The Bulge And The Beautiful

By Steve Lopez/Palisades Park

We've stopped calling short people dwarfs. We've stopped calling disabled people handicapped. We've stopped calling lots of people lots of things we always called them. But the XXXLs of the world have a message for us. It's still O.K. to call them fat, as long as you don't make fun of them. "We're fat! We're here! Get over it!" was the cry at the recent Million Pound March here, a celebration notable for the fact that nobody actually marched anywhere.

Some of the 200 mostly female attendees, who ranged in weight from chubby to barely making it out of the bus, even sat through all the speeches and chants at Palisades Park in Santa Monica, Calif. Ella Lou Wann, whose daughter Marilyn, 31, wore a FAT!SO? T shirt and made the crowd-pleasing observation that "life is too short for self-hatred and celery sticks," handed out 150 ginger cookies.

With palms swaying under dreamy blue skies and the Pacific slapping at the nearby shore, it was as if a busload of Roseannes had wandered onto the Baywatch set. But that was precisely the point.

There's been too much shame, too much pain and too much hiding, said Sally E. Smith, executive director of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance. NAAFA sponsored a weeklong August convention, and is now sending volunteers into schools to educate against taunting and discrimination. Smith says it's time for fat people to get out of the house, stand proudly among the Kate Mosses of the world and maybe even offer the poor birds something to eat.

Or, as the "marchers" sang to the tune of The Battle Hymn of the Republic,

We're learning to accept ourselves, we're learning to be wise Our bodies come in different shapes, we don't apologize Everyone is beautiful and worthy in our eyes We're proud in every size!

Proud, defiant and tired of stereotypes. Heavyweight actress Camryn Manheim of the TV show The Practice said it got old watching Lara Flynn Boyle, her bag-of-bones co-star, get all the steamy action. Fat women like their bread buttered too, so Manheim made a bold demand of her producer, she told the crowd: "I want a kiss, and I want one with tongue."

The applause was thunderous. Revelers wore buttons that said 55% AND GAINING, a reference to a government report that more than half the population is overweight. T shirts were vast billboards for sponsors, including Fat Bastard Sportswear, Bodacious Babes and Gut Reaction.

But good humor was only part of the deal. Leslie DiMaggio, 59, of Monterey, Calif., said she was insulted while checking in for her flight here. "Two airline people told me if they weren't able to get everyone on, I'd have to buy another seat." Charles Van Dyke, 46, a Southern Californian--who estimates his weight at 600 lbs., judging by a sumo wrestler roughly his size--nodded understandingly.

Applauded at the march were arguments that there's no such thing as permanent weight loss, that fat people are fat because of their genes and not a weakness for Cheez Curls and Ding Dongs, and the diet industry is a $40 billion annual ripoff. Although the media are despised for cheap fat jokes and the glorification of supermodels and other stick people, "our evil enemy is the diet industry," says Smith, who laid into fad diets and the manufacturers of diet drugs with dangerous side effects.

All this chest pounding made for a wonderful hula under the coconuts. And is there anyone among us who ever saw bubble-head Suzanne Somers pitch the Thighmaster on TV and didn't want to raid the kitchen for a bowl of frosting and a few Hot Pockets?

But you couldn't help noticing that two words seemed to have been excised from the million-pound vocabulary: exercise and nutrition. Some of the liberated even insisted there was no conclusive evidence linking obesity with health problems.

Denial is a wonderful thing. But before you dash out for doughnuts: "Many people have genetics that lead to a huskier look, and often that huskiness is not fat. [But] there are people we all know who used to be fat, then permanently changed their life-styles, and are now thin." says Dr. David Heber of the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition. Obesity most definitely increases risk of heart disease, Heber adds.

While Smith says NAAFA advocates healthy foods and exercise, you couldn't find a jumping jack or a bean sprout at the march. But 1) they were out in the healthy California sun and 2) there was nothing to eat but a few cookies.

That's progress. The first convention, in 1972, was held at a New York City deli.