In 1903, in a cheery local tavern tucked away in Wells River, Vt., one of America's most successful fat men's clubs was launched.
"We're fat and we're making the most of it!" was their mantra. "I've got to be good-natured; I can't fight and I can't run," was their motto. Members had to be at least 200 pounds, pay a $1 fee to enter and learn a secret handshake and password. Twice a year, members gathered, with meetings announced in advance to allow the men to stuff up in order to meet the minimum weight requirement.
Weigh-ins were a competitive event. A New York Times article from 1885 describes the crestfallen reaction of a member of a Connecticut fat men's club upon stepping on the scale. "I must weigh over 300 pounds now," George Kapp boasted. Alas, he came in at a disappointing 243. As the Timesreported, "His friends thought he shrank at least 20 pounds more from grief before evening."
Daryl Leeworthy, a historian at the U.K.'s Swansea University, says that fat men's clubs weren't just an East Coast phenomenon. Nevada, Utah and Tennessee boasted versions as well. And he says the clubs weren't just venues to celebrate the joys of eating without concern and brag about one's girth. They were, essentially, networking events. Memphis' fat men's baseball club had a reception committee replete with judges, ministers and a rabbi, he says. Populist Democrat William Jennings Bryan traveled to a Fat Men's Club in Concord, Mass., to drum up support for one of his presidential runs, Leeworthy says.
What did one do at a fat men's club gathering? Well, eat, of course — a lot. At its peak, the New England's Fat Men's Club had 10,000 members, according to writer Polly Tafrate's brief history of the club for Upper Valley Life. The men would cram huge breakfasts into their bellies,
Dinner awaited members at sundown. It was a ridiculous amount of food, Tafrate writes:
"One nine-course menu included oyster cocktail, cream of chicken soup, boiled snapper, fillet of beef with mushrooms, roast chicken, roast suckling pig, shrimp salad, steamed fruit pudding with brandy sauce, assorted cakes, cheese and ice cream followed by coffee and cigars. The evening was laced with large portions of wit, sarcasm and roaring laughter."
Female versions of fat men's clubs did exist, according to Leeworthy. He points to a Hazleton, Pa., venue whose female members weighed 236 pounds on average. But Leeworthy says the opposite — fat women's reduction clubs — were far more common.
"One of these existed in Chicago just after the First World War and aimed at promoting responsible diet among the city's overweight women," Leeworthy told us in an email. "Even in the 19th century, diet pills (sometimes known as 'obesity pills') were advertised. ... In a world where power and status mattered a great deal, this was yet another reminder that women tended to have neither."
In some ways, fat men's clubs were a last hurrah for celebrations of corpulence. As Stearns writes in Fat History, "In general, in a trend that began around 1910, doctors and insurance actuaries began to push preferability of underweight to overweight, in terms of health and longevity."
Being fat was no longer so feted. Membership at fat men's clubs began to dwindle, as did waistlines. For instance, at the last meeting of the New England Fat Men's Club, in 1924, only 38 members showed up, none of whom met the 200-pound mark.
Sources for this story came from Npr news, Wikipedia and google
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