Fat Pride: Obese Women Rally in the '70s

Cookies, eggnog, candy canes- who doesn't partake in a little holiday excess? Most of us hate ourselves for it later, but for a group of overweight women Mike Wallace interviewed in 1978, gaining a few more pounds wasn't the worry.

For them, it was the daily cruelty and discrimination they faced.

"I want to be respected, I want to be acknowledged, and I want to be loved for who I am," one woman told Wallace. "And I don't want to walk down the street and have people turn around and make fun of my package."

And who can blame her? It was the 1970s. Back then, it was even OK for a famous correspondent to tell one plus-sized lady: "I feel sorry for you."

WALLACE: I consider you, Jenny, a very attractive young woman, and--and, forgive me, I feel sorry for you.

JENNY: You shouldn't. Would you hire someone like me?

WALLACE: You know, I'm asking--I'm asking myself this as I--as I have my consciousness raised here today.

Now that the holiday is done and we all face the new number on our bathroom scales, it's a good time to watch Wallace get his "consciousness raised" by a group of spunky ladies from the National Association to Aid Fat Americans, an outfit that's still working for Fat Rights today.