FAT CLUB
The first rule of Fat Club: Tell everybody about Fat Club, or rather “fat men’s clubs” that were popular among America’s heavyset elite in the early 1900s.
THE BIG IDEA
In the late 19th century in New York City, there were dozens of “gentlemen’s clubs.” Finally: places where wealthy, well-connected white men could be themselves. They’d drink, smoke cigars, network, and make big political and business deals… and eat. At least that was what the Fat Men’s Association of New York City did at their meetings. So did other organizations, such as the Jolly Fat Men’s Club, the United Association of the Heavy Men of New York State, the Fat Men’s Beneficial Association, and the Heavy Weights. These were early examples of “body positivity” movements—overweight guys admitting that they were overweight, and then celebrating it by getting together to gorge on rich, sumptuous banquets of food.
Those New York clubs were a novelty and they didn’t last long. However, they made a comeback and became a small cultural phenomenon in the northeastern United States a few years after the turn of the 20th century. At a tavern in Wells River, Vermont, one night in 1903, owner Jerome Hale was talking with 10 traveling salesmen, all of whom were regular patrons of the establishment. Like Hale, they were all husky men, each weighing more than 200 pounds. The group started talking about their struggles to lose weight…and how they’d prefer to just forget it and stay overweight, because eating was far preferential to starving themselves. Hale, unaware of the New York fat men’s clubs from a generation earlier, suggested that they form a “fat men’s club.” The salesmen loved the idea and quickly came up a name—the New England Fat Men’s Club—and a slogan: “We’re fat and we’re making the most of it.”
LARGE AND IN CHARGE
The group also established some ground rules. Members of the New England Fat Men’s Club had to weigh a minimum of 200 pounds, learn a secret handshake and password, and were expected to attend twice-yearly club meetings—announced with plenty of advance notice, just in case members had dipped below 200 pounds and needed to get back up to that magic number.
The traveling salesmen quickly spread the word. In the fall of 1904, just a little over a year after the New England Fat Men’s Club had first been proposed, the organization welcomed hundreds to a meeting, which took over Wells River for a long weekend. Here’s a contemporary account from the Boston Globe:
“This village is full of bulbous and overhanging abdomens and double chins tonight, for the New England Fat Men’s Club is in session at Hale’s Tavern. The natives, who are mostly bony and angular, have stared with envy at the portly forms and rubicund faces which have arrived on every train.”
More good news: There are more bacteria in your mouth than there are people on the planet.
MASSIVE SUCCESS
Entry into a “meeting” cost $1.00. It wasn’t so much a meeting as it was a sumptuous bacchanal. Attendees began the day with a huge group breakfast, then they headed outdoors for strength and stamina contests. They played games like leapfrog, they ran footraces, and they competed to see who could jump the farthest. Not every sport was successful. At the 1904 meeting, Jerome Hale won a potato-sack race in which three other competitors fell down, including 377-pound F. C. Dignac of New Hampshire, who couldn’t get back up in time to finish. Pole-vaulting events were called off when no one could find a pole that wouldn’t snap in half. The tug-of-war was nearly canceled after the rope broke, only to be replaced with a chain.
However, all of that physical activity was merely an excuse to work up an appetite, because after the sports came a gigantic dinner. One New England Fat Men’s Club dinner was a multicourse affair consisting of oyster cocktail, cream of chicken soup, boiled snapper, beef filet with mushrooms, roast chicken, suckling pig, shrimp salad, steamed pudding in brandy sauce, cakes, cheese, ice cream, coffee, and cigars. The men reportedly stayed up until well after midnight, all the while eating, smoking, drinking, and laughing.
The New England Fat Men’s Club held “meetings” like this twice a year for more than a decade. At one point, the Fat Men’s Club counted regular membership of around 10,000 portly guys who dutifully weighed in before each official organization banquet, clambake, picnic, or gala. And unlike many other elite activities of the era, these events weren’t held in smoky rooms away from view—the Fat Men’s Club ate and exercised in public. Meetings were announced in newspapers, and spectators were invited to gawk at club members as they ate themselves under the table.
THROWING THEIR WEIGHT AROUND
Fat men’s clubs were a celebration of both rotundity and wealth—which were equated with one another. The early 20th century was the last time that being overweight was widely considered attractive, simply because having extra meat on one’s bones indicated that a person was wealthy enough to be properly nourished.
Beyond the privileged circles of the Northeast, fat men’s clubs sprung up in small towns in places like Nevada, Utah, and Tennessee. (In those locations, the clubs operated more like the Rotary or the Better Business Bureau—places where community leaders could meet up and network.) Members’ approval was even sought out by politicians. William Jennings Bryan actively campaigned at fat men’s clubs during his 1908 presidential run, and President William Howard Taft was offered membership in the New England Fat Men’s Club. He declined to join, but he did attend one of their raucous meetings—or at least he tried to. When he arrived in Wells River, the car that came to pick him up couldn’t move after the 340-pound president got in. So he got back on the train and returned to Washington, DC.
Alfred Hitchcock wanted to film a movie at Disneyland. Walt Disney said no. (He thought Psycho was “disgusting.”)
Changing attitudes toward weight and beauty standards, along with more advanced food production and preservation techniques brought about by the Industrial Revolution, chipped away at membership in fat men’s clubs and the “fat pride” that led to their creation. Around 1910, doctors and actuaries started to suggest that being extremely overweight was also extremely unhealthy. The New England Fat Men’s Club held its last meeting in 1924. Where 10,000 men had once gathered, this time only 38 showed up…and none of them met the 200-pound weight minimum rule.
THE HONEST TRUTH ABOUT…TRUTH AND HONESTY
“Men in general are quick to believe that which they wish to be true.”
—Julius Caesar
“The brightest flashes in the world of thought are incomplete until they have been proved to have their counterparts in the world of fact.”
—John Tyndall
“He who dares not offend cannot be honest.”
—Thomas Paine
“The cure to eliminate fake news is that people stop reading 140-character tweets and start reading 600-page books.”
—Piero Scaruffi
“All control, in essence, is about who controls the truth.”
—Joseph Rain
Miniskirt inventor Mary Quant named it after her favorite car, the Mini Cooper.