In the second wave, the fat acceptance movement became more widespread in the US and started to spread to other countries. The latter went on to become a book of the same name. Other first wave activities included the productions of zines such as Figure 8 and Fat!So? by Marilyn Wann. In the UK The London Fat Women's Group was formed, the first British fat activist group, and was active between approximately 19. The original print magazine closed in the late 1990s but the term BBW has become widely used to refer to any fat woman. In 1979 Carole Shaw coined the term Big Beautiful Woman (BBW) and launched a fashion and lifestyle magazine of the same name aimed at plus-sized women. In 1983, the two groups collaborated to publish a seminal book in the field of fat activism, Shadow on a Tightrope, which collected several fat activist position papers initially distributed by the Fat Underground, as well as poems and essays from other writers. Shortly afterward, Fishman moved to Connecticut, where, along with Karen Scott-Jones, she founded the New Haven Fat Liberation Front, an organization similar to the Fat Underground in its scope and focus. They coined the saying, "a diet is a cure that doesn't work, for a disease that doesn't exist". Founded by Sara Fishman (then Sara Aldebaran) and Judy Freespirit, the Fat Underground took issue with what they saw as a growing bias against obesity in the scientific community. The FU were inspired by and, in some cases, members of the Radical Therapy Collective, a feminist group that believed that many psychological problems were caused by oppressive social institutions and practices. It began as a radical chapter of NAAFA and spun off to become independent when NAAFA expressed concerns about its promotion of a stronger activist philosophy.
In 1972 the feminist group The Fat Underground was formed. Since 1991, Fabrey has worked as a director with the Council on Size and Weight Discrimination, specializing in the history of the size acceptance movement. He primarily intended it to campaign for fat rights, however, a reporter attending the 2001 NAAFA conference notes that few attendees were active in fat rights politics and that most women came to shop for fashion, wear it on the conference catwalk or to meet a potential partner.
NAAFA was founded in America, in 1969, by Bill Fabrey in response to discrimination against his wife. The article led to a meeting between Louderback and William Fabrey, who went on to found the first organization for fat people and their supporters, originally named the 'National Association to Aid Fat Americans' and currently called the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA). In 1967, Lew Louderback wrote an article in the Saturday Evening Post called "More People Should be FAT" in response to discrimination against his wife. Called by radio personality Steve Post, the "Fat-in" consisted of a group of 500 people eating, carrying signs and photographs of Sophia Loren (an actress famous for her figure), and burning diet books. A "fat-in" was staged in New York's Central Park in 1967. Like other social movements from this period, the fat acceptance movement, initially known as "Fat Pride", "Fat Power", or "Fat Liberation", often consisted of people acting in an impromptu fashion. This kind of political climate was the background of the fat acceptance movement, which originated in the late 1960s. First wave įirst wave activities consisted of isolated activists drawing attention to the dominant model of obesity and challenging it as only one of several possible models.ĭuring the early part of the 20th century, obesity was seen as detrimental to the community, via decreasing human efficiency, and that obese people interfere with labor productivity in the coastal areas of the United States. Cooper believes that fat activists have suffered similar waves of activism followed by burnout, with activists in the following wave often unaware of the history of the movement, resulting in a lack of continuity. Sociologist Charlotte Cooper has argued that the history of the fat activist movement is best understood in waves, similar to the feminist movement, with which she believes it is closely tied. The history of the fat acceptance movement can be dated back to 1967 when 500 people met in New York's Central Park to protest against anti-fat bias.