Book Review: Hot & Heavy Edited By Virgie Tovar

Fierce Fat Girls Tell Their Stories

By Ghia Vitale

Hot & Heavy is a fat positive anthology that’s edited by Virgie Tovar. According to the cover, this anthology features stories by “fierce fat girls on life, love & fashion.”

As many of you know, I enjoy reading books about fatness and body positivity. Soon enough, I discovered the writings of Virgie Tovar, a fat activist and sex educator from San Francisco. After following her on social media, I fell in love with her personality and style. Naturally, my curiosity about Tovar and fat liberation led me to read her book called You Have The Right To Remain Fat. 

When I finished that book, I knew exactly what I wanted: Fat power! Also, I wanted to read more work by Virgie Tovar.

While searching for more of Tovar’s writings, I discovered this anthology that’s edited by her. My first thought was, “Yes, please!” This anthology was published in 2012, but still seemed worth reading. I love reading stories that center the voices of fat people and our experiences.

(By the way: This anthology isn’t just edited by Tovar. It also features one story by Tovar and a collaborative piece she worked on with Deb Malkin.) 

Hot & Heavy is a juicy collection of stories about fat women’s relationships with their bodies. There are three sections in this book: Life, Love, and Fashion. In these stories, the writers also explain their individual journeys towards embracing fat acceptance. The content is fat, feminist, and full of secrets to being a fierce fatty. The book is peppered with advice and lessons to help you become a more fierce version of yourself.

Caution: This anthology is seriously steamy. There are a lot of sex positive stories in this anthology. There are stories by notable sex workers like Kitty Stryker and April Flores. This anthology also features stories by burlesque performers like Erin Kilpatrick. Hell, this book was edited by a burlesque performer — Tovar says she has a history of doing burlesque. It felt empowering to read about fat women performing burlesque and being blatantly sexual. Too often, society has a desexualized view of fat women.

I appreciated how raw and candid the sexual descriptions are in this book. Reading some of these stories almost feels like a good friend is dishing out the dirty details of their sex lives to you. I also appreciated how multiple stories in this book talk about the belly as an erogenous zone. I think it’s important to talk about getting pleasure and intimacy in places people don’t always expect. Ever since I dated someone who was into my belly, I can’t stop appreciating my belly by myself. Now, I love belly rubs and no longer try to dissociate from my body or belly during sexual activity. I’m glad that other fat women are talking about them and their big beliies getting the love they deserve.

Hot & Heavy isn’t all sunshine and sexcapades. The stories also talk about difficult stuff. Many of these stories involve writers’ experiences with fatphobia and other hard experiences. However, sharing these fatphobic experiences only serves to demonstrate just how fierces these fatties are to exist without shame. Reading this anthology helped me realize how strong fat people like me have to be to merely exist. It was also interesting to read how other fat women have reacted to fatphobia in the past. Because our culture is fatphobic, fatphobia is pretty much everywhere. We can’t escape it unless we go to fat positive spaces and we even face fatphobia there. It felt reassuring to be reminded that not every fat person is equipped with the perfect clapback to dish out against fatphobes.

Yes, this book is full of feminism, but it also discusses a contentious subject amongst fat women and femmes: The term “BBW.” For those who don’t know, BBW stands for Big Beautiful Woman. Many people involved with fat politics shun this term because they say it’s a form of fetishization. For the most part, I agree with this idea. However, for big girls like myself, identifying as a BBW was one of our first steps towards becoming proud fat women. For this reason, I think it’s interesting that Tovar included stories that included involvement in the BBW scene. I can’t erase the fact that I used to use the #bbw hashtag when I posted my pictures on social media. However, the BBW scene and the fat liberation movement are separate entities despite both being related to people with fat bodies.

Read this book if you want to unleash the fierce fat babe within you. It’ll inspire you to love yourself harder and live a more authentic life.

If you want to stay updated, follow Virgie Tovar on Instagram. You can also check her out on Twitter and like her page on Facebook. 
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