Living Large : We’re a nation obsessed with calories, waistlines and firm fannies. But the notion that it’s OK to be big in the land of liposuction and liquid diets is gaining acceptance.

Frances White is not plump. Nor is she stout, stocky, tubby, paunchy or pudgy. Frances White is fat. F-a-t. Fat.

We may speak openly of this because White has accepted her weight. Her goal now is to get you to accept it too.

White, 51, carries 350 pounds on a 5-foot, 8-inch frame. She has always been heavy. Destined, she says, to be a large person from birth. She was put on her first diet before age 10. Then came thyroid pills, exercise programs and more and more diets.

To her relatives she was an embarrassment. You’ll never marry unless you shed some pounds, they warned. Her friends were little better, unable to fathom why she couldn’t slim down.

At supermarkets, common strangers behaved like food police, criticizing items in her shopping cart. And then there were the taunts, the oinks and the stares--society’s constant, humiliating reminders that she literally didn’t fit in.

“It’s very painful, being fat in our body-obsessed society,” says White, membership coordinator for San Francisco’s public television station, KQED. “There’s this cruel perception that we’re always eating, that we’re all lazy, sloppy and sickly. Your life is just miserable unless you find a way to cope.”

Frances White has found a way to cope. She has become a disciple of “fat liberation,” a promoter of the idea that it’s OK to be large in the land of liposuction and liquid diets.

This might seem a heretical notion, considering our culture’s obsession with firm fannies, no-fat cuisine, waif-like fashion models and the adage that “you can’t be too rich or too thin.”

But the ideology of fat acceptance is, in fact, finding favor in America--not just among the heavy but also among many health professionals, obesity researchers, psychotherapists and civil-rights advocates.

“Fat people suffer tremendous painful social consequences because of their condition,” says Dr. Kelly Brownell, director of Yale University Center for Eating and Weight Disorders. “We need to relieve them of the blame for their excessive weight and promote the message that very few of us can attain society’s beauty ideal.”

Last month, the cause received a hearty boost from new findings suggesting that some people are genetically predestined to be obese. Researchers at Rockefeller University in New York say they have identified a gene responsible for secreting proteins that signal the brain when the stomach is full, thus indicating that it’s time to stop eating. When this gene is defective, the signal is not sent or received and obesity results, the scientists believe.

“You have to attend to (obesity) as an organic problem, not a behavioral problem,” says Rudolph Leibel, a leading obesity researcher at Rockefeller University. Losing weight, in other words, is not always a question of willpower.

Government statistics show that 33% of Americans are obese--defined as more than 25% above their ideal body weight. Studies have linked obesity with numerous medical ailments, including hypertension, diabetes, certain cancers and coronary heart disease.

But many fat activists--and a small band of experts--question such studies, contending that researchers have failed to distinguish fat people who exercise and eat sensibly from those who don’t.

“There are many fat people who lead healthy lifestyles and I believe they are at considerably lower risk for these diseases,” says Joanne Ikeda, a UC Berkeley nutritionist and expert on pediatric obesity. “But the studies don’t address this question because the scientific community assumes that all fat people are lazy gluttons.”

Leading the charge against fatism is the National Assn. to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA), a Sacramento-based group founded by a man angered by the bigotry his fat wife faced. The organization lobbies for fat-friendly legislation, operates a legal research and defense fund and designs educational programs to fight “fat phobia” and anti-fat messages in the media.

In recent years, the group has persuaded greeting-card manufacturers to come up with “fat-sensitive” designs and pressured national restaurant chains to install wider seating in new outlets. Last summer, members made headlines with a demonstration at the White House, where they chided President Clinton--who had been considered an ally because of the flak he took for gaining weight on the 1992 campaign trail--for ignoring fat people in the debate over health-care reform.

“Fat people are becoming empowered,” says Sally Smith, NAAFA’s executive director. “We are coming out of the closet and realizing that you don’t have to put up with second-class treatment, and you don’t have to put your life on hold waiting to be thin.”

Support groups and anti-diet organizations are popping up from coast to coast, preaching the merits of “size diversity” and fighting the perception that fat people could get trim if only they would really try.

Joe McVoy, a psychologist and eating-disorder specialist in Radford, Va., recently formed a network of physicians, dietitians, therapists and others who advocate fat acceptance and healthy living for the obese. The Assn. for the Health Enrichment of Large People, he says, was born of his frustration at seeing his fat patients diet endlessly with no enduring success.

“For the last five decades, we’ve been telling fat people to lose weight, and that once they did, everything would be OK,” McVoy says. “Well, dieting as a long-term solution doesn’t work . . . So we’ve locked these people in a whirlpool of feeling bad because they’re fat, and feeling worse because they fail at dieting.”

But some are bouncing back in the war against fatism with litigation. More and more heavy people have begun to bring claims under the Americans With Disabilities Act and other laws.

A Cookeville, Tenn., woman who sued a movie theater after she was barred from bringing her own chair to a showing of “Jurassic Park” recently settled her case, receiving a sum her lawyer called “very satisfactory.”

Pam Hollowich, a 400-pound Los Angeles woman, sued Southwest Airlines after she was “humiliated” by a ticket agent who allegedly pulled her out of line and ordered her to buy a second seat. “It was terribly traumatic, degrading,” she says. “I was the fat lady who held up the plane.” Southwest Airlines spokesman Ed Stewart called the charges “totally untrue,” adding, “we do everything we can to accommodate people of all sizes.”

Other lawsuits have challenged hiring practices and discrimination by landlords who reject prospective fat tenants, telling them they might crack the floor or break the toilet. “Over the last year, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in these cases,” says James Goodman, senior attorney at the Persons With Disabilities Law Center in Atlanta.

Meanwhile, legislation that would prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of size has recently come before several state legislatures. So far, only Michigan has adopted such a law.

“Fat people are the last acceptable targets of bigotry in our country,” says New York Assemblyman Daniel Feldman, who plans to reintroduce his bill next year. “There are widespread, systematic patterns of discrimination against them.”

Research confirms his assertion. While it has become taboo to insult a person’s race, gender, sexual orientation or religion, surveys show many people think little of mocking the obese.

Fat people also appear to suffer in virtually all aspects of life, from employment to relationships, health care, education and economic status.

One researcher asked a group of college students who they would be least inclined to marry. The obese ranked near the bottom, with the students preferring to wed embezzlers, ex-mental patients, cocaine users or shoplifters.

The question of why fatness is such a stigma is a complex one.

Some experts believe contemporary attitudes are linked to the Puritans, whose lifestyle was dominated by control, stoicism and self-denial. Fat people look indulgent--unwilling to hop on the treadmill and do what it takes to get in shape.

As for fat people themselves, many regard their condition as the worst curse imaginable. Colleen Rand, a University of Florida obesity researcher, asked 47 formerly obese people whether they would rather be fat again or suffer some other disability. Ninety-one percent said they would rather have a leg amputated, while 89% said they would rather be blind.

The personal stories of fat people echo the scientific data. Gary Raymond, a 49-year-old San Bernardino resident who has tried countless diets--plus abdominal surgery--to lose weight, recalls the purchasing manager’s job he got, and then lost, he says because of his size--385 pounds.

For Terry Nicholetti Garrison, a radio advertising saleswoman in Ithaca, N.Y., fat prejudice began in adolescence and followed her into the convent, where she was forced to wear a corset beneath her habit because her hips were said to sway too much when she walked. For five years, she lived with red slash marks on her body from the corset’s stiff stays.

“I’ve made over 100 unsuccessful attempts to lose weight--pills, diuretics, amphetamines, every single diet, hypnosis--and still people tell me that all I need is a little willpower,” says Garrison, 49, who is 5 feet, 3 inches and weighs 210 pounds. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph! If I worked as hard at becoming a millionaire as I did at losing weight, I might not be driving an ’84 Sentra that’s rusting away beneath me.”

Fed up with the pursuit of thinness, Garrison and Raymond have decided to accept their weight and become torchbearers in the fat liberation movement. Raymond is a columnist for a magazine that caters to fat people, and also founded a company called Mourtodri, which makes towels for large people. Garrison wrote a book, launched a newsletter called “Grace-Full Eating” and, with a Cornell University psychology professor, created a self-help group for “victims of weight prejudice.”

Critics say such groups ignore the medical risks associated with obesity. Earlier this month, the nonprofit Institute of Medicine released a report showing that obesity-related ailments lead to health care costs of more than $70 billion a year. And former Surgeon Gen. C. Everett Koop, launching a new campaign urging Americans to “drop a few pounds (and) shape up,” says that obesity-related conditions are the second-leading cause of death in the United States, after smoking.

Even those who endorse the live-and-let-live philosophy of fat activists say that acceptance may not be best for everyone.

“What our profession needs to do is determine which people should lose weight, because of medical complications, and then help them do that,” says Brownell of Yale’s eating disorder center. “Advocating body acceptance for everyone is not a defensible position. It would mean accepting a massive public health problem.”

As the scientific debate continues, fat liberationists say there are signs that their message is being heeded. Hollywood, for instance, has taken an interest in fat characters who go beyond the traditional comic roles. Last year’s film “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,” for example, featured an obese woman who stood up to bigotry and enjoyed her family’s loving support.

Nevertheless, 45 million Americans will attempt to lose weight this year, according to Marketdata Enterprises, Inc., a New York-based market research firm. And thigh cream, tummy tucks, liposuction and other forms of plastic surgery are more popular than ever.

“It’s slow going,” says Frances White, president of NAAFA. “But at least now people are talking about size acceptance. And a lot of fat people are realizing they don’t have to hide from the world.”