Beautiful and bountiful
Women of size have an agenda and a blast
By Dawn Taylor
The Portland Tribune Mar 21, 2006
There’s a revolution quietly fomenting, and Portland is a hotbed of subversive activity. In nightclubs and restaurants, on city streets and in private homes, activists are plotting to change our most closely held beliefs.
And they’re gonna dance while they do it.
On a Sunday night at the Southeast Portland nightclub Holocene, the joint is packed to the rafters with women supporting Fat PDX, a growing organization of folks dedicated to fighting prejudice against people with a tad more junk in their trunk.
The music is loud, the libations are flowing freely and the dance floor is vibrating.
And everywhere you look, there are women. Big women, not-so-big women, plain women, gorgeous women, all wearing satin, lace, feather boas, stompy black boots, jaunty fedoras Ñ the fashions are as diverse as the ladies themselves. Pinup pictures of lushly padded girls in fishnets and spike heels are projected onto the wall, interspersed with messages like “Bodacious Bodies” and “Huge & Hunky.”
Yes, there are a few men in attendance, and that’s fine. But for the most part, this monthly dance party Ñ called Cupcake Ñ is joyously, abundantly female.
“Sometimes fat women won’t go out dancing because of the reaction they get,” explains Stacy Bias, 31, one of the event’s organizers. “They may want to wear crazy outfits and feel sexy. It’s great to be fat and fabulous.”
That’s not a popular sentiment in American culture, where it is estimated that women spend $33 billion a year on diets and $300 million on cosmetic surgery. The medical establishment has linked a number of health issues with elevated weight, and studies have shown that larger people have a harder time getting hired and gaining promotions.
The informational tide, however, may be turning. Recent reports by government-funded research groups like the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases have questioned the links between obesity and diseases like diabetes, saying that they may be coincidental Ñ the result of overall lifestyle, not weight Ñ and activists like Bias are working hard to make the public think twice about dismissing people of size as lazy, slothful and unhealthy.
“We’re our own worst critics, which is the point of Fat PDX,” Bias says. “We all have stuff that isn’t perfect about us, but that doesn’t make us unworthy of love.”
There’s a lot of love at Cupcake for the evening’s star attraction, Heather MacAllister. A founding member of the San Francisco-based troupe Big Burlesque, she’s shaking her stuff for the crowd as her dancing alter ego RevaLucian.
Shimmying in classic stripper style to Eartha Kitt’s sexy torch song “I’d Rather Be Burned as a Witch,” she slips off a filmy white skirt to reveal a glittery, bottom-baring thong.
The male members of the audience gape in frank adoration while the women hoot with delight. Flashing a sly grin, MacAllister presses her voluptuous curves against a delighted gal standing near the dance floor, who turns bright red while grinning from ear to ear.
Big Burlesque performed at Bias’ first big activist event, Fat Girl Speaks, three years ago at the Hollywood Theatre.
“We thought it was important to be there,” MacAllister says, cooling down after her striptease. “We wanted to illustrate how performance could be a political statement.”
As part of that statement, MacAllister and her fellow burlesque dancers have participated in two nude photo shoots with Leonard Nimoy Ñ yes, Mr. Spock Ñ for his Full Body Project. The collected photographs (which can be viewed on Nimoy’s Web site, www.leonardnimoyphotography.com) received coverage internationally, with stories appearing in magazines such as Time and The New Yorker because, MacAllister says, “after all, he is Leonard Nimoy.”
It’s art, it’s politics
While the pictures may seem shocking to some and merely titillating to others, according to activists like Bias and MacAllister, any public display of bountiful beauty is, in this atmosphere of anti-fat prejudice, a political statement. That applies to dancing in a nightclub as well.
“I love to dance, and I want to share with women what I love about my body,” MacAllister says. “And that they can also be sexual and empowered in their own bodies.”
A mention of the event on Craigslist brought Laura Kidd, 22, from her home in Beaverton, dragging her friends Gina and Lisette along for the evening.
“I love to dance, but there’s just nowhere to go that isn’t a meat market with men judging all the women by their waist size,” she says. “And if you’re a woman who likes to dance with other women, it’s even worse if you’re not skinny.”
Henry Renfrow, 28, a Southeast Portland resident who publishes a zine called Fatty Fatty 2 x 4, agrees that Cupcake is a step forward for fat women.
“Just having a size-positive environment is wonderful,” she says, leaning in to be heard over the pounding dance music. “A lot of women are self-conscious about going somewhere that’s all skinny people Ñ it’s great that there’s a place where fat people and their allies can come and have a good time together.”
And along with all of the earnest discussion of size acceptance and politics, having a good time is a primary focus of Cupcake Ñ and of Fat PDX as a whole.
The organization recently has acquired nonprofit status thanks to its association with In Other Words bookstore, and Bias says a number of events are being planned, including workshops on making and painting body casts, clothing modification (“T-shirt surgery, or making patterns bigger,” she explains) and the creation of fat dolls, so larger children can see images they can relate to.
“We also want to do some work with parents of fat kids, on how to parent them better,” Bias says, to help children grow up with good self-esteem and familial acceptance.
Get the glam on
Cupcake will continue as well, on the fourth Sunday of each month at Holocene. With go-go dancing “Cupcake girls” gyrating on top of speakers, free cupcakes (provided, appropriately enough, by the new Northwest Portland bakery Saint Cupcake) and the proceeds helping fund Fat PDX and Fat Girl Speaks, the event promises to bring a joyful, sexy sort of activism to the Portland landscape.
Faith Stern, who works as a dispatcher in North Portland, says that Cupcake gives her an opportunity to pull the sexier, glitzier clothes out of her closet.
“It’s not like I can wear something like this at work,” she says, showing off a cleavage-enhancing bustier and thigh-baring miniskirt. “And everyone’s so supportive, it makes me feel really pretty.”
“It’s great to see people of all sizes feeling accepted, and able to feel free in their own bodies Ñ and it keeps Fat Girl Speaks in people’s minds all year-round,” says Domi Shoemaker, a board member of Fat PDX whose red feather boa matches her bright red mohawk.
“And there’s another reason to come,” she adds. “There’s a lot of hot women.”
“It’s a little tough going out on a Sunday night with work the next day, but this is so much fun,” said Dani Marchetto, 27, an elementary school teacher from Southeast Portland. “I hardly ever get dressed up. It’s like I can be someone else for a night, and I haven’t been flirted with so much in years.”
Dawn Taylor - Portland Tribune (Mar 21, 2006)