Without Measure in The Netherlands Part 2 By Marja Visser

As promised, I will tell you this time a little bit more about the Dutch ISAA branch, but before I continue I have to correct a small mistake I made in the first part of my 'letter from Holland'. I wrote there that the capital of Holland, Amsterdam, was build in 1200 B.C. …. Now that was a 'capital' mistake….it was 2400 years later..1200 A.D.! So, now I did correct this I can continue and tell you about the work we do here in favour of the Big Folks here in Holland.

We started the Bond van Formaat (Union of Size) in 1994. The Dutch Obesity Organisation existed already at that time and many of our members were first organised in this organisation. So was I.

One day, we were gathered in an annual meeting. There was a lecture scheduled in the afternoon. It was a therapist who was working with people with overweight or being obese. The guy was a psychologist. He started his lecture with the words: 'Obesity is not healthy, it is crippling and it will kill you. Besides that, it is unattractive and makes you look irresponsible and lazy.'

The majority of the audience was agreeing with that and sat quiet listening to this nitwit. I was so shocked and felt so insulted that I had to recover for some moments, but then I stood up from my chair and interrupted his lecture and told the man in a loud voice how I felt and what I thought of him and his ideas. I was really furious and I was almost going to attack him physically!!

But…fortunately some friends of mine knew to calm me down and we left the room. Outside we went to a restaurant and there and then we established a new organisation: The Bond van Formaat. In the beginning we did not want to speak or work together with the Dutch Obesity Organisation.

For some years we existed together but we had no connection really and the Dutch Media used to ask our opinion and also from the other group. Soon we were seen as the 'radicals' in the 'obesity-field' and because of the fact that this so called radical point of view and the size-acceptance idea was so new here, the various media were asking me to speak for the radio and national TV, because they found it less dull and exiting to hear somebody say that being big is ok.