Fat Joy & Fat Community: Building Belonging, Celebration, and Collective Care

There’s something powerful about seeing a room full of fat people laughing, connecting, and existing freely. No apology. No shrinking. No need to make themselves smaller for anyone’s comfort. Just joy; loud, embodied, and contagious.

That’s the energy behind Fat Joy & Fat Community, an in-person celebration happening October 19th in Campbell, California. The event is the creation of Chrystal, one of our beloved hosts of Big Sexy Chat, and it’s already becoming something bigger than a single afternoon. It’s a reminder of why community matters, and what it looks like when joy itself becomes an act of care.

As a podcast and collective centered around fat liberation, pleasure, and connection, Big Sexy Chat is proud to support the Fat Joy event and help spread the word. Because we believe in what it represents: a future built on belonging rather than body policing, on abundance rather than scarcity, and on joy that doesn’t need anyone’s permission.

Joy as a Radical Form of Care

More often than not, “fat liberation” conversations are framed around resistance, pushing back, defending, and proving worth. And while resistance has its place, the Fat Joy event takes a different approach. It asks what happens when we stop defining ourselves by what we’re fighting against and start focusing on what we’re building.

Joy isn’t frivolous. It’s fuel. It’s what keeps communities alive when the world keeps trying to erase them. When we gather to eat, rest, and celebrate one another, we’re not escaping reality; we’re reshaping it, embracing it, living joy in it.

That’s the deeper current running through this event: joy as collective care. Each laugh, hug, or shared bite becomes a kind of micro-revolution, an antidote to the isolation that fatphobia, ableism, and shame create.

A Celebration Rooted in Community

The Fat Joy event is intentionally designed to feel welcoming from the moment you arrive. It takes place at Campbell Community Center’s Orchard Hall, a fully accessible venue with armless seating, accessible restrooms, nearby parking, and thoughtful sensory considerations.

From the layout to the lighting, every element has been chosen with community in mind, because comfort and access are not luxuries; they’re necessities. There will be spaces to sit, snack, chat, and breathe. No hierarchy of bodies, no expectation to perform. Just connection.

Guests can look forward to an afternoon filled with laughter, art, conversation, and community, all anchored by an incredible lineup of speakers and performers who embody the heart of fat liberation work.

The Lineup: Leaders, Thinkers, and Joy-Makers

Tigress Osborn, Executive Director of NAAFA, will headline the event as keynote speaker. Her talk, “Finding Joy While Fighting the Power,” centers on the power of joy as both sustenance and strategy. For decades, Tigress has led with heart, merging activism, education, and community-building to uplift and empower fat people across identities.

Her presence at the Fat Joy event connects this local celebration to the larger lineage of the fat-rights movement. NAAFA has spent over 50 years championing equality, access, and dignity for fat people worldwide. Through education, advocacy, and policy work, they’ve helped shift the national conversation from stigma to solidarity.

Also taking the stage is Merf, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with more than 15 years of experience, a California Health Care Foundation Fellow (Cohort 23), and Director of Clinical Services at Casa de Esperanza. She's presented on Fat Liberation and Cultural Humility at CommuniCareOLE and serves as a powerful advocate for health equity and inclusion.

As co-host of Big Sexy Chat, Merf brings humor, empathy, and depth to conversations about bodies, pleasure, and liberation. Her talk at Fat Joy explores fat liberation from a DEI and cultural perspective, centering the experiences of healthcare professionals. It’s a thoughtful, transformative look at how assumptions shape care, and how joy and understanding can reshape both culture and systems.

Adding artistry and expression to the mix, MariVBaby, a fat, indigenous, queer burlesque performer, will deliver a performance that’s part celebration, part reclamation. Through movement and presence, MariVBaby’s art reminds us that fat bodies are powerful, sensual, and deserving of the spotlight, not shame.

More Than an Event: A Living Ecosystem

Beyond the stage, the Fat Joy event will feature local vendors, body-positive creators, and inclusive artisans offering everything from handmade jewelry to self-care goods. Expect tables where people linger, chat, and connect, a marketplace of shared stories and mutual support.

The food for the event will be catered by Tony & Alba’s Pizza, a beloved local business known not just for their incredible pizza, but for their heart. Each October, they host Sock-toberfest, collecting donations of new socks for farm workers in the Salinas Valley. Guests who bring a pair of new socks to the Fat Joy event will even receive an extra raffle ticket, a simple, joyful way to support local workers while participating in the event’s spirit of giving.

There will also be complimentary chair massages to help attendees relax and feel nurtured, plus sweet treats and snacks that center pleasure instead of guilt. Food is not an afterthought here; it’s part of the celebration.

Every detail, down to the playlist and décor, is designed to make attendees feel not just included, but seen.

Why “Fat Joy”?

The name itself carries intention. Joy is not a distraction from liberation; it’s one of its purest expressions. When fat people come together and build community rooted in self-love, humor, and care, it challenges the systems that profit from our pain.

But this isn’t a “revenge body” moment or a clapback to haters. It’s something softer, wiser, and ultimately stronger: the reclaiming of joy as a right.

Fat joy isn’t about centering the pain inflicted by others; it’s about centering ourselves. It’s about choosing pleasure, connection, and delight as acts of healing.

As Chrystal often talks about, this work isn’t just about body positivity; it’s about knowing that our joy, our pleasure, our existence doesn’t need validation. We get to define what beautiful, powerful, and whole look like.

The Movement Behind the Celebration

This event is also a fundraiser: 20 percent of every ticket sold goes directly to NAAFA to support ongoing fat-liberation advocacy, education, and outreach.

By attending, guests aren’t just coming to a party; they’re helping sustain decades of movement work that has opened doors for fat people in healthcare, policy, and media representation.

Fat liberation doesn’t happen in conference rooms or comment sections alone; it happens in gatherings like this, where community fuels both joy and change.

The Safety of Shared Space

One of the most radical things about the Fat Joy event is how intentionally it centers comfort and safety. This is a masked event, not as an inconvenience but as an act of collective respect and care. It’s a reminder that accessibility and safety are community values, not afterthoughts.

There’s also a recognition that not all fat people move, eat, or exist the same way. Some will dance. Some will sit quietly. Some will cry. Some will leave early. Every version of participation is valid.

This is the kind of space where people can show up exactly as they are, without explanation.

A Call to Join the Celebration

If you’re local to California, or even within a road trip’s reach, we hope you’ll join the joy on October 19th.

Tickets are $30 in advance and $40 at the door, with a “Pay What You Can” option available to keep access equitable.

Can’t attend in person? There are still ways to be part of it:

• Share the event page widely.

• Donate directly to NAAFA.

• Support or commission work from the vendors and performers featured at the Fat Joy event.

• Most importantly, practice fat joy wherever you are, laugh loudly, rest without guilt, dance if you can, and love your body as it is.

Joy Is the Work

Joy is often painted as a soft thing; a side effect of comfort, a fleeting spark in a harsh world. But the truth is, joy is work. It’s sacred, deliberate, and communal. It takes courage to show up fully in your body, to celebrate it, to share that light with others.

That’s what the Fat Joy event is all about. It’s not about proving worth or fighting enemies; it’s about building spaces where fat people can exhale, connect, and remember that they were never the problem.

On October 19th, in a hall filled with laughter, music, care, and love, that truth will be alive and undeniable.

Chrystal and Merf will be there, and we hope you will be too.