The woman in the yellow shirt stood up and told of her life-long struggle against being fat, a fight that she had clearly lost. She was enormous.
‘Every time I dieted I ended up larger,’ she said as she broke into tears, ‘If I were anorexic or bulimic, I would get sympathy. It is so frustrating.’ She was applauded by 100 other very fat men and women.
‘Here, you are in an island of sanity,’ said Professor Paul Campos, author of The Obesity Myth and speaker at this annual meeting of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (Naafa) — activists spurring the backlash against America’s obsession with weight.
Campos is their hero. His book has turned convention on its head, arguing that there is no obesity epidemic and fat does not have to mean unhealthy. His book has been a huge boost for association members who want an end to the obsession with weight and dieting and the marginalisation of fat people.
And fat people are finally starting to win a few battles: Campos’s book is rising in the lists and generating a media buzz; the Atkins diet is waning in popularity after its founder’s premature death; and former Cheers star Kirstie Alley, whose weight is a tabloid obsession, has landed her own reality TV show, Fat Actress, which sees her weight as a positive choice, not a reason for horror.
But Naafa is leading the charge. ‘There are few more revolutionary groups in America today and revolution in this area is warranted,’ said Campos.
Founded in 1969, it has several thousand members worldwide. At its annual conference in Newark last week some members had travelled from Canada and Europe. Delegates sported name tags emblazoned with the message: Dream Big.
Naafa hopes to provide a haven for very fat people away from the stresses of living in a thin society. At the conference were talks on how to lobby for fat rights, yoga classes, a pool party, a fashion show, a speed dating session, classes of beauty tips and fitness exercises. In short, they did most of the things that thinner people take for granted.
Marilyn Wann, a co-director of the association, symbolises its attitude of be healthy and happy with the body you have. Her T-shirt asks loudly: ‘Fat!So?’. She says figures blaming obesity for hundreds of thousands of premature deaths in America are wrong: ‘Where are all the fat dead bodies?’
She is appalled by the growing practice among the very obese to have part of their stomach removed in a bid to lose weight: ‘That sort of surgery is simply stomach theft. Why would any human being need to have a healthy organ cut out?’
Naafa encourages members to organise to lobby for legislation to fight discrimination against fat people. Carole Cullum, a Naafa director and lawyer said: ‘It is up to us to fight. We are in a struggle.’
Wann is more blunt: ‘We are in the middle of a witch hunt and we are the witches.’ She says that, like most Naafa members, she eats healthily and exercises regularly — yet is still fat. ‘I mean, seriously, why would anyone choose to be this size in a society that hates them every hour of every day?’
Doctors and healthcare professionals believe obesity has become a global epidemic — and America is at the heart of it. They point to evidence such as the rise in obesity-related diseases, like diabetes. Some studies have shown that 135-million Americans are overweight and the numbers classified as obese have risen 50% over the past 10 years.
The result has been panic. Makeover shows advocating plastic surgery are the latest television hit and bookshelves groan with the latest best-selling diets. In the Eighties, newspaper articles on obesity ran at about 60 a year; last year there were more than 7 000.
Campos believes America, Britain and much of the developed world is in the grip of anti-fat hysteria. He blames much of this on how obesity is measured, claiming that the standards are unrealistic.
He also claims dieting is responsible for making people fat by triggering a ‘starvation response’ in the body which, when dieting stops, starts storing ’emergency’ fat in increasing amounts, a pattern repeated after each failed diet.
That was the experience of Mary Ray Worley (48) who as a chubby child started dieting at the age of eight — but each one only ended with her putting on more weight. Since discovering the association three years ago, she has changed her attitude to her weight: ‘I don’t hate my body any more. I honour it.’ – Guardian Unlimited Â