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Black women and fat
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.
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.
Another friend, a woman of color who is a tenured professor, told me that her husband, also a tenured professor and of color, begged her not to lose ?the sugar down below? when she embarked on a weight-loss program.
And it?s not only aesthetics that make black fat different. It?s politics too. To get a quick introduction to the politics of black fat, I recommend Andrea Elizabeth Shaw?s provocative book ?The Embodiment of Disobedience: Fat Black Women?s Unruly Political Bodies.? Ms. Shaw argues that the fat black woman?s body ?functions as a site of resistance to both gendered and racialized oppression.? By contextualizing fatness within the African diaspora, she invites us to notice that the fat black woman can be a rounded opposite of the fit black slave, that the fatness of black women has often functioned as both explicit political statement and active political resistance.
When the biologist Daniel Lieberman suggested in a public lecture at Harvard this past February that exercise for everyone should be mandated by law, the audience applauded, the Harvard Gazette reported. A room full of thin affluent people applauding the idea of forcing fatties, many of whom are dark, poor and exhausted, to exercise appalls me. Government mandated exercise is a vicious concept. But I get where Mr. Lieberman is coming from. The cost of too many people getting too fat is too high.
I live in Nashville. There is an ongoing rivalry between Nashville and Memphis. In black Nashville, we like to think of ourselves as the squeaky-clean brown town best known for our colleges and churches. In contrast, black Memphis is known for its music and bars and churches. We often tease the city up the road by saying that in Nashville we have a church on every corner and in Memphis they have a church and a liquor store on every corner. Only now the saying goes, there?s a church, a liquor store and a dialysis center on every corner in black Memphis.
The billions that we are spending to treat diabetes is money that we don?t have for education reform or retirement benefits, and what?s worse, it?s estimated that the total cost of America?s obesity epidemic could reach almost $1 trillion by 2030 if we keep on doing what we have been doing.
WE have to change. Black women especially. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, blacks have 51 percent higher obesity rates than whites do. We?ve got to do better. I?ve weighed more than 200 pounds. Now I weigh less. It will always be a battle.
My goal is to be the last fat black woman in my family. For me that has meant swirling exercise into my family culture, of my own free will and volition. I have my own personal program: walk eight miles a week, sleep eight hours a night and drink eight glasses of water a day.
I call on every black woman for whom it is appropriate to commit to getting under 200 pounds or to losing the 10 percent of our body weight that often results in a 50 percent reduction in diabetes risk. Sleeping better may be key, as recent research suggests that lack of sleep is a little-acknowledged culprit in obesity. But it is not just sleep, exercise and healthy foods we need to solve this problem ? we also need wisdom.
I expect obesity will be like alcoholism. People who know the problem intimately find their way out, then lead a few others. The few become millions.
Down here, that movement has begun. I hold Zumba classes in my dining room, have a treadmill in my kitchen and have organized yoga classes for women up to 300 pounds. And I?ve got a weighted exercise Hula-Hoop I call the black Cadillac. Our go-to family dinner is sliced cucumbers, salsa, spinach and scrambled egg whites with onions. Our go-to snack is peanut butter ? no added sugar or salt ? on a spoon. My quick breakfast is a roasted sweet potato, no butter, or Greek yogurt with six almonds.
That?s soul food, Nashville 2012.
I may never get small doing all of this. But I have made it much harder for the next generation, including my 24-year-old daughter, to get large.
Re: Black women and fat
Living near NOLA this is an interesting local issue. Fat is celebrated. My fat baby was "fine". He's getting it less as he thins out, but everytime it's in reference to his chunky thighs. I don't think it's exclusive to blacks down here though. There is so much black culture infused into everything that is NOLA that between that and the food here, I don't see it changing anytime soon. Oh yeah, and pathetic access to healthcare facilities regardless of your ability to pay. It's better than it was a few years ago, but really sad especially for a big city.
My Chart My Nest Bio
Interesting article. I'm very interested to see what others have to say, especially some of our southern posters.
Oh, and this?:
When the biologist Daniel Lieberman suggested in a public lecture at Harvard this past February that exercise for everyone should bemandated by law, the audience applauded
Appalling. Some people truly want to go way too far into the personal lives of others.
<a href="http://www.thenest.com/?utm_source=ticker&utm_medium=HTML&utm_campaign=tickers" title="Home D
Huh? So the white people who are fat can blame black culture for their weight? What about the midwest? Who do they get to blame? For example, Oklahoma is pretty fat, I think in the top 10 of fattest states in 2011. Last I checked the black population was fairly small there.
My Chart My Nest Bio
Maybe you should re-read your post. You attributed to the fact that there was "so much black culture infused in everything that is NOLA" that it would be hard to change. If you are attributing it to something else, then it is not coming through at all.
Pamela, while I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt that you didn't mean what it sounds like....a re-word might be in order, because it does sound just like the way cookie is portraying it.
Oh and the part where "I have yet to meet a one white woman who is worried about dropping below 200"... it was something (and still is somewhat) something that concerned me. Black men don't corner the market on men who are not attracted to delicate flowers. While I realize my H is probably in the minority, there are others like him.
You know how we do
See...this is interesting to me, as a fat black woman. I think economics/class play a role here in whether there is acceptance of great big black women, because I don't know many affluent black men who would frown upon their woman weighing less than 200 lbs. But then, I also don't know many affluent black men who would date or marry a woman that large.
In my friend circles and family, the pressure to be thin is huge (pun intended) and always has been. I can remember as a kid my mother having her teeth wired shut so that she would lose weight and she played tennis and worked out every day. As I've said before, I was on my first diet at 5. My grandma, aunts, uncles and cousins ride me hard about being "the fat one." Nobody has ever said to me, "Girl ALLLLLL the mens will be trying to get at your fat rolls."
I am also from the South.
1st bolded: Remember it's all relative. 200 looks different on 5'3" than it does on 5'10.
2nd bolded: This brought tears to my eyes.
You know how we do
OH! And my mother is always saying stuff like, "How do these big fat girls get these men?" My Grandma told my younger cousin, whose best friend is very obese, to "stop hanging out with that big girl, so you can get you a husband."
And based on conversations with my friends, they weren't raised with any messaging that "fat is good, thin is bad" either.
But maybe we're the outliers, who knows?
People dismissed the idea that someone as attractive as Lamann Rucker would fall in love with a fatty-bo-batty like Jill Scott in that Tyler Perry movie. Said it was unrealistic.
I don't see big black girls being lusted after on TV or the big screen, they are usually tiny, thin -- Meghan Goode, Halle Berry, Viveca Fox etc.
I'm not saying that we don't have a weight problem, the numbers don't lie, but I am just not sure it's because our culture says it's OK to be big as this lady is saying.
I agree with all of this. Times when I gain weight it is definitely commented on and generally not in a good way. I think there seems to be confusion between the appreciation for curves and rubber-stamping obesity. While I think there are things that encourage obesity in our community, I think most of them are lifestyle related versus a notion that people truly believe larger is better.
the bolded gets a big RIGHT ON! from me...
You know how we do
Honestly the first thing I thought of was the fact that the weight probably has more to do with finances than race.
I agree with this. IME, as a fat AA woman, there has never been attitude that being fat is the way to be. I've been on a perpetual diet since the age of 12, as have many of my heavy AA friends. We all would prefer to look like Beyonce rather than Monique. At the same time, I think there is a push to be confident in your appearance regardless of your size. I think that is often misinterpreted as a message to be confident because of your size and you get articles like this.
I don't like the part in the article that references the Lucille Clifton poem, pride in your appearance does not = a desire to be unhealthy.
I am currently overweight (and AA) and while I don't love my body at this moment, I have no problem feeling confident in my appearance. This confidence is something that others could read in a different way.
Obesity is a huge problem in the AA community and I am always pleased when the conversation is brought up.
I'm white, but I've always interpreted it this way as well. I've always really admired AA women who are large and just seem so confident in wearing clothes that show off their bodies. I've often wondered why us white women don't have that kind of confidence. Obviously there are exceptions, but it seems the norm is for AA women to be confident regardless of their size.
I've never really gotten the impression that anyone as a culture views morbid obesity as desirable.
I think it's part of the "be on top of whatever game you are in" mentality we generally have as a community. Make the best of a bad situation and all that.
agreed.
i think skinny isn't necessarily the ideal body type, but neither is fat. something more like beyonce as opposed to giselle.
exactly.
and, as was mentioned before, halle berry, megan goode, et al. are also celebrated for their looks/bodies and i wouldn't even categorize them as curvy...more like thin.
Or the body type is even less realistic and it's someone with a 20 inch waist, huge (and perky, or course) breasts, and a large firm bottom with large thighs that are free of cellulite.
ETA: Not that this body type is exclusive to the AA community (Christina Hendricks). And I say "less realistic" because that is a body that you can neither starve nor over feed yourself, nor exercise to achieve. That is just a body type that some people are lucky enough to be born with. Grumble grumble... Stupid Beyonce and Christina Hendricks... Grumble grumble grumble...
I think Cookie hit the nail on the head re: appreciation for curves and not acceptance of obesity.
I think the men in general that like curves know that it usually comes with a little extra and they dont care. Except for ol cement butt in Florida, genetics can limit where your fat distribution lies so gaining weight may be one of the only ways to increase the feminine curves. 200lbs of hourglass is not the same as 200lbs of apple shaped woman and you dont hear Sir Mix A Lot versing about bellies.
I think TV is still heavily influenced by white society standards. Hustler(and other mags celebrating curvy women) vs. Playboy may be a little more accurate when it comes down to what men really want.
I like big bellies and I cannot lie! LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL
But since you brought that up, from the Commodores' Brick House -- 36-24-36 awww what a winning hand! -- to the YingYang Twins' Dime -- cute face, little waist and a big behind -- they are all talking about curvy bodies, not great big fat ones.
Remember the controversy over LL not using the real singer in his video for Doin' It because she was fat?
Anyway, yes, Cookie hit it right on the head, when brothers say they like thick sisters, they mean the old glass Coke bottles, not plastic 2-liters.
Thread closed!!!
Also side mvther-effing eye at Black culture being the cause for obesity in NOLA. I am sure it has nothing to do with the local cuisine with everything having a heavy cream base and them frying bread is cottonseed oil and topping it with powdered sugar.
I think when we talk about "curves", the biggest difference between cultures is hips and butt. The white ideal is stick thin all over except for big breasts, while it's more desirable for black women to have bigger hips and butts. White women are not supposed to have big butts or big hips.
Lookie here lady, it's plenty of fat black women in Nashville; Memphis didn't corner the market on that one. *takes off TN rivalry hat*
I know it's been said before, but yes, there are some black men who do prefer their women "thick" - we're talking size 10-18. It's kinda a cultural thing - you need to have some curves and some butt. I being a part of the skinny, buttless band of black women, can tell you that I've certainly heard some comments about how I didn't have enough meat on my bones back in my college days.
However, now, I don't hear that as much as I once did. I know plenty of guys who don't mind if you are "thick" but at some point, they begin to worry about ole girl bouncing back after having some kids.
What I do know is that I wouldn't trade my body. When I was 115lbs dripping wet, I wanted to gain weight just so I didn't have people constantly thinking I had a dayum eating disorder. I'm a size 6/8 now and I wouldn't change it for the world.
Dude, pamela, I'm not sure what your kid's chunky thighs have to do with anything. Babies have chunky thighs and they are adorable. Ain't nobody talking about obese babies.
But back to the point, yeahno, I'm not seeing anywhere that obese black women are celebrated. Yes, black men like big butts and they cannot lie the way white men love big boobs but there's a reason Jennifer Hudson can't stop singing about her weight loss, trust.
Black woman want to be Beyonce, not Precious.
I also agree that black culture is all about working with what you've got and taking pride in it. To an outsider it might look like acceptance and even encouragement of obesity but it's not.
Also, I'm in Nitaw's camp. I don't always like my belly, especially lately but I love that I've developed an ass in the last few years.
Click me, click me!
I QUIT YOU!!!
Here's an interesting almost point-by-point rebuttal to the op-ed: http://blackgirlsguidetoweightloss.com/the-op-eds/the-nytimes-offers-reasons-why-black-women-are-fat/
?for crying out loud? good grief.
I had lots of thoughts about this op-ed, simply because I struggle with the reality that so much of women?s body issues are tied up in dating and mating, not their own health. I?m not downing those who have made that decision ? that?s not my place ? I just wonder if those women truly wind up getting what they originally wanted in the end.
I?ll explain that later. For now, on to the article.
I had to chop this up into bits and pieces. It?s so hard to read, that every time I go to paste a new paragraph, I feel like sticking my virtual finger out and saying ?B-b-but?? because it misses so much of the point.
Maybe I?ve been writing about this stuff for too long.
At any rate? the article starts out with a photo of Josephine Baker, with the caption ?Josephine Baker embodied a curvier form of the ideal Black woman.? This highlights a huge problem with a lot of Black women as it is, today: we don?t understand sizes, our bodies or ?curvy? because ?curvy,? like ?thick,? has been misappropriated so many times that it no longer has any meaningful definition.
?Curvy? simply means that you have curves. Josephine Baker ? and, by correlation, Marilyn Monroe ? does not have the same kind of curves that many Black women (hell, women period) refer to when the say ?curves? today. Josephine?s waist isn?t any larger than a 28; her hips, no larger than 40 inches. Not by a long shot. She might be curvy, but she was small. Petite women and smaller women are also afforded the ability to be curvy. Maybe if we embraced and accepted that idea, we?d stop clinging to the notion that ?curves? can only accompany a larger frame. It simply isn?t true, and I?m annoyed by the author?s attempt to use Baker?s photo to imply such.
Surely, we don?t believe that all $174 billion of that is spent on the Black community, right? I mean, we?re what ? 13% of the population? With approximately 60% of the entire Black population suffering from at least being overweight, we?re maybe 7% of the obese population. Do we really think $174 billion is being spent on us?
All I?m sayin? is that this isn?t a necessary guilt trip. We know the numbers are bad. But taking it to this comparison? there?s a reason it hasn?t been done before.
So?are we ?fat? because we want to be, or because ?our men? want us to be? Wait?there?s more:
A dancing teacher doesn?t have ?fat? thighs, she has muscular ones. You don?t have to pray for them? you have to work for them.
How many men legitimately know what 200lbs looks like on a woman? If your husband is weighing you every morning and buying you super sized burgers and fries every time you hit 201lbs, your husband might be creepy. Regardless of how handsome, ?sane,? tenured and successful he is, he is not excluded from being a scumbag.
Unless you are upwards of 5?9?, you?re going to experience problems due to your weight and the means by which you?re keeping it on, provided that it?s mostly fat. And if you aren?t experiencing them now, you may look forward to them in the future. The fact that a husband, who is supposed to want you around long enough and healthy enough for you both to live together forever, doesn?t know that and holds his wife to such a silly standard (Does he want her literally above 200lbs, or does he simply want her to maintain a curvy figure? Must her curvy figure be a 43-35-50, or would a 38-26-40 suffice?) even if it risks her health?. he?s a creeper. If your husband has the audacity to hinge the health of your marriage on you remaining a way that results in your jeopardizing your health, he?s a creeper? and you might wanna change the beneficiary on your policies. Sorry.
And really? ?the sugar down below?? The food you eat might affect how ?sweet? your ?sugar? is, but unless his ?stuff? is the size of a tree trunk, he?s not going to notice anything sexually that can?t be fixed with ? yep, you guessed it, a little hard work. Emphasis on ?hard.? Emphasis on ?work.? Separately? and together.
?but I digress.
Now, I actually ordered this book and, with any luck, will have it by Thursday. It?s a short read, but I don?t want to disparage a thesis I haven?t even read yet. However? this feels tone deaf to me. If a ?fat Black woman? is supposed to serve as a political statement against the idea of the ?fit Black slave,? where does that leave ?fat Black men?? It?s far more likely to me, at this point, that the invisibility of Blacks to predominately-white marketing teams contributed to the fact that Black women don?t get the ?message? to hyperextend themselves in the quest to be thin. Not that we passed down this idea that Black women ?need to be fat to protest against the idea that we should simply be workhorses,? because if that were the case, then we would?ve stopped being nannies, midwives, or even?ahem?portraying them on film.
I?m still gonna read the book, though.
?which is no different from Alabama, Mississippi, Virginia, Oklahoma, Texas or any other state that?s a part of the bible belt. Overlay a map of The Bible Belt?
?with a map of obesity rates?
?and then overlay that with a map of poverty in the United States.
If you wanted to refute your own point about Black women being fat ?because we want to be,? this was a great way to start.
The rest of the essay was all over the place ? apparently, according to Mrs. Randall, fat Black women are the reason the $1 trillion will go towards obesity-related illness (not, say, poor prioritizing on behalf of the government? because we sure can find trillions of dollars when it comes to the defense budget or, say, our politicians? own inflated salaries and benefits), ?sliced cucumbers, salsa, spinach and scrambled egg whites with onions? is a great ?go-to family dinner? worthy of mentioning in her essay, and mentioning the ?six? almonds she eats with her greek yogurt was also important ? but a few things stand out for me.
For starters, as the wife of a lawyer and a ?writer in residence? at Vanderbilt,I can tell you that she has access to far more money than most Blacks in America. Why? Because approximately 50% of all Black wage earners are making less than $25,000. In fact? The number of Blacks making more than $50k? I can?t even remember the number, but I?m almost certain it?s in the single digits. (And before you rattle off all the affluent and upwardly mobile Blacks you know, also think about how small those circles are and how there are still well over 32 million self-identified Blacks in America. There?s a reason you wind up seeing the same folks at the same events.) The fact that she has that money is a large part of why real, legitimate issues like ?lack of fresh produce? or ?affordability? or ?the time it takes to learn about and cook? don?t make an appearance in her op-ed. This is the contingent that merely worries about their husbands leaving them, should they lose their collective booty (or, maybe not, because if he hasn?t left her over that ?go-to dinner,? then?I?own know. He might love her more than she thinks.)
Secondly, can we briefly discuss the fact that there?s no legitimate information in this essay that we didn?t already know? Those of us who have the free time to commit to reading the NYTimes already know the dire straits the community is in when it comes to health, but was it supposed to be some epiphany that she chose to correlate ?lack of education funding? to ?fat Black women? (not, mind you, health concerns in the Black community, even though dialysis centers were mentioned)? Because we legitimately think that if the government was surprised with a windfall as a byproduct of the success of the ?no fat Black chicks? campaign, it?d spend it all on education? Chile, please.
I also don?t know how to reconcile this idea that ?our men want us fat? with the conversation we had a couple of weeks ago, discussing the fact that losing weight actually opens up your opportunities in dating, and women?s pursuit of such. It sounds much more like men trying to protect themselves from having to compete with other men for a woman?s affection?and for that to spill over into a marriage, where [ostensibly] you?re there ?til death do you part? It?s creepy.
And, lastly. I know, I know, I get it. We?re unique. We?re special. We?re Black. We?re different. But there?s not a single damn reason that applies to us that doesn?t apply to the rest of America, either. Everyone is affected by lack of knowledge. Everyone is affected by the lack of access to fresh produce and healthy meat. Everyoneeveryone is affected by issues of time and affordability. Singling us out and then applying foolish reasons that sound more like Sheena Easton songs than legitimate husbandly concerns winds up harming us all, leaving those of us with legitimate concerns rendered invisible, and severely discredits those of us who simply don?t know better. It makes us look like the ?burdens on the system? we?ve always been painted out to be, and plays right into the hands and mentalities of those who think we are lazy, shiftless, and foolish. Stop trying to separate us from the rest of society, and for goodness sakes, stop blaming Black men for our weight? because, truth be told, they?re just as overweight as we are.
Excerpted from The NYTimes Offers Reasons ?Why Black Women Are Fat? | A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss