Reviews with content warning for Body shaming - Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia

Reviews tagging 'Body shaming'

Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia by Sabrina Strings

30 reviews

mandkips's review against another edition

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challenging informative reflective slow-paced

4.0

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orinthebard's review against another edition

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challenging informative slow-paced

5.0

A must-read to understand anti-fat bias in the Western world and how it relates back to white supremacy.

As we have seen, the current anti-fat bias in the United States, and in much of the West, was not born in the medical field. Racial scientific literature since at least the 18th century has claimed that fatness was savage and Black... because women are typically reduced to their bodies, fat stigma has commonly targeted racial ethnic Other women. Protestant moralism and the distain of indulgence contributed to the cacophony of pro-thin, anti-fat bias. The medical field has been the most recent institution to enter the fray.

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puttingwingsonwords's review against another edition

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challenging informative medium-paced

5.0

I had seen Fearing the Black Body recommended in pretty much every antifatness related book list, so when I saw it was available on my audiobook app, I immediately added it to my shelf. Anyone who wants to dive a little deeper than the basics and learn about the history of antifatness and its roots in racism and eugenics should read this book.

It’s not long and while the language is academic, it’s not overly complicated. The audiobook was easy to follow. I haven’t listened to a lot of nonfiction audiobooks yet so I was afraid that my attention would waver, but it was the opposite: I listened for much longer stretches than I usually do because I was so intrigued.

Fearing the Black Body helps put the current discussions around antifatness into a historical context and shows how much we are still influenced by decades or centuries old ideas of eugenicist doctors and ‘race scientists’ who spouted ‘scientific’ ideas with no basis in research or reality.

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minty_3's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative reflective slow-paced

4.0

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therecoveringbookworm's review against another edition

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funny informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

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naturallybgrace's review against another edition

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challenging informative slow-paced

5.0

Incredibly thorough, well descriptive and information driven. The origins of anti-fat thought, believes, policies and action is traced to anti-Blackness through the years.

Quotes—
“…the current anti-fat bias in the United States and in much of the West was not born in the medical field. Racial scientific literature since at least the eighteenth century has claimed that fatness was ‘savage’ and ‘black.”

“The legacy of Protestant moralism and race science as it related to fat and thin persons loomed large. Indeed, many early to mid-twentieth-century physicians relied on moral and racial logics to rail against persons deemed too fat or too thin. But over time, a growing number did so specifically, and exclusively, to condemn fatness.”

“…Revealing race to be the missing element in many of these analysis’ indeed the racial discourse of fatness as coarse, immortal, black and other, not only denigrated Black women but it also served as the driver for the creation of slenderness as the proper form of embodiment for elite white christian women. In other words the fear of the black body was integral to the creation of the slender aesthetic amount fashioned white Americans.”

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