MAGAZINE CELEBRATES WOMEN AT ANY WEIGHT
‘It’s about living the best life,’ says the publisher ofFabUplus
Shannon Svingen-Jones finished a 10-kilometre run last summer and — as always — jumped on the scales: still 245 pounds. “I wanted to cry. I said to my husband, ‘That’s it. I want weight-loss surgery.’ ”
After a battery of tests to see if Svingen-Jones was a candidate for bariatric surgery, her doctor cheerfully delivered the news — “You don’t need it because you’re healthier than a lot of thin people.”
“But look at me,” Svingen-Jones remembers saying. “Just look at me.”
When a friend later asked her if she could feel healthy in the body she had, the answer was a swift no.
“Society teaches us that unless we’re skinny, we’re losers. Then I realized I’ll never look the way they’re telling me I should look. For the amount of activity that I do, it’s genetically impossible.”
Thus, FabUplus magazine was born.
Its concept, says the publication’s founder and publisher, is to show plus-sized women as active people with fulfilling lives who don’t march solely to the insistent drumbeat of dieting.
In less than a year after her epiphany, Svingen-Jones had the website fabuplusmagazine.com up and running with 5,000 hits a day.
The first edition of the print magazine — an ambitious 20,000 copies — hit store shelves throughout North America at the beginning of June.
It’s been an all-consuming undertaking for the former educator from B.C., who sunk her savings and a small business grant into the project.
Producing a glossy magazine is an expensive choice in today’s digital world, but she says focus groups told her that’s what they wanted.
“Overwhelmingly they said, ‘I want to buy it, I want to hold it, I want to put it on the coffee table,’ ” says Svingen-Jones.
“Because for the first time in my entire life there is someone who looks like me on the cover of a magazine who isn’t a celebrity.”
Svingen-Jones says she’s not out to glorifying obesity; rather, “it’s about living the best life now in the body you have.”
There are more than 100 million North American women who are overweight or obese (defined as having a body mass index over 25 and 30, respectively) so there’s no shortage of potential readers.
But since FabUplus’s doesn’t promote weight loss as its goal, is it good for people?
Dr. Arya Sharma, professor of medicine at the University of Alberta and founder of the Canadian Obesity Network, says it’s possible to be healthy over a wide range of shapes and sizes.
“However, for most people, risk of health problems increase at higher weight levels over time,” Sharma said in an email.
“Nevertheless, the body-positivity movement has a lot going for it, especially as there is ample evidence that having a negative body image and body dissatisfaction can take a significant toll on your mental and physical health as well as social functioning.”
FabUplus is available on magazine stands across North America — including at Chapters, Indigo and Shoppers Drug Mart — or through fabuplusmagazine.com. Digital editions can be purchased through Apple’s App Store.
I realized I’ll never look the way they’re telling me I should look. For the amount of activity that I do, it’s genetically impossible.