Baring her -- albeit voluptuous -- soul on a nationally televised talk show has been great for Chrystal Bougon's business.
In the 24 hours since the San Jose owner of Curvy Girl Lingerie went on Fox's Bethenny show, 24,000 unique eyeballs looked at her blog, six times the average traffic. She received 2,200 more Facebook likes. And her Willow Glen shop took 38 orders since Thursday. Typically, she said, the shop gets 18 orders a day.
She owns the only plus-size brick-and-mortar shop of its kind in the United States.
On the show, which was taped before Thanksgiving but aired on Thursday, Bougon talked to host Bethenny Frankel about some of the mean comments she and her customers get when they post selfies in lingerie on Curvy Girl's Facebook page. The campaign, which Bougon launched last November, is called "Regular Women."
But Bougon said she doesn't care about those mean "Internet trolls."
"You can call me fat and ugly," Bougon told Frankel. "I've been fat since third grade. If you're a fat girl, you have thick skin."
Several heavy women -- who were strangers, but are now friends -- entered the Bethenny stage, wearing nighties and spaghetti-strapped camousels.
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Bougon has done the talk show circuit before. But it wasn't as pleasant as being on Bethenny, she said, where she was invited to simply strut her stuff.
In December, CNN, Good Morning America, Access Hollywood and other shows had Bougon on the show to spar with the Sacramento area’s Maria Kang, aka “Fit Mom,” over pounds, sexiness and health.
Kang had criticized Curvy Girl, saying during a CNN interview she was "peeved" by the San Jose shop's call to have fat women post their lingerie photos, "because that's not how real women look like or should look like."
But Bougon disagrees.
She feels that Kang -- best known for her flat abs Facebook post in October with her kids, in which she asked “What’s Your Excuse” -- and others who don't embrace those who wear X-size panties are “fat shaming” those who don't wear a size 2.
It seems as though Frankel agreed with her San Jose guest, whom she introduced as a woman who was "challenging the definition of beauty, stretch marks and all."
