Let's go, girls!

[Times photos: Kristen Schmid] The dance floor stays full, no matter whether the song’s slow or fast, at the Big Beautiful Women and Admirers dance at the Travelodge Hotel in October. Deejay Tippy Golphin plays requests that range from Garth Brooks to disco to rap.

By BABITA PERSAUD

© St. Petersburg Times, published November 10, 2000

Plus-size women cut loose on the dance floor at Big Beautiful Women and Admirers dances in Tampa.

TAMPA -- The Big Beautiful Women dance isn't about size. Or about weight. Or about getting exercise. It's not about working off calories to be as slim as Barbie.

No, the Big Beautiful Women dance, held every other Saturday night in the Travelodge hotel on Busch Boulevard, is about being free to wear whatever you want -- be it lace, leopard print, leather or a strapless dress.

It's about exercising the right to shake your bon-bon to Ricky Martin. To flirt with guys shamelessly and down strawberry daiquiris.

The Big Beautiful Women dance is about pursuing happiness, which can be hard to attain when your body doesn't match the world's idea of perfection, and the world doesn't mind saying so.

The world couldn't keep its mouth shut one night at the Yellow Rose in Town 'n Country. Shelley Bower and her friends were on the dance floor, having a grand time, minding their own business -- when the mooing started.

"I blew it off," said Bower. "People being stupid."

Ron and Shelly Bower, who met in the BBW AOL chat room, attend the BBW dance at the Milner Hotel in September. Patty Radice, right, shares a table with them.

How different the atmosphere is at the Big Beautiful Women and Admirers dance. How comfortable.

The deejay plunges into a long set of requests, each song a salute to the plus sized:

Baby Got Back

Back That A- Up

She's a Brick House

That dance floor hops. Women shimmy, strut, raise their arms high.

But the song that really revs them up, really empties all the chairs, is sung by that twig of a woman, Shania Twain.

Let's go, girls! she calls, urging them to scream and shout, color their hair, cast off their inhibitions.

The best thing about being a woman is the prerogative to have a little fun.

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" the women shout. "I want to be free to feel the way I feel.

"Man! I feel like a woman!"

The first Big Beautiful Women dance was held in July. The events draw about 250 people, about 20 percent of them men. Regulars come from as far away as Miami, Jacksonville, Daytona. Here, you'll find women comfortable with their bodies, whatever the size: 14, 16, 24.

Women like Michelle Royal, age 25, in bright orange: "I never sit down."

Women like Jodee Sutherland, who has modeled sleepwear and evening wear for Lane Bryant. "Why should we sit at home just because we don't wear size 6?" she says.

You'll find diversity: African-American women, white and Hispanic women. Stay-at-home moms and professionals, such as Stacie Anderson, a public relations rep.

You'll find women who go out every weekend.

And women who don't go out much at all, like Denise Ward of Riverview, a 38-year-old with long chestnut hair.

She's what the women at the dance call supersize. Ward spends most of her time in the cyberworld, where appearance is not a factor. She rarely goes to the movies. Never to Ybor. Stares and rude comments have kept her out of view.

Why do people comment? she says. Why can't she walk by in peace?

"Don't people know that words can break somebody? You can get your self-esteem up to 10, and one comment will bring it down to a 1."

Before her first Big Beautiful Women dance, "I worried myself sick," she said. She sat in the parking lot for an hour, sat in a back chair when she finally came inside.

Closer and closer she got to the action, until she got up to dance.

To Funky Cold Medina.

"I came out of my shell," she said.

Lynn Sames, a retail analyst for Catalina Marketing, took it on herself to start the Tampa Big Beautiful Women dances. Growing up, she was heavy. Most of her weight gain came while she was working, traveling and eating out late. Sames is 39, the mother of two girls, divorced, conversational and confident.

The confidence is new.

On a dance floor in Brandon four years ago, someone she knew told her she looked funny dancing and made fun of her.

"I was so humiliated," said Sames. "It was extremely hurtful, and for years, I would not go dancing." Until one night, a year ago, at a club in Orlando, a guy asked her to dance.

"Fear just struck me," said Sames. "He said "Come on, come on.' "

Finally, she did. "I sat down and I thought, "You know, that wasn't so bad. Nobody looked at me. Nobody said anything.' "

Words can tear.

Words can also fuel.

Sames thought hard about what to call the dances in the beginning. Obese, "an ugly medical term," was out of the question. So were big-boned, heavy-set and large, "which can refer to breast size."

Also out: fat.

The word is accepted by actor Camryn Manheim, who entitled her autobiography Wake Up, I'm Fat! But Sames hates the word, equating it with the n-word for African-Americans.

For her, the term that fit was Big Beautiful Women, or BBW, which is also the name of a magazine she read as a teen and a chat room on America Online.

"It best describes who we are," said Sames.

The Big Beautiful Women dances are part of a worldwide size acceptance movement. In Berkeley, Calif., there's a swim club. At first the women come in T-shirts and shorts, said organizer Bettye Travis from her California home. Then they wear a two-piece. Next, they don't come at all, because they are at the regular pools, not feeling shy about showing their bodies in a two-piece suit, said Travis.

In England, there's the Freesize organization. In the United States, the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, an advocacy group since 1969.

There are books: Fat Is Not a Four-Letter Word; The Invisible Woman: Confronting Weight Prejudice in America; Overcoming Fear of Fat.

And magazines: Radiance, Mode, Fat!So?

And merchandising, T-shirts and buttons that read: "Woman of Substance," "Fat by Nature, Proud by Choice" and "Large and in Charge."

All are aimed at building forces against what is called the last politically correct "ism," lookism -- judging someone by the way they look -- explained Kevin Thompson, a University of South Florida psychology professor who has studied body image extensively.

People will cringe at a racial joke. At a fat joke, he pointed out, they still laugh.

At a Big Beautiful Women dance, there's only praise.

Especially from the men.

"To me, it's about what's here," says Jeff Naviaux, pointing to his head.

"And here." Pointing to his heart.

A rail of a guy with thin-rimmed glasses and spiky hair, he dated his share of cheerleader types, even went out with a former beauty queen in Connecticut.

But Naviaux, 39, who works at an insurance benefits company, married a Big Beautiful Women, Dawn. She wasn't "look at me, look at me," he said. She was down to earth and beautiful from the inside: "I knew it from the first time we woke up together and I looked into her eyes."

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