"Kiss My Fat [Black] Ass" - Tyra Banks
Welcome to This Black-Ass Life! We want to talk about anti-fatness and how it's rooted in anti-Blackness. Also, you'll learn what Tyra did with that bathing suit.
I. The Facts
Anti-fatness is a Black-ass problem.
Thinness doesn't exist without fatness because it's a concept that requires comparison.
Sabrina Strings argues enslavement and removal of Africans to Europe and the Americans necessitated the creation of whiteness distinct from Blackness which didn't just extend to race but also the formation of bodies and the association of fatness with Black femininity.
Further, behaviors associated with fatter bodies and Blackness included loving sex and food (what a miserable place to be in if you don't?!). To convey a love for things like sex and food means you are likely to be obese and lacking of self-control, existing as an antithesis of the popularized "Protestant ethic." To be a good, upstanding Christian, you had to be white, thin and show you could abstain or show restraint.
This stratification based on zero science, just racist vibes and capitalism continue today. An example is the Body Mass Index (BMI). Black people, especially Black women, tend to be healthier at heavier weights than white populations. This medical scale created for global populations as a benchmark for health was built with specific bodies in mind and led to fat stigma and poorer medical outcomes. Here is an example from Strings about how that affects COVID analysis:
“… We're looking at, effectively, a 7-percentage-point disparity between white and Black populations in terms of rates of obesity. However, when we're looking at serious complications with COVID-19, what we're seeing is that Black people are dying at rates of 2.4 to 7 times that of white populations. How that 7-percentage-point differential is leading to 2.4 to 7 times the disparity in serious complications and in death, no one's really been able to explain that. And so this is the problem with these kinds of correlative studies …”
Why does it matter?
Although the CDC considers most adult Americans overweight or obese (73.6%), America hates fat people. Anti-fatness bias is encoded in every sphere of American society: fat people can legally be fired for being fat in 49 states; the state can take fat children from their parents due to "medical neglect," fat women are more likely to be sexually assaulted; fat people are more likely to be dismissed or misdiagnosed by doctors.
Those who exist at the intersection of fatness and Blackness are in particular danger. Alton Sterling, Walter Scott, George Floyd, Michael Brown, Tony McDade and Ma'Khia Bryant are just a few of the unarmed Black people murdered by police whose size was then used to justify their state-sanctioned murder.
In reports about their deaths, both in the media and in official autopsy reports, fat Black people were treated like superhuman beasts whose large Black bodies were inherently violent or obese giants who would die of fatness anyway.
Dead or alive, fat Black people are disregarded because of their size. Remember how people treated Rachel Jeantel, who tried to bring justice for her friend in a stunning show of bravery? She was subsequently skewered online for how she spoke, her Blackness and her fatness by people who allegedly "supported the cause!" Black womanhood was put on trial in a sad, telling way.
What can my Black-ass do?
Check out this mapping of arts and texts cited in Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia.
Read The Body Is Not An Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor, an excellent guide to practicing radical self-love.
Check out this podcast episode featuring Da'Shaun Harrison on Fatphobia and Foodphobia as Anti-Blackness. And read Da'Shaun's book Belly of the Beast.
Remember that anti-fatness campaigns don't work. Not as a public policy and not as a tool to get yourself or those you love to lose weight. You can't address a so-called crisis of obesity if you ignore the systemic challenges and markers related to fatness, and you can't shame people thin. You're just harming everyone with a fear of fatness.
Work on your shit and love on yourself. One of the ways that my (Jumoke) anti-fatness shows up is in my insistence that I love all bodies and that all bodies have a right to exist, and in the same breath, talk about how dissatisfied I am with my body. I can't claim to love something in other people and then hate it in myself.
II. Other Things
Black-ass happenings
Make better fat people clothes! For Crystal’s sake!
In googling the subject line of this newsletter, I (Mitu) came across this horrifying headline: Tyra Banks Says She Hasn't Washed Her 'Kiss My Fat Ass' Swimsuit: 'It's Gonna Stay Stank.'
Meet the cast of Young, Famous & African on Netflix based in Johannesburg, South Africa. We hear it's very juicy TV, y'all.
Chlöe's album is coming.
Lizzo's Watch Out For The Big Grrrls debuts this week.
I (Jumoke) don't like Drake's cornrows!
Our Black-Ass song(s) of the week (Mitu):
For joy, try The 5th Dimension's Aquarius (Let the Sunshine In).
Things we look forward to / don't look forward to:
I (Jumoke) look forward to Mitu taking me on a date to The Read live at the Kennedy Center!
I (Mitu) look forward to my date with Jumoke and the return of Abbott Elementary.
lll. Text from a Black-Ass Parent
Any of y’all work at Meta and can help Jumoke’s mama get back to her newsfeed?
Stay Black, thrive and take a nap today. We'll hit your inbox next on April 3.