Beautiful and bountiful

Women of size have an agenda Ñ and a blast

By Dawn Taylor

The Portland Tribune, Mar 21, 2006, Updated Oct 30, 2009

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.”

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