![]() ![]() The book was pivotal to my personal understanding of diet culture as a Black woman, as it uncovered some deeply troubling truths about the mistreatment of my ancestors simply for being larger. In her 2019 book, Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia, Strings un-blurs the lines between medical fact and history to understand how fatphobia and anti-Black racism are inextricably linked. There’s also this hard truth: diet culture is firmly entrenched in white supremacy, so says the brilliant Dr. ![]() In fact, I’d wager the classic “video vixen” look - which requires an excess of fat around the hips, butt, breasts, and thighs but not anywhere else - is much harder to pull off than just losing weight.įatphobia is rooted in white supremacy and anti-Black racism I can assure you that singer Jill Scott and actress Gabourey Sidibe are not treated equally (though they are both beautiful plus-sized women). While having full hips, a round bottom, and thick thighs is celebrated, sporting a tummy or fleshy arms is not. The concept of “fat” looks different in my community, but over the years, I fear that has led non-Black people to confuse “different” with “accepted.” She failed to mention that being fat was my third strike, a fact I would be reminded of often - even by other Black people. She was arming me for a lifelong, uphill battle to try and snatch some semblance of equality, understanding that I was already starting from behind. Growing up, my mother told me that I had “two strikes” against me: I was Black, and I was a woman. I cannot stress enough how untrue and, frankly, dangerous that line of thinking is. ![]() The conclusion was that thanks to the “acceptance” of fatness in the Black community - and our superhuman strength - we were shielded from the harsh realities of fatphobia. Over the years, the “t han white women” quietly dropped from the headline. One 2012 study of school-aged children deduced that Black girls were the most satisfied with our bodies when compared with our white and Asian counterparts.Īnother study, covered the same year by the Washington Post and the Kaiser Foundation, proclaimed: Black women heavier and happier with their bodies than white women. Now, the TV, movies, and the web were working in tandem to fuel our insecurities about the way we looked.Ī few of these studies sought to compare weight and body image perception cross-racially. Increased access to the internet opened up a whole new world for adolescents. In the early 2000s, there were several widely-circulated studies about the media’s impact on girls’ body image. Society perceives Black women as unaffected by body image concerns The uncomfortable truth is that fat, Black women were not spared from diet culture, and in the absence of empathy or compassion, we had to save ourselves. Under the myth of the “strong Black woman,” our “strength” supersedes our humanity, and we have to contend with a society that demands we play both victim and savior. ![]() Our experiences with diet culture are at best, isolating, and at worst, demoralizing. As a fat, Black woman, that includes diet culture - but nothing could be further from the truth. It’s this idea that Black women are somehow impervious to ills that plague our non-Black counterparts. For example, the image of the “strong Black woman” is a pervasive harmful trope we see in everything from movies to reality TV. The world has very decided views on Black women.Īctually, what the world has is a set of inherent stereotypes and biases that people desperately cling to in order to maintain their (assumed) place in society’s hierarchy.Īs a fat, Black woman, these stereotypes run the gamut from the regular insults of laziness to the more “positive” in nature. Knowing the historical shame attached to fatness and Blackness, how could anyone look at me and think: “wow, fat, Black women have it easier?” ![]()
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