NAAFA: Creating Equality and Acceptance for Fat Americans

Bill Fabrey founded the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA), Oakland, CA, in 1969 as a way to promote the acceptance of overweight Americans in society and the media. With a team of volunteers, the association provides information to its members and the media on issues dealing with diet, social interaction and government legislation. NAAFA is on one side of the increasingly controversial debate on issues facing overweight people and their rights.

Peggy Howell, the passionate public relations chair for NAAFA, answered a few questions about the association and the uphill climb to further fat acceptance in America.

What is the purpose of NAAFA?

NAAFA is a nonprofit, all-volunteer organization composed of determined individuals seeking to increase the well-being of the fat American. Millions of fat Americans, as well as individuals from around the world, constitute a group that exists in a society geared toward slimness as an ideal. They constitute a minority group with many of the attributes of other minority groups, including poor self-image, guilt feelings, employment discrimination, exploitation by commercial interests and being the subject of ridicule.

This leads to extreme treatment by some members of the medical profession, inability to purchase most health and life insurance, difficulty in buying clothes and often a lack of understanding by one's own family. It is the aim of this organization to help people all sizes of large deal more effectively with these and other problems and to promote more tolerance and understanding from society.

What conditions does a person need to meet to become a member? What services does NAAFA offer to its members?

We welcome people of all sizes who are interested in and willing to be supportive of people of size. We have many advocates who are not people of size. NAAFA creates a safe haven for people of size to learn to accept themselves as they are and to celebrate life without fear of judgment or ridicule. Fat people learn that they really are valuable, productive citizens with civil rights that are being violated. Discrimination is wrong.