PERSONAL GROWTH & LIFE TRANSITIONS
The Body Positive Journal
Virgie Tovar
Virgie Tovar is a leading expert on body positivity and weight-based discrimination and holds a Master's degree in sexuality studies with a focus on the intersections between body size, race, and gender. Her approach to this subject matter is both joyful and empowering. The Body Positive Journal is part diary, part workbook filled with prompts, reflections, and fun illustrations designed to encourage the reader to release judgment and shame, and love and value their body as is.
MEMORABLE QUOTES:
"Humans — all of us — are impossibly sophisticated and miraculous creatures, existing against the odds of every challenge we have faced throughout time. It's difficult to remember this when you believe your body is a problem that needs to be fixed. Your body is not the problem. The way you've been taught to see your body is. Imagine you are going through an art gallery, and your guide — instead of telling you how interesting and beautiful every painting is — spends their time complaining about how every painting needs more blue in it or criticizing the paintings that don't look enough like a Picasso. With a guide like that, you might forget, you're surrounded by masterpieces. The guide is our culture. The masterpiece is you. It's all of us. Remember that you're art. Remember that you're art."
"Allowing yourself to feel anger is an extraordinary act of self-care and self-acceptance. You don't need to feel shame on top of feeling angry. Being angry is enough work. You can just let yourself have the emotion, checking in about what needs are or aren't being met, and then figure out ways you can get what you need without engaging in self-destructive behavior."