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Big Fat Index exists to answer a simple question: "Where can I find great fat-positive content on the web?"
The idea for Big Fat Index (BFI, for short) was born in April, 2006 at the first Fat and the Academy conference. When talking about all of the great fat-positive stuff that was out on the web, an exchange between Dr. Pattie Thomas and Paul McAleer unearthed the idea of a "fat clearinghouse." As peggynature blogged it:
The Q&A section of Paul's talk introduced, through Pattie Thomas' skilled questioning, the idea of a 'fat clearinghouse' of sorts on the web. Pattie brought up the important point that how we consume our own media is the other half of the equation, alongside authoring it. She pointed out that we need to be reading each other, listening to each other, engaging each other in discussion, encouraging each other, and creating a buzz that might actually expand outside our own little insulated community.
Paul initiated the clearinghouse idea (and I swear I could actually see a little lightbulb appear above his head as he said it) by pointing out that the different pieces of our fat discourse are somewhat scattered and disconnected. There are blogs here and there, and books, and articles, and podcasts, and fat-postive groups, and we hear about them through word of mouth or links on other blogs -- but there is, as yet, no compendium of all the different places where the fat debate is happening. If we want this collection of small skirmishes to develop into the unstoppable monolith that we need in order to topple the status quo, they've got to be, somehow, connected and made easily accessible...and not just accessible to members of the movement, but to outsiders, most notably journalists, who might be researching the topic of fat.
And here we are.
Keeping this simple:
Any links not meeting these criteria will be rejected.
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