San Francisco Hires a Morbidly Obese Activist as City Health Consultant

The left: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is too nuts to be secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Also the left: We need a pro-obesity activist as a health consultant in one of the nation’s biggest cities.

Look, far be it from me to say that the government should tell you, as a red-blooded American, what foodstuffs to consume. To quote the legendary fictional libertarian thinker Ron Swanson: “The whole point of this country is if you want to eat garbage, balloon up to 600 pounds and die of a heart attack at 43, you can. You are free to do so. To me, that’s beautiful.”

However, I’ve never exactly heard any American also express the opinion that our public health authorities are holding our beloved country to, say, unnatural standards of thinness. But apparently, the San Francisco Department of Public Health — bet you didn’t see that one coming — sees that as a problem, because Fox News reports they’ve put “a self-described ‘anti-weight-based discrimination’ expert” on the public payroll “to consult on ‘weight stigma and weight neutrality.’”

Virgie Tovar is the author of  “You Have the Right to Remain Fat” and “The Self-Love Revolution: Radical Body Positivity for Girls of Color,” as well as editor of the collection “Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love & Fashion” — all books that promote “fat positivity and body acceptance.”

And now, in what she calls an “absolute dream come true,” she announced on Instagram that she’d be consulting San Francisco on issues of same.

 

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A post d by Virgie Tovar (@virgietovar)

“I’m UNBELIEVABLY proud to serve the city I’ve called home for almost 20 years in this way!” she said in a Monday post.

“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.”

I’ll leave it to Fox News to (pun unintended) flesh out the backstory of San Francisco’s newest hire:

Tovar’s website lists her as a ​”plus-size Latina author, lecturer, and leading expert on weight-based discrimination and body positivity with over a decade of experience.” She is a contributor for Forbes, where she covers stories on the “plus size market.” Her most recent articles include features about hosting a “size inclusive” Thanksgiving and alleged “fatphobia” in current TV shows.

It is unclear what role Tovar will play within the department. The San Francisco Department of Public Health did not respond when asked by Fox News Digital about details of Tovar’s consultancy.

Yeah, I wonder why. Perhaps it’s because a city that’s dealing with rampant homelessness, crime, drug needles and feces on the streets, fleeing tenants and residents, and a brand image as a city, in general, that falls somewhere in between Spirit Airlines’ in the aviation sphere and Yugo’s as a carmaker, has hired her as part of a fix to what’s ailing it.

And let’s be clear about what her thing is — since Fox News, reporting the story objectively, declined to make value judgments on what Tovar has said in the past.

For instance, in one video, she talked about how her doctors had urged her to lose some weight.

“I really believed that this was about my health. 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,” she said.

One wishes not to be mean, but one also can’t help but to call for summary judgment on that one: Do you believe her doctors’ diagnosis, or her own? Just saying.

Then in July, she posted about a seminar she conducted for government employees — jurisdiction unidentified — about the “stigma around food and bodies at work.”

What did she teach them? “1. Talk less or not at all about how you and others eat at work. 2. Talk less or not at all about you or others’ bodies at work. 3. Talk less or not at all about exercise at work. 4. Don’t presume that food, weight, body size or exercise are safe or comfortable topics to discuss at work for everyone.”

Heck, why even acknowledge that we consume food and the amount we consume is somehow connected to our bodies or our health? The idea of sustenance — and that we can over-sustain or under-sustain ourselves — is Problematic™. It’s sustenance-shaming, people. Let’s get sustenance-agnostic.

Don’t use the word “lunch break.” Say that you’re “taking a break that has to do with a bodily function I am uncomfortable sharing with you and how dare you ask, by the way? And why did you defend yourself by saying that you didn’t ask? And how dare you defend yourself by saying, ‘no, really, I didn’t,’ when I d my lived experience that you did?”

I kid. I think. I hope.

The whole thing, in honesty, reminded me of Tom Wolfe’s famous essay about San Francisco government do-gooders, “Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers.” I wasn’t alone; John Loftus, editor at large for the Daily Caller, also noted how this reeks of that 1970 piece, “which chronicles the hilarious exchanges between young, militant San Francisco residents who would shake down the white, liberal bureaucrats at the Office of Economic Opportunity and pressure the dorks to divert cash to their preferred ethnic groups.

“I can imagine Tovar thundering into the Department of Health Office, crashing down some doors, demanding they throw her some cash so she can make PowerPoints about fat-shaming, with neat little sound effects, as well, and feel good about herself,” he wrote in the Tuesday editorial. “I can also imagine the city bureaucrats quaking in the presence of such a colossal force of nature, such a brilliant mind.”

I’m sure he thought and hoped he was kidding about that scenario, too — and the assessment of the “brilliant mind” they’d put on city payroll. I wouldn’t be so sure on those counts, Mr. Loftus.

But remember, RFK Jr.’s the crazy one.

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