Fearing the black body : the racial origins of fat phobia / Sabrina Strings.
Strings, Sabrina, author.
2019
HQ1220.U5 S77 2019 (Mapit)
Available at General Collection

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Title Fearing the black body : the racial origins of fat phobia / Sabrina Strings.
Author Strings, Sabrina, author.
ISBN 9781479886753 (paperback)
1479886750 (paperback)
9781479819805 (hardcover)
1479819808 (hardcover)
Published New York, NY : New York University Press, [2019]
Language English
Description 283 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm
Call Number HQ1220.U5 S77 2019
Dewey Decimal Classification 305.48/896073
Summary "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."--Amazon.com.
Bibliography, etc. Note Includes bibliographical references and index.
Record Appears in On-Campus Resources > Books
All Resources
Introduction : the original epidemic
Being Venus
Plump women and thin, fine men
The rise of the big black woman
Birth of the ascetic aesthetic
American beauty : the reign of the slender aesthetic
Thinness as American exceptionalism
Good health to uplift the race
Fat, revisited
Epilogue : the obesity epidemic.

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