If you're the kinda soul who hones in on the Circus Fat Lady site in Dimensions'Image Mall, then Freak Show: Sideshow Banner Art (Chronicle Books,1996, $14.95, 96 pages) is the coffee table item for you! Authors Carl Hammerand Gideon Bosker collect a series of beautifully rendered banners frombig top sideshows, and among these are several choice examples of circusfat lady art.

Like most writers who deal with side show 'n' carny, Hammer and Bosker aren'tas versed on the dynamics of fat lady display as they are the more extremedenizens of carnivalia. (They even get Dolly Dimples' name wrong!) For thebest look at both the history and erotic appeal of such supergals as BabyRuth Pontico (I see her even now in her most famous pose!) and Alice fromDallas, Leslie Fiedler's Freaks remains the defining word. But for coolreprintings of banners featuring Sweet Marie ("643 pounds!" thebanner trumpets) and Harvey's Beef Trust ("Singing -- Dancing -- Entertainers,"the lettering notes beneath paintings of two apple- shaped super-sized ladies)this is the real goods. Those with an eye for male adiposity will also beglad to note the presence in these pages of Buster ("18 years old --640 pounds!"), standing coquettishly in an old-fashioned bathing suitby the ocean.

Banner art, like much surrounding the side show, was given to hyperboleand exaggeration (not to mention: out and out fraud!) but of all the images,those surrounding the fat ladies seem the least tainted by undelivered promises.Whatever her actual weight, you can bet that Sweet Marie was a sight fewmales forgot, the object of more than one unknowing FA's fantasies in the1940's. Even if the authors don't realize the full power of these fat womenimages (unceremoniously relegated to the rear of the book under the chapterheading "Blimps and Shrimps), it's clear that someone at ChronicleBooks did. For who do we see on the cover of Freak Show?

Sweet Marie at dinner, of course.

---Wilson Barbers