A pro-girth movement is gaining momentum, reflecting a nationwide trend of changing attitudes toward the overweight.
”Being fat is certainly becoming more accepted,” said Rosanna Radding of San Jose, Calif., the founder of More to Love, a dating service started a year ago for overweight people and those who admire them.
Radding and others who call themselves ”fat power” advocates point to the commercial success of products, services and media personalities-such as TV sitcom queen Roseanne Barr, who reportedly weighs 214 pounds-as evidence that society`s attitude toward the overweight is changing.
”The large women themselves are turning things around by demanding recognition,” said Dr. Lorraine Bonner, a general practitioner in Oakland who specializes in treatment of overweight patients. ”There are more stores and self-help groups and magazines like (Oakland-based) Radiance that help in the fat liberation movement.”
”Things are starting to happen here and throughout the country for fat people,” said Alice Ansfield, the publisher of Radiance, a slick, issues-oriented quarterly for large women.
Fashions that fit
A key shift also has occurred in the fashion industry, said Carole Shaw, founder and editor in chief of Big Beautiful Woman magazine, a Beverly Hills- based monthly.
More than 35 million women wear clothes size 14 or larger, and designers and retailers, including such well-known names as Pierre Cardin, are now making clothing to fit them, Shaw said.
After years of being forced to settle for shapeless, unfashionable garments, the new attention has sharply enhanced the self-esteem of overweight women, said Shaw, who estimated annual retail sales of large-sized apparel at $7.5 to $10 billion.
Upscale boutiques and discount outlets are rushing to fill the demand for stylish clothing in big sizes.
It`s about time
William Fabrey, founder of the 1,500-member National Association to Aid Fat Americans, hails such developments but notes that they were a long time coming.
”We at NAAFA have been trying to make the world safe for fat people for the past 18 years,” said Fabrey, who founded the organization almost two decades ago when he became angry at the way his overweight wife was treated by her family and society in general.
The organization, which is based in Bellrose, N.Y., has 23 chapters in the United States and Canada and provides a range of services for the overweight, their friends and families. The group does not try to ”talk people out of becoming thin,” but hopes to persuade society to ”become more tolerant of those who choose not to,” said Fabrey.
To that end, the group lobbies for legislation, maintains a legal research and defense fund, presses court claims and operates an educational program aimed at fighting discrimination against the overweight.
4,000 strong
”No body is bad just because it`s the wrong size,” said Radiance publisher Ansfield, whose publication began as a four-page newsletter five years ago and now runs more than 50 pages each edition with more than 4,000 subscribers.
Ansfield is 36 and calls herself ”fit, fat and fairly successful.”
Her mission is to expose common myths about the overweight, including such maxims as the one that says obese people are unhappy or that inside every fat person, a thin person yearns to break free.
She conceded, however, that disabusing people of their notions about the overweight-and helping to rid the overweight of negative self-images-is tough work.
”We can`t just change attitudes overnight by going out onto a beach in a bikini,” said Ansfield.
”It`s time to stop and get on to the things that are really important in our lives.” –
