Stacy Bias: Press

Big girls don’t cry
FatGirl Speaks festival celebrates the plus-size
By DAWN TAYLOR Issue date: Tue, May 4, 2004
The Tribune
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People in America are fat. Every organization devoted to studying obesity — and there are many — comes up with a different estimate of just how many people are packing on extra pounds. Most figures, though, fall in line with those of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity, which classifies 64 percent of Americans as “overweight or obese.”
On television, such numbers are usually followed by a description of obesity as an “epidemic,” accompanied by unflattering footage of chubby people walking around a mall eating ice cream. The message is clear: Despite the fact that most of us are fat, it’s unacceptable. It’s wrong and dangerous and ugly.
Not everyone, however, agrees that fat people should be miserable about their size.
“I had an idea one night,” says graphic designer Stacy Bias. “I thought: ‘You know what would be really cool? If I could feel good about myself for a day. That’d be really nice!’ ”
Because of various life stresses, Bias had gained a lot of weight. And looking around at her thin, fit friends — P.E. teachers and marathon runners — she was dismayed by their profound dissatisfaction with their own bodies.
“I thought, ‘Oh, my God, these women hate themselves,’ ” she recalls. “I felt like, it’s not OK for them to say that they feel fat and they hate their bodies, because what does that say about me? That I have no right to feel any sense of worth about myself! And then I got really mad.”
So last year Bias put out a call to friends, acquaintances and local women’s groups, creating FatGirl Speaks, a “celebration of size, self and sexuality.” The event featured performances by gleefully hefty performers, a large-size fashion show and workshops focusing on size acceptance.
Working on a shoestring budget, Bias didn’t expect much more than a good time from the event and admits that she was braced for a small turnout.
“We figured if a hundred people showed up, what a success,” she recalls. “But the day of the show people kept coming and coming — we reached capacity at the Hollywood Theatre and then had to turn away a hundred people at the door!”
This year the daylong festival, to be held Saturday at the Roseland Theater, has a bigger budget and a larger venue. The event will offer a slate of workshops ranging from the political to the health conscious (a “fit and fat” seminar) to the purely entertaining (a class on burlesque dancing taught by Ms. DeMeanor of San Francisco’s popular Fat Bottom Revue).
The evening hours will feature performances by poets, dancers, musicians, the cast of BroadArts Theatre’s “Fat and Sassy” show, and a group of Portland-based cheerleaders called the Fat Action Troupe Allstar Spirit Squad (the joke is in the acronym).
Coming from the Bay Area is fat activist Marilyn Wann, editor of “Fat!So?” magazine, who will teach a workshop and serve as emcee with sex educator-activist Coyote Daze.
“We have this superstition about weight,” Wann says. “We think that the number on the scale determines what sort of a life a person gets to have. Whether they get to be healthy or happy, have cool clothes or date or have sex — or get respect and equal opportunity. We have this superstition that if you’re fat you don’t get any of the goodies. It’s just not true.”
Wann says that, despite its lighthearted tone, FatGirl Speaks is part of the “fat pride revolution,” encouraging people of all sizes to question what she calls “a culture that’s really toxic about bodies and about food.” Even the fashion show is a revolutionary act, she claims.
“Clothes are seen as a frivolous topic, but what you get to wear says something about who you get to be,” says the 270-pound writer, who once appeared on NBC’s “Tonight Show” as part of a synchronized swim team called the Padded Lilies.
“For a quarter-century of my life, I refused to wear shorts or sleeveless things because I felt like the world would target me with even more hatred if I exposed my fat parts,” she says. “It’s been truly liberating to play dress-up and wear incredible things.”
Attendees of last year’s event enthusiastically describe FatGirl Speaks as “empowering,” with the focus on fun.
“It was great to be a part of such a groundbreaking event for fat positivity,” says Marie Fleischmann, who will return this year as a volunteer. “Watching all those women strutting proudly and looking so fabulous was a sight to behold.”
The goal of FatGirl Speaks, Bias and Wann say, is for women of all sizes to feel good in their own skin, and celebrate size diversity with joy and humor.
“In the ’60s there was a piece of graffiti on a wall in my neighborhood. It had a raised fist and it said, ‘Black is beautiful,’ ” Wann remembers. “How stupid that you should even have to say that. So in my work I say, ‘Fat is beautiful,’ and it’s just as ridiculous that we even have to point that out.”

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.”

Brush up on the classics with these scholarly salves
By Shanna Germain

The Portland Tribune Aug 31, 2004

Stacy Bias is a library fiend. Only one problem: Browsing among those bards of old made her lips as dry as dull prose. So Bias took inspiration from a few famous authors and created Literati Lip Balm to soothe her word-worn lips.

“I came up with the idea about a year ago, and have spent that time trying out different formulas to get the texture and consistency just right,” says Bias, who works out of her Northeast Going Street office.

Find inspiration in the sonnets of the Bard? Literati’s ShakeSpearmint will have you speaking in rhyme in no time. “Little Women” more your style? Try the tale-inspiring Alcott Apricot. Other lip-erary offerings include PoeMegranate and Bront‘ Berry.

The vegan balms Ñ made from coconut oil, shea butter, avocado and other ingredients Ñ come with quotes from the authors and a bookmark. At fewer than five bucks a pop, they’re an easy way to get reacquainted with the classics.

“I would love to see them used as school fund-raisers and make an impact,” Bias says. “I also plan to donate 5 cents from every tin to literacy programs Ñ ideally for underserved youth.”

The balms are coming soon to a bookstore near you. If you can’t wait to be a smooth talker, check out the Web site www.literatibalm.com.