Her ebony hair twists into a tall braid, adding inches to her five-two frame. Her makeup is heavy, but very well applied. For the occasion, she has donned a fashionable black Qiana pants outfit topped by a flowing, knee-length tunic. She is readying trays of canapes and crackers and dip for her first meeting of the local chapter of the National Association to Aid Fat Americans. Linda Blackmon flits around her elegant Arlington house like a plump budgie. "I'm built for comfort, baby, I ain't built for speed."
Most important, though, and what is most starting about the fat power movement, is the change that enlightened fat people have rendered within their own minds. They are coining new words ("lookism" - discrimination based on looks, "FA" - Fat Admirer), fighting for new laws against discrimination based on a person's size, and seeking to change the entire outlook of modern society. They are rallying to help each other find sympathetic doctors, happy employers and future mates. Today they are forming clubs for social encounters, moral support and court battles.
Like the five crew members who weren't allowed to meet Jimmy Carter when he made an inspection tour of their submarine docked in Florida last summer because they were too fat to be seen by their President.įat people across the country are rising in protests against the indignities they have been made to suffer just because they are fat drab, ungainly clothing, unsatisfactory or nonexistent social or sexual relationships, inaccessibility of theaters because seats are too small, doctors who pronounce them healthy but insist they must lose weight, bosses who monitor their overweight secretaries' daily lunches and countless more putdowns that have left fat people at best demoralized, at worst, suicidal. Like the kids who are being threatened with suspension at Oral Roberts University in Oklahoma because they won't - or can't - lose weight and thereby achieve the "whole person lifestyle" ORU feels students need for a higher education. Like Charlotte Horowitz, who was kicked out of the Kansas City School of Medicine for being sloppy, hard to get along with - and fat. There are many others who aren't so lucky. She is also head of the Baltimore-Washington area chapter of the National Association to Aid Fat Americans. She holds a job she loves and is surrounded by friends and family who dote on her. She is now married to a man who adores her ample figure and enormous bosom. She is part of a growing movement of fat people - well-represented at her wedding - who have declared war on a society which, they believe, has discriminated against fat people for more than 700 years on every possible level - social, psychological, medical and professional. But unlike the other seventy million fat Americans, Peggy Williams has chucked Madison Avenue and declared her independence. She, many of the wedding guests and fully a third of the people in this country, according to medical statistics have endured a lifetime of diets, deprivation and suffering - sometimes with fatal results - in attempts to adhere to the Madison Avenue dream of slimness.
Peggy Williams, nee Greensfelder, is fat. Her being weighed three hundred and seventy-five pounds. Peggy's joy and being that chilly February day filled the aisle. Twenty-four feet of shimmering ivory Qiana trimmed in creamy Venice lace, ten feet of frothy bridal illusion, a gown custom-made by Miss Judy herself of Miss Judy's Bridal Salon in Baltimore, enveloped her as she floated toward the fluorescent-lit altar. THE WEDDING was, as weddings are, unforgettable.įrom the moment she appeared dramatically at the top of the aisle in the ultra-modern church, the moment she began her solemn walk down the long white polyester carpet rolled out in her honor, Peggy eclipsed her surroundings.
By Adrienne Cook Adrienne Cook's most recent contribution to the Magazine was on urban farming.