Fat Strikes Back 

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The pool floats were stacked 6 feet high–a blow-up dragon, a toothy shark, a unicorn, and a dozen other fantastical creatures. The question was how many people would come by for a float. 

Attending a pool party isn’t usually considered daring. But it can be when you’ve been the target of stinging stares or commentary.

This, however, was an explicitly plus-size pool party, presided over by Durham-based activist and entrepreneur Suzy Hooker with an assist from her podcast co-host Krista Nabar, known to listeners as Dr. Sexy Fat.

It was late August, which is Fat Liberation Month, one of the calendar’s lesser-known designations. Through the smoldering evening haze, Hooker hurried around the tiki-themed edges of a rented private pool in southeast Durham.

She wore rainbow bottoms and a pink top close to the color of her kinky hair. At this party, there’d be no need for cover-ups, so often deployed to hide flesh not toned to Barbie-and-Ken comeliness.

Hooker imagined the event as joyful and unabashed. Like a Pride Month parade—lacking the widespread cultural ballyhoo but still packing strong solidarity vibes. It would also be a chance to share details about a new app she was developing to help people navigate a world that has seemed to grow more contemptuous of people in larger bodies. 

But would their community come? In July, Plus Raleigh hosted a Fat Lake Day. While its Instagram following tops 2,500, only three showed up.

Hooker wanted to make a bigger splash for fat liberation amid a mainstream culture now awash in marketing for GLP-1 drugs.

Hooker propped her hands on her hips, like a veteran ship captain waiting to shove off. Her smile can be all-American dazzling, but this evening she was all business. 

“I’m excited to meet the fat community in a place where no one is snickering,” she said as a flowered floatie bobbed behind her, waiting for someone to hop on.

Body Gon Bang 

“Fat girl fine / Big boo bossy / Always eating / Always flossy … ” 

Three days before the pool party, Hooker and Nabar bopped their heads as rapper, model, and “plus size princess” Chasyn Sparx ripped through “Big Body,” her loud and proud anthem of fat liberation. 

“Super plus size / Imma mind mine / Hater hoes hate / Body gon bang / Money gon skate / Honey gon stick / Thighs gon quake … ”

The prerecorded backbeat bumped around the cinderblock walls of the People’s Solidarity Hub, a teal-painted community hall in east Durham. At the front of the room, Sparx sashayed in platform sandals. 

“Big Body / I got a big body / Bad bitch body / You know this a big body … ”

Sparx was the opening act for a panel on the Bull City’s place in the annals of “body fascism,” as some of the speakers described America’s age-old take on weight. Specifically, Scalawag magazine brought together activists, academics, and authors to discuss how Duke University and Durham came together to build “Diet City.”

Annie Elledge, a part-time assistant professor of gender and women’s studies at Kennesaw State University, researched the topic during her time at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In the 1930s, Duke physician Walter Kepner developed the Rice Diet to relieve hypertension and related maladies, restricting patients to modest portions of white rice and fruit. Those patients also shed pounds–lots. 

Word spread, and people poured in from around the world to trim down (including, legend has it, Elvis Presley). A cottage industry sprang up as Kepner opened “Rice Houses” dedicated to weight loss. Copycats followed. 

Over the decades, diet and fitness centers–not tech hubs or renowned restaurants–fueled the economy, from the defunct Slim-O-Rama Health Salon and Structure House to what is now the Duke Lifestyle and Weight Management Center. According to Elledge’s research, by the mid-’80s dieters descending on Durham generated as much as $100 million a year in economic impact.

The sustained boom, panelists said, is emblematic of how society has long sought to profit off “erasing” larger bodies. In the early 2000s, Americans were sinking $33 billion into weight control services and products. Today, the figure has swelled to $135 billion with the rise of GLP-1 drugs from corporate behemoths Novo Nordisk (Wegovy and Ozempic) and Eli Lilly (Zepbound), both of which maintain gleaming campuses in North Carolina. 

As the panel dished out facts and stats, the audience murmured and moaned. All the while, a woman in a purple tracksuit sat absorbed in a cross-stitch frame, her needle spelling out two words–“All brothers”–from an old Yiddish labor song extolling solidarity.

Burning Twiggy

Drugmakers pitch their pills and injectables as an effective way for the more than 100 million American adults–about 42% of the adult population–considered obese to lose weight and be healthy. In North Carolina, that number is estimated to be 3 million adults, or about 34% of the population.

But fat activists object to the reflexive notion that thinner is necessarily better. Researchers and advocates have published volumes on the matter, with conclusions that can be hard to parse: 

• Generally speaking, the American Medical Association (AMA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recognize that obesity is associated with an increased risk of serious health conditions, including type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
• At the same time, the AMA cautions against relying on body mass index (BMI) alone to assess an individual’s health. And weight stigma can cause harm of its own, from social isolation and stress to avoiding medical care. 

Organized resistance to weight stigmatization took shape alongside other “counterculture” surges. In June 1967, hundreds poured into Central Park for a much-publicized “Fat-In.” Protesters set fire to diet books and photos of switchblade-slim model Twiggy. Within a few years, activists launched the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance. 

“I’m excited to meet the fat community in a place where no one is snickering.”

Suzy Hooker, activist and entrepreneur

But the movement has always faced a familiar pushback. While it’s widely agreed upon that people shouldn’t be denied rights because of something out of their control, like race or sex, many still see excess weight as a moral failing. Perhaps a plus-size physique reflects a diminished sense of personal responsibility, a lack of discipline?   

“In the ’70s, I thought we were on the cusp of radical change, but it didn’t happen,” said Judith Stein, a veteran fat activist who first rallied around the cause in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and now lives at a retirement community in Durham. She can’t help but notice her fellow residents, particularly the women, who continue to harp on achieving their “ideal weight” well into their 70s, 80s, and 90s. 

“The original organizers are getting old, and some of us have died,” she said. But, she noted with an uptick in her tone, “There are younger people coming up.”

These new fat activists, including Sparx, Hooker, and Nabar, are marshaling tech tools–from Instagram to backbeats to homemade apps–to help tip the scales. 

Thunder Thighs and Bedroom Eyes

The original name of Hooker and Nabar’s podcast, Fat and Fucked, had both charms and challenges. 

Launching the project in 2023, the duo liked the punchy alliteration as well as the double meaning. Their shared experience of being fat would be the podcast’s North Star. Hooker, a visual artist and media specialist, and Nabar, a psychologist (hence her Dr. Sexy Fat nom de pod) and founder of the Carolina Sexual Wellness Center, would kvetch, crack wise, and preach liberation: the end of self-loathing and social stigma. 

The double meaning came in with the second f-word. Hooker and Nabar wanted to make the point that plus-size people are, like everyone else, sexual people. On the flip side, they wanted to emphasize that the weight-obsessed world often mistreats plus-size people. Whether it’s medical care, a dearth of fashionable and affordable clothing options, or roller coasters. 

At 22, thrill-seeker Hooker waited three hours in a summer swelter to board the then-new Apollo’s Chariot roller coaster at Busch Gardens Williamsburg. When she finally slipped into a car, the restraint bar wouldn’t close over her lap. The ride attendant sent her away not through the exit, but back the way she came, past dozens of queued-up coaster-goers who understood exactly what had happened. 

“Some laughed. Some averted their eyes. It was humiliating,” she recalled. “It was the first time I registered that the world was not built for me.” 

Despite booking plenty of guests eager to share similar sentiments, Fat and Fucked proved a problematic title. According to Hooker, online algorithms apparently clutched their digital pearls at the presence of both f-words, suppressing its searchability. 

So in 2025, the duo rechristened the podcast Thunder Thighs and Bedroom Eyes. By that point, Hooker, who describes herself as having “pretty excellent ADHD,” was also running with an idea for a know-before-you-go app. 

Every day, plus-size people face the prospect that they might not fit–sometimes literally–in the places they want to go. Will the seats at a diner accommodate a larger body? Are the aisles at a store impossibly narrow? And when it comes to attitudes, does a doctor or trainer tend toward fat-shaming? 

With support from tech-savvy fellow activists and a GoFundMe round, Hooker founded FatFabFree, a 501(c)(3) digital directory rating the accessibility of spaces and the mindsets of service providers starting with health care. Is the seating accessible? Is the staff respectful? 

“In the ’70s, I thought we were on the cusp of radical change, but it didn’t happen.”

Judith Stein, a veteran fat activist

The data will come from plus-size people reporting their real world findings: crowd-sourced. After building out the health care database, Hooker plans to set the app’s sights on shops, diners, museums, hotels, trains, planes, and bus lines: the whole gamut of everyday experiences. 

The info will be free to users. Hooker intends to sustain the project through donations, grants, and perhaps, down the line, certified businesses paying a listing fee.

As Fat Liberation Month rolled around, the app was inching closer to a series of stress tests and “debuggings.” By the end of the year, Hooker plans a beta launch in select cities, from Los Angeles to Chicago to the Triangle. But to make the crowdsourcing component work, Hooker and FatFabFree needed a crowd.    

‘Cannonball!’

Two hours into FatFabFree’s party, the pool floats were doing boffo business ferrying bikini-clad bodies through the waves–so much so that the revelers had to direct traffic before cannonballing in. 

Katie McClure was among the 30 or so revelers.  

She grew up in North Carolina but discovered Fat Liberation only after moving west. In California, she found employment protections, “medical justice” initiatives, a Rubenesque burlesque dance class, and copious plus-size clothing swaps. “San Francisco has a well-established radical fat liberation movement,” she said. “But here in the South–where we have plenty of fat people–we don’t have nearly as much.”

Meghan De Maria, genial founder of Plus Raleigh, floated by, musing, “I’m thankful for this. There’s something special about celebrating your body when the world doesn’t want you to.” 

On the other side of the pool, an Instagram influencer known as RainbowTatGirl drifted near the water’s edge to talk about her distinctive bathing suit, a black web of straps and peekaboo cutouts provided to her by a swimwear brand called Chub Rub.

The Seattle-based company specializes in “plus-size fashion for curvy babes ready to love their bodies out loud.” Or, if you prefer a more ivory tower tilt: “Chub Rub creates fat liberation by centering marginalized bodies in boundary-pushing narratives.” 

Either way, RainbowTatGirl, who counts more than 24,000 online followers, is abundantly aware that the Chub Rub aesthetic commands an enthusiastic audience–and not just among the plus-sized.

“A lot of guys are into fat women now,” she said. “Not just fat guys; all kinds. They come up to you in the bars. Growing up, there was such a stigma. Then, you couldn’t talk to fat girls. Fat was the worst you could be.”     

But she deals with haters, too. RainbowTatGirl asked not to be identified by her actual name. She didn’t want to make it easier for online trolls to follow through on promises to track her down and do terrible things.

“Growing up, there was such a stigma. Then, you couldn’t talk to fat girls. Fat was the worst you could be.”

RainbowTatGirl

“Some people are like that,” she shrugged, shifting her eyebrows as if to brush aside the online viperousness. “It’s just important for me to be an example of body positivity.”  

Hooker, too, had no time for backtalk. When she launched into her poolside description of the FatFabFree app, she was focused, practical, determined. 

“We’re not setting this up for people to talk shit,” she said. “We want to know the providers you love or the providers you recommend people don’t spend their money with.” 

Then, with moonlight sparkling in the sloshing pool, she allowed herself a grin, whooping, “And we’re going to have more events like this–because I FUCKING LOVE IT!”