As he walked off I noticed he was pigeon-toed.Keanu Reeves's film, 'Speed', opens here on 30 September(Photograph omitted). THREE large black women walked in to The Brixtonian, the chicest bar in Brixton, south London, on Thursday night, and everyone stared. Their clothes were tight, they were dressed to kill, they commanded attention. 'I don't have to slouch around in my cheapest clothes, walking as if I was apologising I take up space,' says Stephanie Jones, 33. 'If a man says to me, 'champion girl' as I'm jumping on a bus, I turn to him and say, 'Yes]' ' According to Stephanie, a sense of style, of the importance of dress, is crucial in the black community and intimately tied up with a sense of self-esteem. Anyone who lives in Brixton notices it: these wonderfully-dressed big black women who, if white, would only leave the house when they had to, and then dressed in something beige and shapeless from D H Evans. And if they wanted to dress up, where would they find the clothes? 'The designers see big women as having no social life, no partner, we never go out, we just stay in and eat,' says Stephanie, a health promotion officer.

'And because we're big we must be stupid,' says Fay Romans, 27, an information support officer for BT and part-time choreographer. 'We're too stupid to know it's bad to be fat so we must be on income support.' Stephanie and Fay are both previous winners of the Big and Beautiful contest, an annual event for black women where contestants spend a small fortune on specially designed evening gowns and matching shoes. A similar contest, in the Caribbean, is a massive event, shown on television across the region and attracting major sponsorship. Why do black people regard size in such a different way from the rest of British society? 'Everything comes from within,' says Dianne Regisford, 25, a freelance journalist and PR consultant. 'You see racist imagery every day and you need a sense of self-worth to take it on.' Stephanie, Fay and Dianne train at a gym, because being firm is important to them, but they do not diet 'Black people do have cellulite,' Dianne says.