And so what they did was they decided to articulate new aspects of racial identity. “Now we have all of these people who are. Strings explains that after 200 years of white and Black people living in close proximity with one another, society could no longer use skin color to differentiate racial binaries. In order to be distinguished from Black slaves, there was a white societal push for skinniness. In an effort to further differentiate racial categories that allowed the justification of slavery, fatness became intrinsically tied to Blackness through racial stereotyping. And of course, self-control and rationality, after the Enlightenment, were characteristics that were deemed integral to Whiteness”. “They decided to re-articulate racial categories, adding new characteristics, and one of the things that the colonists believed was that Black people were… inherently obese, because they lack self-control. Slave owners believed Black populations to be more prone to obesity, and this became another justifier of oppression as white people felt superior.Īuthor and Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine, Sabrina Strings dives into this history in a recent CBS News interview. In interacting with Black slaves, stereotypes about black bodies abounded. These fatphobic sentiments were always supported by white supremacist ideals, tying all the way back to the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Magazines like Harper’s Bazaar found it “important that ate as little as was necessary in order to show their Christian nature and also their racial superiority.”

These mainstream sentiments changed in the mid-20th century when white women were pushed by popular culture to maintain skinniness. Women with curvy, “hourglass” figures, such as actress Marilyn Monroe, were more prominently spotlighted. In the early 19th century, the natural curvature of a woman's body was praised in pop culture. Take a walk with me through the history of American anti-Black and anti-fat sentiments. Oftentimes in academic settings, the actual roots of societal issues are not explored to the fullest extent of comprehension we brush over topics we see as well-known without truly understanding the depth of history that undergirds these issues. Anti-Blackness is deeply rooted in our obsession with skinniness.

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