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Black Women and Fat

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Black Women and Fat

By ALICE RANDALL

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, “[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Sdib6gd190"]Skinny Legs and All[/ame].” 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.

Alice Randall is a writer in residence at Vanderbilt University and the author of “Ada’s Rules.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/06/opinion/sunday/why-black-women-are-fat.html
 

Thot Slayer

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Chile......

119vsz9jpg.gif


wont.end.well.
 

Pressley

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WTF is this ish and why?...and hell yeah, I"m resonding because I'm bored at work. BW must be really powerful if so many spend time thinking about our damn bodies, our vaginas, and anything else that is OURS. I'm also tired of the BW who adopt some kind of false sense of superiority and enjoy putting down their sisters. I work out, I am eating as well as I can but I'm not about to look down on anyone else. Every non BW I saw yesterday at Sams was fat with a sweaty neck....where's the stats on that?
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Maxine Shaw

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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.

bµllsh!t. We all know black people don't get married. *eyeroll*
 

tokyodiva91

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I really hope that the media does not try to turn this American obesity issue into a Black women's problem. They love to blame black women for HIV/STD rates, out of wedlock children, abortion, etc. Obesity in this country is an AMERICAN problem and until all Americans see that this is a serious issue, there will never be a serious and open, honest dialogue about it.
 

Murci

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I see some of yall didn't read the article.

It's by a black woman and the reason she is writing about black women being fat is because:

a) She is black and likely has a more vested interest in our health
b) We have a higher incidence of obesity among us than the "others" do

There's not much controversial in the article, though I'd be more interested if she touched on the bµllsh!t that is the BMI and why that shouldn't be relied on so heavily as a measure of our health. We're shaped differently and those extra pounds are not always telling the whole story.
 

Pressley

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WTF does it matter what her husband does for a living? Bish Boo Bye. She's attempting to validate herself and her own unfulfilling life by dragging other BW down. She brings all this sh!t up about Joe Tex--wtf??--because since she was young she never felt worthy..and even as an old ass woman she still doesn't. Worry about the size of your own ass...some people don't need the damn Internet. It's given every fool the idea their opinion is needed.
 

Toby Flenderson

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but this is the author :bulgy-eyes:blaming your weight on your blackness. :arrogant:excuses.
randall-alice_0_1313065862.jpg


dave-chappelle-crackhead.jpg


edit: i think she's just trying to sell books. her book is about being overweight
 

Unlucky1

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BLACK WOMAN the world HATES you and your womb. What the fµck are we lab rats? They studying our asses.
 

Pressley

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No, maybe you didn't read it. I did.
Just because someone shares the same skin color and they falsely call out their own doesn't mean it comes from a good place. Stats are about as true as the person conducting them. I will NEVER believe BW are more fat than other women. They obviously don't live around my way. Every Mexican and white woman I see is fat at Walmart in particular. On the contrary I see BW at my gym and every where else looking fit and fine. There is a big problem going on here. We are not protecting our own, we are throwing our own under the bus. When I see an article constantly with the headline calling out the race of another group, maybe I'll be swayed. The attack on the BW is in full effect and the enemy will use your own to get you. FACT. Let's talk about Black men's large asses also. That's never discussed. Sexism is in full force and very prevalent in our community.

I see some of yall didn't read the article.

It's by a black woman and the reason she is writing about black women being fat is because:

a) She is black and likely has a more vested interest in our health
b) We have a higher incidence of obesity among us than the "others" do

There's not much controversial in the article, though I'd be more interested if she touched on the bµllsh!t that is the BMI and why that shouldn't be relied on so heavily as a measure of our health. We're shaped differently and those extra pounds are not always telling the whole story.
 

Fabulous Foxxx

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That was weird, idk anybody who equates having nice hips, thighs, and ass as being sloppy and over 200lbs, or who try to become obese in order to receive male attention.
 

Roxanne Ford

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I see that this article struck a nerve with quite a few people. Probably the same people who are part of the "4 out of every 5 black women is overweight or obese" statistic! Keeping your heads in the sand won't change the problem that any person can see with their own two eyes.
 

mochamajesty

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I see some of yall didn't read the article.

It's by a black woman and the reason she is writing about black women being fat is because:

a) She is black and likely has a more vested interest in our health
b) We have a higher incidence of obesity among us than the "others" do

There's not much controversial in the article, though I'd be more interested if she touched on the bµllsh!t that is the BMI and why that shouldn't be relied on so heavily as a measure of our health. We're shaped differently and those extra pounds are not always telling the whole story.

Didn't read the article - don't have time and I figured it would be full of excuses.

Black women are fat because of the same reason Whites, Hispanics, and other people are fat. We eat too much. We (Black women) may have the added problem of not wanting to work out so that we "don't sweat out our hair".

Thick and fat are different - despite what people say to feel good about themeselves.

And bµllsh!t to the bolded. What is the "whole story"? BMI is accurate except for people who carry a lot of muscle.
 

Tinky_Winky

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This is right up the alley as that article about Black women being scientifically more unattractive than white women.
 

Murci

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No, maybe you didn't read it. I did.
Just because someone shares the same skin color and they falsely call out their own doesn't mean it comes from a good place. Stats are about as true as the person conducting them. I will NEVER believe BW are more fat than other women. They obviously don't live around my way. Every Mexican and white woman I see is fat at Walmart in particular. On the contrary I see BW at my gym and every where else looking fit and fine. There is a big problem going on here. We are not protecting our own, we are throwing our own under the bus. When I see an article constantly with the headline calling out the race of another group, maybe I'll be swayed. The attack on the BW is in full effect and the enemy will use your own to get you. FACT. Let's talk about Black men's large asses also. That's never discussed. Sexism is in full force and very prevalent in our community.

Stats can be manipulated but you're assuming that these stats are incorrect based on what? Who you see at Walmart and the gym? It's possible they're wrong but where I live I see the exact opposite.

High incidences of diabetes, high cholesterol and high blood pressure seem to be the reality for black people. So yes, having read the article I see nothing controversial about a black women speaking to what goes on in her community.

As if white women don't rail about autism and anorexia (which I believe happens more often in their community)? Are they throwing their own under the bus as well? no, that would be called bringing awareness or a "hot topic". Frankly I wouldn't care if we were the least obese people on the planet. This large black woman wants to talk about HER experience. There's nothing political about that.
 

nura0008

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The title is offensive, but there is truth to it. Just as some White women have an obsession with being thin, African Amer. culture is guilty of promoting unhealthy body images as well.


In general America needs to get on top of this obesity epidemic, and its not helpful to be overly-sensitive about the topic. Too many people suffer and die due to being overweight
 

meache

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I really hope that the media does not try to turn this American obesity issue into a Black women's problem. They love to blame black women for HIV/STD rates, out of wedlock children, abortion, etc. Obesity in this country is an AMERICAN problem and until all Americans see that this is a serious issue, there will never be a serious and open, honest dialogue about it.

Here here!

Obesity is an American problem that crosses racial lines. Foreign countries usually don't have this problem, no matter what race their population is.
 

Mrs Jason Momoa

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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 is nowhere near enough food for 1 adult to eat in a day. If they eat like that everyday, I wouldn't be surprised if they're actually not losing weight.

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.
wtf
depending on your height, being 200 lbs is not being 'fat' it's 'overweight' or 'obese'
 

Pressley

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Me either because it doesn't exist. No woman really wants to be over 200 pounds. The average BW has a gorgeous shape and she wants a small waist with shapely hips.....she wants to still be in shape and keep those curves. No way are we aspiring to be sloppy and weigh over 200lbs. If we do, oh well but it's not a conscious thing to just decide, "Hey, let me eat this whole buffet so the men will like me."
Also, let me be clear, sloppy is not how I see any woman over 200. BW have way more muscle mass than other races and even if we are that weight, many times you don't know it...and we NEVER look sloppy. :arrogant:

That was weird, idk anybody who equates having nice hips, thighs, and ass as being sloppy and over 200lbs, or who try to become obese in order to receive male attention.
 

Murci

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Didn't read the article - don't have time and I figured it would be full of excuses.

Black women are fat because of the same reason Whites, Hispanics, and other people are fat. We eat too much. We (Black women) may have the added problem of not wanting to work out so that we "don't sweat out our hair".

Thick and fat are different - despite what people say to feel good about themeselves.

And bµllsh!t to the bolded. What is the "whole story"? BMI is accurate except for people who carry a lot of muscle.

bµllsh!t to that bolded because that can account for a lot of BMI misreads. Enough that a fair number of doctors dont even bother with it.

People who have more muscle mass in places that aren't obvious (like legs (not just bodybuilders like people speculate) have this issue.

Obese is pretty much obese regardless but women with large breasts (not muscle) and hips (not muscle) can often find themselves on the wrong side of the average/overweight cutoff too.

Further, BMI is supposed to be a quick read on how likely you are to put yourself at risk of prevalent health problems like heart disease. What BMI does not tell you is that depending on where you carry the weight an "overweight" person may be more at risk than an "obese" one. And on top of that there are better ways (like cholesterol or blood pressure) tests to guess at these things than BMI.
 

Murci

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Me either because it doesn't exist. No woman really wants to be over 200 pounds. The average BW has a gorgeous shape and she wants a small waist with shapely hips.....she wants to still be in shape and keep those curves. No way are we aspiring to be sloppy and weigh over 200lbs. If we do, oh well but it's not a conscious thing to just decide, "Hey, let me eat this whole buffet so the men will like me."
Also, let me be clear, sloppy is not how I see any woman over 200. BW have way more muscle mass than other races and even if we are that weight, many times you don't know it...and we NEVER look sloppy. :arrogant:

I've heard the bold was true also, which is why I called BS on the BMI.
 

Pressley

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Some of you guys really don't get it. The issue is, BW are the only women where any type of body image we may or may not have is made a NEGATIVE. White women's so called obsession is the mainstream and not seen as a negative....and I stand by, I will recant all of this, once other races are put up on negative headlines yet again about their bodies...especially by one of their own. That mess is foul and I'm convinced many Black people don't even know what they need to be offended by anymore.

The title is offensive, but there is truth to it. Just as some White women have an obsession with being thin, African Amer. culture is guilty of promoting unhealthy body images as well.


In general America needs to get on top of this obesity epidemic, and its not helpful to be overly-sensitive about the topic. Too many people suffer and die due to being overweight
 

Pressley

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xeCWM.gif



Stats can be manipulated but you're assuming that these stats are incorrect based on what? Who you see at Walmart and the gym? It's possible they're wrong but where I live I see the exact opposite.

High incidences of diabetes, high cholesterol and high blood pressure seem to be the reality for black people. So yes, having read the article I see nothing controversial about a black women speaking to what goes on in her community.

As if white women don't rail about autism and anorexia (which I believe happens more often in their community)? Are they throwing their own under the bus as well? no, that would be called bringing awareness or a "hot topic". Frankly I wouldn't care if we were the least obese people on the planet. This large black woman wants to talk about HER experience. There's nothing political about that.
 

Moionfire

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Well black women are more likely to be fat, so I have no problem with it being discussed.

However no one ever balances this out with black men are more likely to be fat compared to other races. With an article like this after 200 studies about the horrors of being a black women I can understand why this article looks like an attack on black women.
 

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