Book Review / Hot and Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love and FashionVirgie Tovar

Many of the essays in Virgie Tovar’s Hot and Heavy begin with some variation of “I am a fat girl.” These unapologetic declarations are jarring in a culture in which women are quick to tell their overweight friends “You’re not fat!” The writers here make no apologies for their size, and talk openly about sex work, depression, and short shorts—descriptive, loud discussion from a group whose large size makes them strangely invisible and mostly mute. The writing is funny and poignant, and the take on Fat feels fresh. This book was not written to show that fat people are the same as everyone else; on the contrary, the women in this book seem to say, “I am not like everyone else, and that’s what makes me great.”

Labell, Molly. "Hot and Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love and Fashion." BUST Magazine