Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia
Ratings5
Average rating4.8
15
Ratings5
Average rating4.8
There is an obesity epidemic in this country and poor black women are particularly stigmatized as “diseased” and a burden on the public health care system. This is only the most recent incarnation of the fear of fat black women, which Sabrina Strings shows took root more than two hundred years ago.
Strings weaves together an eye-opening historical narrative ranging from the Renaissance to the current moment, analyzing important works of art, newspaper and magazine articles, and scientific literature and medical journals―where fat bodies were once praised―showing that fat phobia, as it relates to black women, did not originate with medical findings, but with the Enlightenment era belief that fatness was evidence of “savagery” and racial inferiority.
The author argues that the contemporary ideal of slenderness is, at its very core, racialized and racist. Indeed, it was not until the early twentieth century, when racialized attitudes against fatness were already entrenched in the culture, that the medical establishment began its crusade against obesity. An important and original work, Fearing the Black Body argues convincingly that fat phobia isn’t about health at all, but rather a means of using the body to validate race, class, and gender prejudice.
Reviews with the most likes.
Illuminating and infuriating.
The timeline alone says it all, when it comes to what chronologically promoted fat phobia:
First racism seen in art and ‘science' justifying colonialism and slavery, then religious ascetic morality further promoting racism and controlling women, and THEN unsubstantiated claims about health associated with insurance companies to help medical industries and doctor reputations alongside eugenic concerns, condemning and fearing minorities and working to promote a supremacist idea of white women as mothers first.
The author shows how in addition to the black body, it becomes very clear that convenient narratives that championed white supremacy and a slender white aesthetic also sought to other, denigrate, harm with impunity, all people of colour as well as Jewish people, Southern and Eastern European immigrants to the US, and anyone of a ‘lower class', and simultaneously judge and control women.
Racism and fatphobia have often been the tool of commerce and the reigning social class when the white ‘upper class' find it an expedient way to keep themselves on top.
I'll admit the seeming constant back and forth on women being ‘too skinny, too fat' in Kellogg's day felt a bit muddled in providing evidence for the book's argument.
The Fat, Revisited chapter and Obesity Epidemic epilogue felt a bit breathless, but I think that's a personal perspective based on reading a number of books on aspects of what is covered in those pages - the recent issues with the medical industry and BMI and conceptions of obesity - it's a lot to try and summarize in a chapter or two.
It doesn't take away from Strings' well-supported report on all the ways that minorities, in particular, Black women, have been designated the undesirable Other through skin colour, body shape, features, size and weight, based on specious, spurious arguments, how they have been condemned to further a white agenda, even as it simultaneously worked to discipline white women, even in situations where white women are doing it to other white women or themselves.
Negative result for all! 🤦🏼♂️
Sidebar:
Y'know it was mildly funny when I found out a few years ago that Kellogg cereal guy was anti-masturbation, but finding out he was a pro-eugenics, white supremacist writing racist pseudo-medical screeds is just exhausting.
⚠️racism, xenophobia, antisemitism, sexism, fatphobia, disordered eating
