people that they're
a tool of diet culture
because they're trying to
make healthier choices,
I don't see who that
statement is intended to help.
It's one thing to say, hey,
instead of worrying
about your body weight,
focus on eating mostly nutritious foods,
getting daily exercise, and dealing
with any psychological barriers to both,
and your body weight will
sort itself out over time.
It's another thing to preach
to vulnerable individuals
that health is about
eating whatever you want
whenever you want, eating without shame.
That's health?
That trying to control what
you eat is a bigger threat
to your life than dying of
the litany of complications
that accompany being obese?
Virgie Tovar and other fat activists seem
to give food, in
particular unhealthy food,
so much value and power.
They seem to live in this world
where they're unable to
view turning down cake
as anything other than masochism.
It really makes you wonder
what triggered Virgie so deeply
that she felt she needed
to make this video in the first place,
and we're in luck because there's actually
an accompanying article
that she wrote about this,
and I was so happy about finding this
because it basically confirmed to me
all of my suspicions about her motivations
for making this monstrosity to begin with.
(soft string music)
"Recently, a CRFI happened
to me at a birthday party.
"There was a very expensive
"and very gorgeous cake, chocolate.
"I was ready for that cake.
"I was pretty sure that there
was a ganache inside of it.
"Sure, there was
buttercream on the outside,
"but I could sense the sneaky ganache.
"In the midst of my ganache reverie,
"I was interrupted by a woman
"who felt it very important to convey
"that the slices of cake
"that my friend was
making were too large."
So there we have it,
the reason that this video exists.
Someone got between Virgie and her cake,
and a suspected but unconfirmed ganache.
Although we are only talking
about this one video here,
I did look into Virgie's
content more thoroughly
before making this video,
and it's not conjecture to say
that food plays a very
important role in Virgie's life.
(marching music)
Her writing is often hyperbolic,
but there's always intense
descriptions of food,
tons of obsessive moments with
food throughout her stories.
Her podcast is called
"The Rebel Eaters Club,"
and she has written an entire article
on how she dumped someone
because they didn't like ruffle chips
and sour watermelon candy.
She also made this video with her friends.
- Die, kale, die.
- Fuck you, vegetables.
- Die, veggie scum.
- Look at what we can do
when we work together
to vanquish patriarchy,
I mean vegetables.
- Wow, Virgie, seems like you have
a really great relationship with food.
All foods are equal, right?
Except vegetables though.
Fuck those guys.
It's not normal to obsess
over food to this degree,
where it's the topic
of every conversation,
where it takes this
starring role in your life,
and you feel like you're
depriving yourself
if you turn down a smaller slice of cake.
Certain foods are addictive.
That's a fact, and
depending on your genetics
and life experiences, certain
people are more at risk
for developing a food addiction
when continuously exposed
to certain types of foods,
and it sounds like Virgie
Tovar might just be one
of those people, and
there's no shame in that.
I found what Virgie says
next in the article, though,
to be the most telling of all.
She goes on to say that
this woman's request
for a smaller slice of
cake shifted the energy
in the party immediately.
"Certainly, it shifted my
unequivocal ganache lust
"into a flurry of frustration.
"It stirred up old feelings
in the recollection
"of my weight cycling
food restriction years.
"Immediately, her words made me consider
"that perhaps she was
judging my slice of cake,
"and that perhaps it was
not a safe environment
"in which I could glut on cake freely
"because honestly, we all know
"that no one just judges
their own slice of cake
"if they're a cake-judger."
So, wait, Virgie Tovar is
supposed to be this figurehead
of body acceptance, and confidence,
and self-love, and yet everything
that she just said suggested
she's incredibly insecure
and doesn't accept herself as she is.
Why should someone else's decision
to have less cake make her
feel bad about herself?
What does that have to do with her?
If Virgie is so secure in her body weight
and she truly loves being fat,
then why is someone else's behavior
that's not directed at her enough
to make her feel unsafe and judged?
If some girl at a party is judging you
because you're eating more cake than her,
does that not say more about her than you?
If Virgie has it all figured out,
and she pities this woman
because she's a tool of patriarchy,
then why does Virgie feel uncomfortable
eating the amount of cake she wants to eat
while the woman is totally fine
going against what is most likely
the social norm at a
fucking birthday party
with Virgie Tovar present
to ask for a smaller slice of cake?
You may have also noticed
that the comments are
turned off on this video,
and they're restricted on
her Instagram posts as well.
Pretty peculiar for someone
who claims to be totally
secure with themselves.
Now, maybe I'm wrong here.
Maybe she does accept herself as she is,
maybe she is totally happy with being fat,
but there's enough evidence
throughout her Instagram
post and her stories
on Ravishly to suggest otherwise.
And if that's true, is it
not a little disturbing
that someone who's trying to
help women accept themselves
as they are does not seem
to accept herself as she is?
If you're promising people
that, by shunning diet culture
and eating whatever they want 24/7,
they will find the peace
that they're looking for
with their bodies, I would hope
that you had already
gone through that process
and found that peace yourself.
From what I can see here, she
hasn't managed to do that.
So please, enlighten me, Virgie.
What is the benefit
that's being offered here?
If it's not acceptance,
and it's not self-love,
what is it that's worth
giving up your health for
if the insecurities just continue
once you've given up any
attempt at being healthy?
See, the thing is, if Virgie
Tovar wants to lie to herself
and tell herself that society
is the one with the issue,
not her, if she wants to just believe
that she was born fat,
and there's nothing she can do about it,
then go ahead, no one cares.
You have the right to
remain fat or whatever.
But talking about health like
it's a societal construct
to your followers who trust you,
and acting like lifestyle
factors don't have an impact
on people's quality of life and outcomes,
people believe her.
She's literally helping
people delude themselves
into giving up and eating themselves sick.
No one cares if you want to be fat,
and most reasonable
people respect your right
to love your body the way that it is,
but don't help other
people delude themselves
the way you've deluded yourself.
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- It's so rich.
- I think we can all agree
that obsessing over cutting calories,
beating yourself up
over your food choices,
or making yourself feel bad
because you don't like your body
are all unhealthy behaviors,
but obsessing over food,
having zero control
over your intake, and
generally making no effort
to restrict yourself from foods
that are literally designed in a lab
to override your body's ability
to eat intuitively are two
sides of the same coin.
If you have a pet goldfish
and it dies because you
weren't feeding it enough,
well, you're not a very good pet owner,
but guess what, you're
an equally poor pet owner
if it dies because you
were feeding it too much.
In the world that we live in right now,
it's really hard to pin down
what a healthy relationship
with food actually looks like,
but it's pretty clear
that it's not on the
extreme of either end.
There's a huge difference between jumping
from fad diet to fad diet
to drop weight as quickly as possible
because you hate your body
and learning what it means to
live a healthier lifestyle,
and a movement that fails
to make this distinction
in order to push its own agenda
doesn't really sound like something
that anyone should aspire to be a part of.
Anyway, I hope you guys
enjoyed this video,
and I will see you in the next one.
- So remember, the next time
that you're on the verge
of committing a CRFI,
be an ally to women rather than
an accomplice to patriarchy.
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