When I was about 8 years old, my grandparents enrolled me in swimming lessons. I went to the community pool, excited and suited up in a one-piece bathing suit, swim cap, and goggles, my panzita proudly leading the way. The swim instructors were all thin, white jocks — the exact people you’d imagine being cast in a movie about a U.S. summer. After getting registered as a guppy (the youngest aspiring swimmer group), one of the lifeguards walked me by the shoulders over to a fair-haired bro in sunglasses and said that I hadn’t been claimed for a swim class yet. “Well, look at her,” he said, sardonically. My chubby Brown body was a perpetual punchline, shorthand for everything negative that happened to me or even around me.⁠ I did learn how to swim, but I think that was the summer that started my lifelong struggle with the season. It was definitely the last time I wore an actual bathing suit — rather than a long t-shirt and shorts — until adulthood. This started to change in 2011. I was 30 years old, and I had just become a fat-positive activist. One of my first acts of body reclamation was putting on a bathing suit again for the first time in 20 years and swimming in a pool with fat friends. Every summer since that one has been about reclaiming and rewriting my history as well as making room for myself and other up-and-coming 8-year-old guppy gorditas.⁠ -⁠ In this serviceable essay for our #hotgirlsomos series, @virgietovar shares some tools she's learned about navigating body anxiety in the decade-ish since she started identifying as a fat Brown babe. Trust, you'll want to check them out. Link in bio.