New Haven Fat Liberation Front

Far from recognizing the basis of fat women’s oppression as sexist, however, and speaking to the issues involved - issues of importance to all feminists - the Women’s Movement has unconsciously reinforced and perpetuated society’s stereotypes against us. Fat feminists are in a sense stepsisters in our own movement by its adoption of the ultra-slim body style approved by Madison Ave. and with it the dieting-as-a-way-of-lifestyle necessary for most women to maintain this unrealistic ideal. For women, and this includes a sizable number, not able or willing to starve and otherwise torture their bodies into the desired configuration, this amounts to a betrayal of some basic feminist principles. (Karen Jones in a November 1974 Connecticut NOW newsletter)

Running with those idea, in the spring of 1977 Karen Scott-Jones, together with her husband Darryl Scott-Jones, Aldebaran (who has gone by many names, including Sara Fishman) and Sharon Bas Hannah founded the Fat Liberation Front in New Haven, Connecticut. It took less than a year for them to begin publishing brochures critical of calorie counting and diets and the sizeist and inaccurate information being disseminated by local doctors (Stimson).