Move over, it's Saturday night at Club Bounce and people are bouncing onto the dance floor in a big, big way.

These are big, big people, all dressed to the nines, many of them tipping the scales at 250, maybe 300 pounds.

That's because this expansive nightclub a couple blocks from the Pacific Ocean, with its flashing lights, friendly atmosphere and wall-rattling hip-hop sounds, caters specifically to fat people.

That's right, fat people. Not just any fat people, either, but fat people who are proud to call themselves fat people. People who joke that they are part of the new Fat is Phat movement.

"Self-conscious? No! Not at all," Monique Lopez, a curvaceous woman of 23, says with a laugh as she arrives in a tight black dress and heels. "I was like, 'I'm going to Club Bounce tonight. I'm going to wear my shortest skirt."' (Which she did.)

The movement for equal rights for plus-sized people is nothing new, of course. The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, with chapters around the country, was founded 40 years ago. A nonprofit group, it advocates for everyone to be treated equally regardless of size, arguing that we don't live in a one-size-fits-all world.

But what has been slower coming, fat advocates say, are places like Club Bounce, where people who might have some trouble getting past the velvet ropes at other nightspots because of their size are made to feel like they fit right in.

"When you're not what they consider ideal, you know, and you're out there trying to get your dance on at those other places, you get the looks, the stares. But not here. Everything's accepted here," says Vanessa Gray of Long Beach, an attractive 30-something woman who acknowledges jovially that after giving birth to three children, "I've got a little more meat on my bones."

Not that every large person prefers to be called fat, especially by someone who isn't.

Lisa Marie Garbo, who opened Club Bounce five years ago, says she prefers terms such as "plus-sized" and "larger-framed."

"But I don't think fat is a bad word anymore," she adds. "I think a lot of people embrace it now."

Garbo, a vivacious, 40-year-old blonde partial to flamboyant outfits of tight-fitting pants and low-cut tops, said she opened the club for herself and others who were tired of being "the only fat girl at the local nightclub."