XLQ, the fashion magazine for Big Men

"XLQ", THE fashion mag for the larger man.


Bernie Hughes was looking for a new outlet for his creative energies.

As owner of "Big Adventure", the most successful Big and Tall clothing chain in the USA, Bernie has achieved much more than he had imagined on that day ten years ago, when he set about turning his designs and ideas for cooler clothes for bigger guys into reality. Big Adventure turned into more than just a clothing chain; it has become a positive force in the struggle for 'fat acceptance' in America.

Big Adventure's provocative, sexy, appealing advertising has helped turning bigger and fatter men into sex symbols across the USA and beyond. One measure of its success is that Big Adventure is now being blamed by the Surgeon General for contributing to the expanding waistlines American teen boys and young men, and contributing to the 'obesity epidemic'. To which, Bernie says, "Cool! If you look at the 20th century, Americans have been doing two things: living longer, and getting fatter. I believe these two are linked."

Tracing the origins of this success needs some reference to the poise, presence, and clean-cut sex appeal of Bernie's first super-sized male model, Roger Craig, whose massively attractive looks and charismatic person contributed heavily to taking Big Adventure out of the "niche retailer" area and putting clothes for the bigger male squarely in the mainstream of American business.

Of course, Roger's own tale of change and growth is quite something. Initially, Roger's growth was a private thing - it was his wife, Cindy, who encouraged her recently enlarged husband to try out for a modelling position with Big Adventure, where she had been buying so many of his clothes. There was only one caveat that Bernie laid on Roger when he was hired - he wasn't big enough! With Cindy's enthusiastic help, Roger immediately set about 'improving' his weight up to the 800 pound level that Bernie was searching for in his new promotional spokesman. Roger's role as a fat male supermodel required him to wear anything and everything in Big Adventure's line of rugged, challenging clothes for the sporty bigger man, the "Biggest Adventure" line. Bernie consistently chose to feature Roger wearing the brightest colours and boldest patterns in Biggest Adventure's advertising - to show other fat guys that they didn't need to hide their gorgeous, lovable bulk under dark colours and baggy clothes.

Brilliant jewel tone tees and sport shirts in body-skimming cuts, pants and shorts in spandex-enhanced stretch fabrics that rode closely over massive guts and thighs, richly toned horizontal striping or colour blocking in heavy cotton rugby shirts, and body-hugging bicycling spandex in dayglo colours were all the order of the day. Big Adventure scored its attention-getting initial successes with clothing lines aimed at America's hot young fat guys - beefy football players, massive powerlifters, heavyweight wrestlers, amateur sumos, potbellied ex-college jocks, and radical gainers, and most importantly among the growing numbers of fat teens and even fatter twenty-somethings who wanted to look like their beefy football heroes or the leading sumo wrestlers. These fat poseur types flocked to Big Adventure's most radical lines.

Bernie soon backed up his choice of Roger as top model by hiring a stable of young SSBHM supermodels, including Coleman, a young cousin of Cindy, who at 15 years old was already an awe-inspiring 450 lbs, and who Cindy had noticed was copying the more radical of the fashions his uncle Roger modelled. With Coleman on board, flaunting his youth and phenomenal size in ads for Big Adventure's new "Teen Hero" line for ample teenage boys, Bernie saw total sales shoot upwards. This growth enormously increased the value of the Big Adventure stock options Bernie had given Roger.

Bernie decided to further reinforced the success of Big Adventure by filling another unfilled need, a men's fashion magazine featuring the larger styles and fashions that were making Big Adventure famous. Bernie launched XLQ, XtraLarge Quarterly, "THE fashion mag for the larger man". Initially, XLQ was a house organ, intended to be given away to regular customers - a beautifully laid out dream catalog/promotion piece, but with a few additional articles, columnists, and op-ed pieces to round it out. The first issue came out with a front cover featuring Roger in "Indiana Jones" style, boots, sturdy cargo shorts, open-necked rugged canvas shirt, fedora and binoculars, while the back cover featured Coleman, in searing neon yellow spandex top and electric blue shorts, body and gut in the air, lunging to spike a volleyball.

Nearly as soon as the first issue appeared, however, requests began to come in for subscriptions. Many came from women wanting subscriptions for their bigger husbands/ boyfriends/sons, and the requests also arrived from gay men wanting subscriptions for their BHM partners. While Bernie had expected his catalog to be popular, this demand for subscriptions caught him unawares. He sat down with his publishing crew to see if they were prepared to greatly expand their publishing goals, by moving beyond being a house organ.

XLQ has its detractors, of course, who refer to it as FQ - Fatso Quarterly. But, frankly, who cares what Richard Simmons, Paris Hilton and the US Surgeon-General think? Certainly not the men who read XLQ!


Caution: this item is a work in progress