Winner, 2020 Body and Embodiment Best Publication
Award, given by the American Sociological Association
Honorable Mention, 2020 Sociology of Sex and Gender
Distinguished Book Award, given by the ...American Sociological
Association How the female body has been
racialized for over two hundred years 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.
“Obesity”, is defined as a body mass index (BMI) ≥ 30. Yet the tool, BMI, has been shown to be flawed in its weight classing. BMI categories were made by relying nearly exclusively on data about ...middle-class white males, creating “the normal (white) man”. Yet, BMI continues to be used as a diagnostic tool, and is increasingly deployed to stigmatize fat persons as “diseased”. This has critical implications for women—especially Black women and Latinas—who have some of the highest BMIs in the country. But, despite the consternation over the size of the bodies women of color have, there are nearly no studies to date examining the relationship between BMI and rates of chronic illness by race and gender. In this study, we examined the associations between BMI and type 2 diabetes (T2D) for women across race in comparison to white men. Relying on 20 years of NHANES data, we found that while Latinas and Black women were nearly 3 times and over 5 times as likely to have T2D than white men, respectively, the association between BMI and T2D was significantly weaker for Latinas than for white men. The association between BMI and T2D was markedly weaker for Black women. This study shows that racial and gendered health disparities cannot be explained by differences in rates of “obesity” as defined by a white male norm.
Much of the extant whiteness literature treats "white" as a self-evident racial category and focuses largely on white men. Investigations into how the category transformed over time, and how or why ...white women would have participated in its transformation, have been limited. I performed a qualitative content analysis of articles from Godey's Lady's Book, the top women's media outlet of the 19th century. Findings reveal that elite white women were integral to the remaking of whiteness in the 19th century. Anglo-Saxon women used their media platform to play up racial distinctions between themselves and "part Black" Irish women. In so doing, they treated physical features associated with whiteness, including light skin and thinness, as forms of embodied capital. They simultaneously derided racially-othered Irish women as darker skinned and fat in an effort to undermine inter-racial relationships between Irish women and Anglo-Saxon men.
A flurry of recent articles in the medical and popular press have decried black women’s “alarmingly high” rates of obesity. The number of high-profile publications lamenting the “epidemic” among ...black women has grown, even as mounting evidence indicates that obesity (defined as a body mass index ≥ 30) does not necessarily lead to poor health outcomes. Indeed, given its functional limitations in explaining or predicting health status, a number of medical researchers are now issuing calls to revise the standard definition of obesity. In this article, I examine the curious nature of the discourse decrying the obesity epidemic among black women. I argue that rather than being a novel concern about black women’s health or public health, the medical and popular discourse about obesity and black women is largely a reproduction of the trope of the diseased black woman that has been used throughout American history. This trope reifies the purported sensualism of black women. Moreover, the newest incarnation of this discursive device is distinct in that it renders black women as triply signified “social dead weight.”
This article describes how size-based health and beauty ideals made their way into the medical field through the eugenics movement of the 19th to 20th centuries and were validated using so-called ..."standard weight" tables. They became even more mainstream with the 20th-century tool to replace standard weight tables: body mass index (BMI). BMI, then, is a continuation of white supremacist embodiment norms, racializing fat phobia under the guise of clinical authority. This article describes the key players in the legacy of size-based mandates, which fall under what I have labeled the "white bannerol of health and beauty." This pseudoscientific bannerol has helped forge oppressive conceptions of fatness as an indicator of ill health and "low" racial quality.
Winner, 2020 Body and Embodiment Best Publication Award, given by the American Sociological AssociationHonorable Mention, 2020 Sociology of Sex and Gender Distinguished Book Award, given by the ...American Sociological AssociationHow the female body has been racialized for over two hundred years 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.
"Chilly climate," as a concept, has been hugely influential in education studies. However, studies of people of color, genderqueer folx, men, and non-STEM graduate programs have been few and far ...between within this body of literature. So, too, have been interventions to address inhospitable learning environments at the collegiate level. In this paper, we advance a new analytic to study the experiences of people in the aforementioned populations: "intersectional spectrum of experience." We surveyed twenty-four graduate students across racial/ethnic and gender identities in two seminars in a "female-dominated" discipline. We found wide variability in perceptions of classroom equity by race and gender identity; men were least likely to attest to male superiority, and none of the men found the intervention to improve classroom equity helpful. We argue that "intersectional spectrum of experience" speaks to the ways in which gender and racial identity intersect to create a range of (un)ease in the classroom.
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