Imagine the scene: you've come to see a women's dance performance about body image and the tyranny of slenderness. You expect the show will probably consist of something like a waif-like lesbian wafting pretentiously around the stage, doing a kind of bad literal interpretative dance featuring imploring hands and pointed toes. What you're probably not expecting is what happens next: four fatties run around in full body leotards, they sit on a load of cakes and shake their caked arses to the audience of 800 roaring women. Welcome to the world of Pretty, Porky and Pissed Off.

According to group members Allyson Mitchell and Abi Stone, Pretty, Porky and Pissed Off are a Toronto-based fat activist group who do performances and also address body image issues through writing, education, making things, stickering, clothes-swapping and...chatting.

The group is part of a new generation of activists who are tired of the restrictions concerning what a fat woman can be. They are the latest proponents of size esteem in an honourable line that started with the Fat Underground of Los Angeles in the early 1970s. Although others had considered fat to be a civil rights issue before them, the Fat Underground were the first to generate a really radical interpretation of fat. They redefined it in political terms, rather than a personal problem that could be solved by dieting - an idea that is still relevant today. Like the Fat Underground before them, and other collectives such as the women who published the 'FaT GiRL' zine in the late 90s, Pretty, Porky and Pissed Off are also very dyke-centric.

Mitchell explains how the group started. "It all began with a failed attempt to buy hot spring pants. Nowhere in the city could I find pants that fit me that weren't dowdy navy blue or grey with elastic waist bands. I was bitching with a friend, Ruby Rowan, and we decided to do something about it instead of just complaining.

"We brainstormed for a name and came up with Pretty Porky and Pissed Off. Pretty meaning fat is beautiful but also meaning that fat is subjective in its size as in 'fairly' fat; Porky as a reclamation of a word that has been hurled at us by others and ourselves as an insult; and Pissed Off meaning we are ready to take arms against a culture that makes us feel badly about our ample female forms."

She continues: "So we called a bunch of friends and organised our first demo, which was to be a bit of public street theatre that would serve as our 'coming out' as fat as well as an interruption in the sizes of bodies that feel comfortable on Queen Street in Toronto - heart of fashion hipness and tinyness. We went around saying: 'We are queen size; don't you think that it's weird we can't get clothing to fit us on Queen Street?'"

Mitchell adds: "But Pretty Porky and Pissed Off is about much, much more than the right to shop. In fact, one of our favourite activities is clothing swaps where we exchange and share clothing with each other in an anti-consumerist and group-love way to avoid malls and clothing made by women under unfair conditions. We are also learning how to make our own clothing for ourselves."

Pretty, Porky and Pissed Off have little connection with the mainstream fat rights movement, such as the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance in the US and the Canadian Association of Size Acceptance. In fact, they say "What mainstream fat movement?" adding: "We are glad those groups exist. However, we tend to stick with and get most excited about the work done by young women through their own cultural productions like: Stink Mitt, The Gossip, Nomy Lamm and all the awesome fat work that gets done in Olympia, Washington, and all the chicks who are doing fat burlesque and dance."

Both Stone and Mitchell refute the idea that Pretty, Porky and Pissed Off is a single issue project. They say: "It's no more a one-subject deal than feminism is. We do a lot of our work about fat acceptance and body image but our work also includes addressing issues of anti-globalisation, sustainability, environmentalism and classism in relation to fat bodies. The members of the group come from various socio-economic, racial and religious/ethnic backgrounds and all of the work that we do is informed by these identities. Our collective history as activists and women's studies students means for a complicated politic. And thankfully, this is a politic with a sense of humour. We couldn't do this hard work if it wasn't fun."

The pair say that audiences, whether gay or straight, usually get what they're trying to say. "There have been a couple of occasions when we have performed at straight comedy clubs to pretty straight audiences who are used to laughing at fat jokes. In these cases the audience clearly didn't know what to do with us. We like to think they were afraid."

Stone says: "The biggest misconception that people have of us is that we have reached some place of total self-acceptance and never have fat phobic moments or 'bad fat days'. Another is that we advocate for the gaining of weight or that we thing everyone should be fat. This is not our message. Our message is that these are the bodies we have and we are sick of a lifetime of feeling shame and trying to alter them through unhealthy practices."

Meanwhile, Pretty Porky and Pissed Off have big plans for the future. Stone and Mitchell explain: "This winter after a crazy jam packed schedule we decided to hibernate for about six months. We meet on Monday evenings and have potluck, massages, workshop various ideas and strategies and analyse and discuss global and local issues. We had been working too hard for a while and were burning out so we decided to huddle in together and take care of each other and launch fully into changing the world again in the fall. Taking this time will infuse new work with new energy and we have big plans for film, dance-offs, publications and plus size leg warmers."

Lastly, what do the gals have to say to fat dykes in the UK? "Pass the potatoes and come on over and visit us anytime!"

Pretty Porky and Pissed Off