There he met “fat admirers”, good looking skinny or beefy guys, who prefer proud fat partners.
Whitesel followed some of his interview partners from middle and working class to their one-time-a-year vacation meeting at the very end of California in an unhip hotel.
Resistance against society’s “war on obesity” means that people don’t want to be damnified in their life style. So the Girth and Mirth groups have a double role: At first they offer a way for social exchange and counseling, and second they seem to be political in every case. Moreover, they have to cope with all the other discrimination that obese persons are faced with in daily life since the 1880s, especially from doctors, colleagues or school mates. “Fat gay men” are refused entrance into clubs, because they don’t have ideal gay look. So, demands for the right of being fat rebound from political affairs within the Gay Community. Whitesel shows how integration of gays and lesbians into society made it necessary for them to adopt straight health ideals, while in advertisement and subcultural journals skinny bodies dominate perception of perfection.
