Fat Activism
• Health Issues
An interesting look at the “politics of fat.”
What is clear is that not all fat citizens are obediently jumping on the diet bandwagon: A growing number are organizing to demand that society transform its bodily ideals, instead of agreeing that they should try to transform their bodies. The best-known of the fat activist groups is the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA), but there are dozens of others, from the Fat Underground, which devotes itself to disrupting Weight Watchers meetings with pro-fat guerrilla theater, to rabble-rousing zines like Fat!So?, “for people who don’t apologize for their size.” Read though these Web sites and manifestos and you encounter a political movement in the making, one that a lot of us overfed Americans may soon be thinking about joining.