City hires ‘fat positivity’ expert to tackle weight stigma

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The San Francisco Department of Public Health’s latest consultant once made comments that “no one has to be healthy.”

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Virgie Tovar, 42, a longtime activist for body positivity and fat acceptance and self-described “anti-weight-based discrimination” expert, was hired to consult on stigmas faced by overweight people.

“Weight stigma can lead to psychological distress and can have a negative impact on mental health,” the health department said in a statement to the San Francisco Chronicle.

“Weight stigma can also undermine health behaviors and preventive care, causing disordered eating, decreased physical activity, health care avoidance and weight gain.”

Tovar will be paid $12,000 for her temporary position with the city, which ends on June 30, 2025, the publication reported.

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Tovar took to social media to share the news of her hiring.

“I’m unbelievably proud to serve the city I’ve called home for almost 20 years in this way!” she wrote on Instagram.

“This consultancy is an absolute dream come true, and it’s my biggest hope and belief that weight neutrality will be the future of public health.”

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It is unclear what Tovar’s role within the department will be but she has been outspoken about diet culture and how it’s attacking our so-called health.

She recounted in a video posted by Project Heal how, as a child, she was pressured by doctors to lose weight and she was made to believe they were doing so with her health in mind.

“I really believed that this was about my health,” she says in the clip.

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“I really believed my doctor was right and so I was using the language of getting ‘better’ but I was actually deeply in the throes of anorexia.”

In July, Tovar led a “weight bias training” for government workers and shared four tips she taught on “what we need less of at work so that people with all types of histories with body image, exercise, weight/stigma, and eating can feel safer just going to their jobs every day.”

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In 2022, Tovar appeared on an Ulta Beauty podcast hosted by celebrity hairstylist David Lopez where she was asked to explain what her definition of health was.

“That’s really complicated… I want to start by saying that, no one has to be healthy,” she responded.

Tovar later added: “No matter what size you are, you don’t owe anybody else your health. In an ideal world, there wouldn’t be health-based gate-keeping at all.”

At the time, Megyn Kelly mocked the interview on her SiriusXM show, saying, “You don’t have to be healthy but we don’t have to celebrate somebody who is morbidly obese as healthy. That’s a lie.”

Tovar is the author of the book You Have the Right to Remain Fat and describes herself on her website as a “plus-size Latina author, lecturer, and expert on body positivity with over a decade of experience.”

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