NY Times: “Black Women Want to be Fat”
Alice Randall at the New York Times says that black women have a cultural identity in which they encourage one another to be overweight.
FOUR out of five black women are seriously overweight. One out of four middle-aged black women has diabetes. With $174 billion a year spent on diabetes-related illness in America and obesity quickly overtaking smoking as a cause of cancer deaths, it is past time to try something new.
Josephine Baker embodied a curvier form of the ideal black woman.What we need is a body-culture revolution in black America. Why? Because too many experts who are involved in the discussion of obesity don’t understand something crucial about black women and fat: many black women are fat because we want to be.
The black poet Lucille Clifton’s 1987 poem “Homage to My Hips” begins with the boast, “These hips are big hips.” She establishes big black hips as something a woman would want to have and a man would desire. She wasn’t the first or the only one to reflect this community knowledge. Twenty years before, in 1967, Joe Tex, a black Texan, dominated the radio airwaves across black America with a song he wrote and recorded, “Skinny Legs and All.” One of his lines haunts me to this day: “some man, somewhere who’ll take you baby, skinny legs and all.” For me, it still seems almost an impossibility.
Chemically, in its ability to promote disease, black fat may be the same as white fat. Culturally it is not.
How many white girls in the ’60s grew up praying for fat thighs? I know I did. I asked God to give me big thighs like my dancing teacher, Diane. There was no way I wanted to look like Twiggy, the white model whose boy-like build was the dream of white girls. Not with Joe Tex ringing in my ears.
How many middle-aged white women fear their husbands will find them less attractive if their weight drops to less than 200 pounds? I have yet to meet one.
But I know many black women whose sane, handsome, successful husbands worry when their women start losing weight. My lawyer husband is one.
I was a very skinny girl and my mom made me eat, so while my sisters were size 5 & 7 as teens, I was an 11-12 (big) for a teen because at age 9 and 10 I was told eat, eat. Both my parents were small and not overweight.
I have lost those extra dress sizes as an adult, because I am in gym two days a week. I am so sad when I see preteen and teen girls who look as if they weigh over 150-200 lbs.
We are setting our girls up for future health issues and self esteem issues, fat is not cute at any age. I don’t judge people on weight, but I am concerned, been there. A size 11-12 may not sound like a lot to most people, but for a teen it is big. Get healthy sisters and teach your girls. Watch how Mrs. Obama keeps her girls TRIM and they look so healthy.
I don’t want to be fat but I dont want to be skinny either. Right now I am 185 and my goal weight is 165. My issues with being skinny is that I feel I would be vulnerable and defenseless. Not saying it is true just most women you see or hear about getting attacked are skinny. Just my opinion.
This is the first time I’ve heard that Black women want to be fat. My sister was fat as a child and our mother had trouble finding clothes to fit her. A friend tells me she was fat as a child and the only clothes she could find were ugly. Clothes for heavy women consisted of muu-muus in ugly colors or loud patterns. Is the author of this article saying that Black girls and women preferred to dress like that?
I am so sick and tired of these stupid and demeaning articles concerning Black women Most of us DO NOT want to be fat. We usually carry our weight differently than white women. And the American diet is hardly any different from one race than the other in this fast food industry. Actually it’s more of a class issue than race; poor whites tip the scales of just 1% lower than Black people. The most obese people in the U.S. are Hispanic and Native American women. Don’t believe me? Look it up! And stop relying on stats from the C.D.C.
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