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FAT! SO?

Continued from page 2

Published: September 9, 1999

"I'm in a swimsuit," the girl says. "I'm in a sleeveless shirt. That's a long way for me."

"Yeah," Cathy says, nodding. "A hell of a long way."

She still wants to smack her.

About an hour later, it's lunchtime. Teriyaki chicken and steaks are on the grill. Cathy opens a six-ounce package of fat-free ham.

Fat-free? "Not that I do it intentionally," she says. The pack happened to be the first one she grabbed at the store. She takes each piece and folds it up in her palm. With her manicured nails she methodically twists off small pieces and washes them down with Pepsi.

"Tostitos?" someone offers. The table is laden with chips.

"Nope," Cathy says. She finishes the pack. "I had my lunch."

The Diet Pepsi in the kitchen belongs to Carlette, Cathy's sister, an accountant. Cathy pours herself a regular, calorie-loaded cola and moves into the living room. Every Monday Carlette starts a diet. Every Wednesday she's off it. Cathy's almost twice Carlette's size, but she doesn't have Carlette's desire to lose weight. "A friend of mine lost 210 pounds," Cathy says. "After she lost all that weight she still had the same job, the same husband, the same bills."

Carlette wishes she were thinner because she'd like to move around more easily. Carlette's the one who does the yard work, climbs ladders to change light bulbs and weeds the flower beds. Cathy's less active; she does more of the cleaning, laundry and cooking. If there's an airline ticket to be booked or a phone call to be made, Cathy does it.

"Cathy's comfortable," Carlette says admiringly. "I'm still self-conscious in a bathing suit."

Carlette has three suits.

"And they all have skirts," Cathy says.

Cathy has 21 bathing suits. She tells Carlette to borrow her bikinis.

Their mother worries about Cathy's health. Ruby Lee is afraid Cathy will get to the point where she can't walk. "She can't walk a whole lot now," Ruby Lee says. Cathy admits that not being able to walk has crossed her mind. Doctors always ask if she has considered losing weight. They tell her that she's at a higher risk for heart disease and diabetes and all the things that Cathy has heard before but doesn't think will happen.

"I take care of myself," she says. "I eat my vegetables."

Right after Cathy discovered NAAFA, every day her AOL inbox was full of messages from men who wanted to meet her (and some who wanted to do things to her that her mother didn't like at all). Men instant-messaged her, wanting to chat. At first she wrote to most of them. Fat women often feel more comfortable meeting guys on-line, Cathy says. On-line it doesn't matter what you look like. And if you actually want to meet a guy, you can show him what you look like first and not have to have an embarrassing, unhappy encounter.

Through her personal ad, Cathy met a gorgeous man who lived in Vegas. They dated about a year. But he didn't want to commit, and she didn't want to waste her time.

She and her parents had just moved to Houston to open Annie's Plus, a clothing store for seriously Rubenesque women. (The dressing rooms were six-by-nine.) Cathy and Carlette owned the store, and Cathy and her mom ran it.

To get publicity for the store, Cathy decided to start modeling for Dimensions magazine, which proclaims itself to be "where big is beautiful." She told the editor he wouldn't get much skin from her, that he'd get class instead of ass. And in February '97 her first five-page spread appeared. It showed Cathy working out in a leopard-print unitard, holding a feathered fan while wearing a white negligee and seductively eating a hot fudge sundae.

The Fat Admirers adored Cathy; her e-mail was more active than ever. But eventually the fun of on-line flirting wore off, and Cathy started ignoring most of the guys who wrote her, chatting with her friends instead.

A guy named Dave Ferguson, a jet-aircraft crew chief for the Department of Defense in Fort Wayne, Indiana, says that he usually just chats with people about golf; he doesn't know what made him look at Cathy's AOL member profile. He followed the link to her Web site, thought she was pretty and sent her a note.

Cathy wrote him back, but his note didn't stand out; he was just another guy who lived far away who she probably would never meet. He sent her instant messages, and she didn't respond. But Dave persisted, they talked on the phone a few times, and eventually they arranged to meet.

In August '98 she had her second cover spread in Dimensions. This one showed her and two friends, Frannie Juneau and Zsalyan Whitworth, as "the fat trio"; the issue was put in all the goodie bags at NAAFA's Los Angeles convention. Dave dropped by the convention, and they had dinner and went dancing.

"Wow," was all he thought when he met her. Cathy thought he was nice, but she wasn't bowled over. "He's different from any guy I've dated," she says. "I've always dated Mr. GQ-type guys, and he's an all-American-type guy."

He asked if he could call her. She said sure and gave him her number in Houston. She didn't think much of it; she'd given her number to a few other guys, and she figured none of them would call.

But the weekend she got home Dave called, and they talked for a few hours. He seemed sincere. He started calling regularly.

She didn't want a relationship at first because relationships were too much trouble. But she was sick of dating.

"You get tired of all the jerks, the assholes and the charmers," she says. "I was tired of being the beauty queen. I was ready to just be Cathy."

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