Big Dreams

Photos: Rahadi Marsito

The obese are increasingly figures of unflattering stereotyping in modern Indonesian society. Heavy women, in particular, in these image-focused times, are the object of derision and the butt of the joke. A new group is working to show that being big does not have to mean feeling small. Bruce Emond reports.

As the fashion show ended and guests moved out of the hotel ballroom to sample refreshments, Lulu was still giddy with excitement at her brief stint on center stage.

A member of Xtra-L Indonesia, a group for overweight people, Lulu has a cute bobbed haircut, dewy skin that most women would envy and an attractive bubbly confidence that perfectly fits her work as an event organizer. Her ample curves would usually banish her from the skinny ranks of catwalk models, except on this day, when women with a little extra padding were celebrated for their beauty.

Unlike most of their large brethren featured in cheap TV sitcoms, they did not have to noisily gorge on cakes or chicken legs, slip on a banana skin or suffer other indignities to get attention.  

Lulu declares she has learned to accept herself, although it was a tough struggle facing comments from people about her weight or the judgmental looks.

Big girls may not cry, as the song goes, but they still hurt.  

“Now, if people give me a sideways glance, I just look at them and think, yes, I’m a big, beautiful, sexy girl, so what?” she says, performing a shimmy that fellow plus-sizer Susan Boyle would be proud of.

Members of the group wore a variety of designs, from traditional kebaya to evening wear and a stunning collection of wedding dresses. Designer Sagita D. Rivai discarded the usual “safe” wardrobe of heavy people – “slimming” black or dark hues, vertical stripes, motifs kept to a minimum – for bright colors, patterns and cuts that emphasized the models’ femininity.

“I don’t usually design for larger women, but I do now because I care about them,” Sagita says of her recently launched Constantien line for large women. “There really isn’t much out there for large women, except housedresses and things which look slobby.”

For Ita Sugito, taking part in a fashion show was an emancipating experience – “the dream of every little girl playing dress up” – after living her life smothered by the label of being fat.

Raised in a Western-oriented family, Ita did not have to deal with nagging from her parents about her weight except to remind her about her health. However, it was a different story outside the home, especially with bullying at school and discrimination in the workplace.

“When you’re chubby, the slim girls just don’t want to deal with you,” says the 46-year-old IT manager. “That’s their right – but then they add the bullying to it: ‘You’re fat, you’re so ugly, you move so slowly’.”

She later applied for a job as a secretary. She passed the initial test, but then came face to face with her prospective boss. He told her bluntly that she did not look good.

“I replied by asking him if he was expecting to get an erection by hiring me, or build his company, and walked out,” she remembers.

Living in Los Angeles for 12 years gave her a broader perspective on being a heavy woman, including seeing the support groups for overweight and obese people.

“In Indonesia, I was considered big size, but over there many people were heavier than me. And I saw they were OK, they were just going along with their lives easily, instead of being bothered by [the fat stigma]”.

She returned to Indonesia to find the lack of recognition of the needs of the obese, including plus-sized clothing and clear information on overcoming weight problems from doctors and slimming centers.

There also was a dearth of support systems, which led to Ita and several friends setting up Xtra-L. The group organizes a walking club at the National Monument every Friday and swimming every Monday. It is currently starting slowly by building its membership roster.

“Basically when we started, we did it spontaneously, we needed to be together, to share. Each chubby person has the same problems, so this group is trying to make their confidence higher, increase awareness of themselves instead of their body,” Ita says.

“We’re a support group to enlighten people on healthy living. Most of us have similar problems. Sharing it makes it easier, the solution is there … basically it’s kind of self-resources, this is my experience, this is their experience, and we can compare them.”

Photos: Rahadi Marsito

The group currently has more than 1,100 members across Indonesia, as well as several overseas. About 80 percent are women, but more men are joining, which is pleasing to Ita. It’s hard for larger women to find a partner, she says, and they may be able to find their soul mate among male members.

“In the long run, I hope this group can be the center of all this obesity knowledge – psychologists, doctors and designers – and hopefully for advocacy against discrimination against large people.”

The intense pressure to be thin appears to be increasing in Indonesian society, ironically when many residents of big cities are battling the bulge from changing lifestyles. Slimming centers are commonplace in Jakarta malls and shopping centers and the buffed body fitness culture has taken off with at least three major fitness chains.

The images of beauty that young women see today are almost universally rail thin, from willowy ad queen Luna Maya to the plethora of skinny models from Eastern Europe now flooding Jakarta catwalks. It’s a long way from the 1980s, when curvy Eva Arnaz was the bombshell in popular movies and womanly figured Elvi Sukaesih was the queen of dangdut. A new singing talent show gives contestants cosmetic surgery, including liposuction, and puts them on a strict diet, with weekly public weigh-ins on live TV to see if they managed to lose weight.

Agnes Monica, one of the most influential entertainers today, whose clothing and lifestyle choices are copied by impressionable teens, has lost at least 10 kg from her already petite frame through diet and exercise in recent months, becoming elfin-like in appearance with a new short haircut. Hughes and Tika Panggabean, both once among the most prominent heavier women on Indonesian TV, also have slimmed down recently, for health reasons.

Ita does not have a problem with striving to be healthier – she herself has dropped from 106 kg to 79 kg through healthier living. But she does bristle at the absolute viewpoint that thin is the only in, and the overweight and obese should keep out of the public eye unless they are willing to play the big buffoon.

“It is our job, not just our group, but our society to tell people you are good as you are, you don’t just have to copy other people,” Ita says. “Sure, have Agnes, but have a chubby woman as well.”

Xtra-L Indonesia is planning to publish a book next month telling the stories of overweight women, from the discrimination they face to the difficulties in finding partners, as well as their success in their careers.

Ita says she would still like to lose some more weight to be healthier. It begs the question that, if her BMI dips into the normal range, will she no longer be a member of Xtra-L? Slimmed down and freed from negative images, will she leave her former friends behind, along with her heavier self?

“If I get thin, I will still be with them,” she says. “I want to show people that a woman over 46 and weighing 106 kg can still lose weight. I just want to tell all the chubby girls that they can still do it – hold on to your dreams and it will happen.”

For more information on Xtra-L Indonesia, contact Ita Sugito at jp_sugito@yahoo.com.

One of the (big) girls

Sagita Rivai can empathize with her larger figured clients, because she was once one of them, weighing 30 kg more than she does today. She didn’t face too much fat phobia, however, saying that excelling in school made everybody else want to be her friend. She also lived some of the time in the Netherlands and London, where plus-sized clothing was easily available.

Lulu, left foreground, and Sagita, center, at the end of the show (Photos: Rahadi Marsito)

But she found when she returned to Indonesia that clothing stores did not offer anything stylish for larger women. After working as a personal assistant for 12 years, she went into home furnishings design in 2005. At an exhibition, she met two overweight women who told her about their problems in finding a belt to wear.

“I told them that I could make it for them. I became their friend and gave them advice.”

That was three years ago, and she has since lost her excess weight. But her friendship with the women has continued, as has her venture into designing large-sized fashion. Her new line includes four different designs: for younger women, with shorter skirts and more “bubbly” attire; for short but big women; for large women of average height; and for tall, large-sized women.

“To be beautiful in and out, you don’t have to order from Paris,” she says. “Of course, large women cannot wear everything – nobody can – but they just need to pay attention to detail, color and motifs to find clothes that suit them.”

Although the response to the designs has been great (even TV puppet Unyil made an appearance at her show at a five-star Jakarta hotel, “handing” one of the models a rose), her most satisfying moment came when she saw her models’ emotional reaction.

“They cried, they felt so happy, they felt so beautiful,” she says. “When I saw that, I knew I had reached my goal.”+ Bruce Emond

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