I am certain there are folks who saw the piece as yet another attack on black women along the lines of "we can't get married, we can't do what we want with our hair and now we're fat". I have found there to be a general discomfort of discussing, in public largely white forums, about "certain" issues. I find it odd, given that a great deal of the same people have no problem with "integration" and "diversity". Did they not think that such diversity would somehow act as a cover for issues? But that's a side commentary.
The author, Alice Randall, took a look at some of the cultural "imperatives" that inform African-Americans to explain that black women aren't overweight by some happenstance (or that it is a claim of "big bones" the poorest excuse in the book. We can possibly by big muscled but big boned? No.). Rather Ms. Randall discusses the cultural imperative to "thickness".
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.As any person who listens to Hip Hop or R&B will attest to, "thick" women are very much the ideal of "urban" blackness. Sir Mix-A-Lot is probably the most well known the genre, but anyone familiar with Hip Hop knows that there are far more explicit admonitions to be thick. What is of importance is that even within African-American culture there is an aversion to "fat" by the males. However "fat" is culturally defined much differently than the mainstream. There are many women who are thick by African-American cultural standards who would be considered obese or at least well overweight in the mainstream. That said, in an effort to be more "counter-culture" with thickness (discussed later)some women who would have been considered "fat" 20 years ago are calling themselves "thick".
There is a larger issue within the mainstream that the author did not discuss: the "waif" standard pushed by many in the fashion industry. I have long said that the fashion industry needs to be examined for it's numerous homosexual males that dictate standards of female beauty. Though I have no direct proof of the matter, I believe it is them, and their desire for male bodies that has given us the white woman of no shape as the standard. Even the black women who are considered "model types" by their "boyish" standards are relatively shapeless rather than a reflection of a "black" prototype. I do not believe it to be an accident at all that these women look like made up boys. I simply cannot conceive of straight men preferring women with barely there breasts and lack of buttocks. Honestly; while I can appreciate a leggy woman, I have never understood the fashion industry's use of women with no curves to speak of to model clothes that will not drape the average woman anywhere close to what is shown on the runway. It makes no sense to me. While we are at it let us be clear most white women do have some kind of curve to them. They are simply excluded from the fashion world.
While the author discusses American references to body types we would do well to look at the cultural link that goes back to Africa. A recent report about obesity in west Africa showed that the men in Mauritania had/have a thing for large women. They reported on a man that was very proud of the fact that he needed a wheel barrow to cart his wife around. They reported on the phenomenon whereas young girls as they reach marriage age to undergo fattening sessions .
The preference originated centuries ago among the Moors, nomadic Muslims of Arabic and Berber stock who make up two-thirds of Mauritania's 3.1 million people. To the ancient Moors, a fat wife (much like fat livestock) was a symbol of a man's wealth, proof that he had enough riches to feed her generously while others perished in the drought-prone terrain.Indeed in places like Ghana and Nigeria one would note how the traditional dress of women does emphasize the curviness of women and is deemed very desirable. I have no doubt that some of these same traditions came with Africans into the new world.
At the same time we should shatter this myth that Euro-centric body image, as commonly discussed among African-Americans, were always slim and "flat". This was not the case. In Europe there was a time when "large" women (and men I suppose) were seen as a marker of high social cast not much different from it's time in Europe. If one could afford to eat the amounts that it took to become large (and the non-exerition of non-manual labor) then one would naturally become overweight. In the 1850's High status European women were known to wear corsettes and bodice's that would emphasize the breasts and the buttocks. Even in the early 1900's women were to have an "s-shape" that today are often reserved for material usually deemed "pornographic", which is interesting in and of itself.
So it's clear that within a cultural context even European "ideals" for their women have changed. Of course African-Americans being a minority group within a larger framework are subject to the same pressures and changes via mass media. That can be both good and bad. Let me touch on the slavery issue that Ms. Randall brought up via a quite because I think it was incorrectly presented:
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.
The slave trade had a definite mark on those Africans who survived the journey. Clearly those with the physical and mental capacity to survive the travel were the survival of the "fittest". In addition those who were able to deal with the insect born diseases and the climate of the cotton and tobacco plantation also acted as a culling agent for those "unfit" for duty. So we have to taken into account the unique environmental stresses that formed the African-American populations including a preference for metabolisms that can store as much energy as possible (usually as fat) and that can go without what we would consider proper hydration.
The second issue with the history of slavery is that up until the slave trade was abolished, there was no basis for looking out for a strong slave (in terms of length of life) particularly for the female. Many slaves were literally worked to death. Once the slave trade was abolished, the necessity of having slaves survive became important as a dead slave was not only lost productivity but also literally irreplaceable with new stock. Females became objects of breeding as well as work. Though I cannot say what the emphasis was but we should also take into consideration that knowing that male slave owners (and later employers) had a penchant for "tipping out" with their servants/property, having women around who were allegedly "not attractive" may have worked to the favor of the women of the homes. But that is argumentative as I'm not prepared to actually provide evidence of that. But I do believe the concept of the Mammy is also a strong theme for women who worked in close proximity with white males who may attempt sexual liaisons with or without permission
But let's suppose that the obese black body is somehow a political statement of "resistance" against the larger society. Isn't that, at this day and age immature? Would it not reek of "I'll show you even if it kills me" stupidity? Certainly the black body that was necessary to survive the plantations and the middle passage is not necessary or perhaps even desirable for survival in a largely sedentary society. br />
One of the things that goes unspoken in many quarters is the sexual harassment of women and the "don't look like a crack head or AIDS victim" mentality that is in the black community. When crack hit the scene in black communities one of the common ideas that took hold was that if you were on crack then you didn't eat and therefore got skinny. Favoring a world class marathoner would likely result in a person being assumed to be abusing drugs of some sort.
The issue of diet is also important. Indeed when Africans were involved in a high level of physical labour a high caloric intake made sense. The problem is that now in the 21st century such a diet is not only unnecessary for the vast majority of the population but is actually deadly. Simply put, old cultural habits are causing all kinds of medical issues for African-Americans. This has serious economic implications as money spent on insulin and other medications for avoidable diseases robs the next generation of wealth as well as the spending power of the diseased population.
In the end though while we should be striving to more healthy bodies we should recognize that body variability exists and exists for a reason. Not everyone is going to have the shape of a world class runner or swimmer. That fact though is not a good reason to do nothing.
