Padded Lilies

The Padded Lilies are a water ballet troupe of heavy-set women based out of Oakland, California, United States. The group was founded by fat activist Shirley Sheffield in 1997 to promote "synchronized swimming, body-acceptance, fat-empowerment, and fitness at any size." The Padded Lilies have been profiled in People magazine, interviewed by the British Medical Journal, and featured on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and in the short film "Weightless." In 2003 filmmaker Julie Wyman made a 27min film about the Padded Lilies called Buoyant. Fat activist Marilyn Wann has swum with them.

In the UK, the Padded Lilies have featured in a BBC scientific program called Horizon's 2002episode entitled 'Fat Busters'. The program looked at the belief of the swim troup that a slow metabolism caused their size and then showed that although science had proven fat people to actually have faster metabolisms, there were a variety of ways in which there could be truth in the Lilies' idea that there was something genetic about their size.