A review by naturallybgrace
Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia by Sabrina Strings
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.”
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.”
Content Warnings
Moderate: Fatphobia, Religious bigotry, Misogyny, Eating disorder, Body shaming, Slavery, Sexual violence, and Racism
Because of the nature of this topic may potentially triggering things are mentioned and discussed. I’d encourage folks check in with themselves and others while reading as the content is heavy, but none the less necessary.