she’s all fat anti-racist bookclub

Welcome to the She's All Fat anti-racist book club! White and non-Black-POC listeners, this one is especially for you if you'd like to be working through your internalized racism and fatphobia.

We're going to start out with Fearing the Black Body by Sabrina Strings. Each week, we'll read a chapter together as a team and a community! Sophie will include some questions and exercises both in the top of each episode of the pod, and we’ll have even more detail in the shownotes, and on this page too!

week 1 (6/11)

Your job, if you'd like to participate is simply to buy the book Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia by Sabrina Strings. Make sure to purchase from this list of Black Owned Bookstores!

week 2 (6/18)

Last week your job was to get the book from a Black owned bookstore. This week we're reading chapter one, Being Venus. So read, highlight, dog ear, & message us with your thoughts and questions!

week 3 (6/25)

We’re usually going to start each episode with some thoughts, some questions on what we learned from this week's chapter. But, since chapter one and two comprise a special Part One of the book, we'll have some more specific exercises next week after we've read chapter two and can talk about part one together.

While you're reading, please take the time to journal about what comes up for you when you're reading this work. If you're white or a non Black person of color, allow yourself the vulnerability of thinking about how your tastes and vision have been shaped by this history. If you're Black, please take care of yourself. We love you. Read chapter two (Plump Women and Thin, Fine Men) for next week.

Week 5 (7/9)

Chapter 3: The Rise of the Big Black Woman

• Chpt. Highlights from Lynn:

  • Page 67, end of the middle paragraph, “The racialized female body became legible, a form of ‘text’ from which racial superiority and inferiority were read.” Okay WOW — something to track is WHITE femininity, thinness, and morality. 

  • Page 72, end of the first paragraph, theories about race “were to be read and expanded upon by subsequent scientists and philosophers, several of whom were deeply invested in maintaining or extending the slave trade.” Folks. We have to remember that this new way of looking at “race” HAD A VESTED INTEREST in explaining away the dehumanization of enslaved people. If they could prove that Blackness was innately bad or sub-human, they could justify the slave trade. And that’s the BASIS ON WHICH RACE THEORY WAS WRITTEN!

  • Page 84, middle of the second paragraph, linking fatness and blackness “transformed the act of eating from personal to political.” This is an important chunk of text to start understanding the thesis of the book — how fatphobia was begotten by anti-black racism. 

  • Page 92, bottom of page, “the fascination with Sara’s [Sara Bartman] size [...] was simultaneously grotesque and exotic: a sexual specimen with a peculiar racial identity.” Here’s another really important idea to track: Black Female Sexuality, and how white European men defined it as excessive and grotesque. 

• Thoughts & Questions From Laila:

  • As covered in Chapter 3 of the book, French born, François Bernier “was the first person in the world to create a system of human classification based on race”. He specifically championed the racial-ization of female bodies. In modern day France, sadly (yet unsurprisingly) see the imprint he left behind. His racist ideals are still being thrust upon French women, even today. In 2016, there was a ban on "burkini’s” across the country. Stories across the country began popping up of beach-going Muslim women being harassed, publicly shamed, and fined for wearing full-length swimsuits. While this issue intersects with Islamophobia, it is also about feminism and ingrained racist ideals that value thin and white bodies.

  • In one incident taking place in Nice, a group of French policemen went as far as making a Muslim woman remove her clothing in front of fellow beach-goers. The woman was then issued a fine which read she was not wearing “an outfit respecting good morals and secularism”. Then French Prime Minister Manuel Valls stated the burkini and burqa represent the "enslavement of women". And French education Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem said, “as a feminist” she “disapproved of the burkini”. Despite the courts ruling from the state council that the burkini ban was found to be a “serious and manifestly illegal violation of fundamental freedoms”, more than 20 mayors defiantly kept in place decrees under which municipal police can stop and fine any women in full-body swimsuits at the beach.

  • It is clear that France is still perpetuating racist scientific theories created by people like François Bernier and refuse to stop projecting them onto any women that doesn’t conform to their narrow standards. I would argue against the Prime Minister’s words to say that what is actually enslaving women are oppressive and racist viewpoints such as his. And as if that wasn’t enough? France will still ban Islamic face coverings even after making COVID-19 mask wearing mandatory. This state of affairs in Franceexemplifies how the policing of non-white bodies must continue to be called out in an effort for a more nuanced dialogue and change to take place. It also clearly points out issues within France (and most of Europe’s) brand of Feminism as a whole- and especially as it upholds Islamophobic views and conflates true feminism with forcing women to remain uncovered (instead of giving women the choice). This is why intersectionality matters, folks! Our various oppressions are interlinked. How can we work on collective liberation?

  • In what ways do you see racist ideals towards Black and non-white bodies around you? Can you spot the intersectionality that underpins oppression(s)?

    • Send us your answers to these questions if you'd like to be featured!

Week 6 (7/16)

Chapter 4: Birth of the Ascetic Aesthetic

• Thoughts & exercise from Yeli:

  • There were lots of examples in this chapter of the ways that different institutions uphold fatphobia and racism. For example, the medical industry really creates a connection between food and morality. This is directly reflected in the “standards of taste” document. It was also interesting to see that the document was changed and had a “reconfiguration of aesthetic details” - it really goes to show that all this systemic fatphobia is intentionally man-made! I also saw a connection between the society at Oxford back then upholding those ideals, and how universities and colleges today are built on white supremacy. 

  • Exercise: First, journal about the ways that your industry, workplace, or media that you consume is complacent in fatphobia and white supremacy.  Then, brainstorm one concrete way that you will work to dismantle them.

• By viewing women a reflection of male wealth, status, and morality signals women's bodies don’t belong to the women who inhabit them, but rather to men. Men have expected women to contort and starve themselves for social status points, honour, and bragging rights amongst themselves in their boys clubs. The history of The Spectator and the Ugly Club are perfect examples of this toxic masculinity. The notion that women’s bodies have no inherent value and exist solely to serve the whims of men must be questioned in order for it to stop.

• Food waste as a symbol of (performative) femininity- and therefore a representation of one’s wealth or status- shouldn’t exist in our modern times. So, I urge any listeners out there to come join me on the dark side in learning how to a) divest your body from this harmful narrative and reclaim it as your own by b) de-centering men. Come in, the water is just fine! Here you can redefine femininity (or not) for yourself. Enter into this wide, wonderful world! Here is a place where you can take up all the space you want! Where we can all eat whenever our bodies ask us to! Where we can be together to, in the words of Cardi B., “fat in peace”.

• Thoughts & a Rec from Yeli: 

  • One of the things that really stood out to me about this chapter was how many writers and poets were out here being at the forefront of these fatphobic and racist movements! I never studied Ralph Waldo Emerson in university, but I know for a fact that his name is tossed around constantly. I can’t say I’m surprised that he was so vile, but it really goes to prove how much (again) learning institutions uphold white supremacy! For anybody that’s ever been in a literature major or course, or even simply in high school, you KNOW how white the course reading and theory is! The fact that Shakespeare is crammed down our throats every single year of our education, yet books written by a Black author are cornered into “multicultural studies” is absolute white supremacy! AH!!! 

  • Another thing that really stood out to be was how many WOMEN were out here propagating the ideas that fatness was immoral, and how that was tied to Blackness! It reminded me of how the birth control movement is seen in present-day as some sort of revolutionarily feminist movement from the beginning, when in reality its roots were actually racist - lots of the ways that reproductive control were marketed and justified were actually in order to minimize the amount of non-white people being brought into the world. Have you ever heard somebody say that the reason the world is overpopulated is because families in other places in the world have millions of children? Because I was TAUGHT THAT in high school, and it was only a couple of years ago that I was able to educate myself and unlearn it! Anyways, goes to show how white women have historically always been NOT intersectional.

  • Rec:If anyone wants to learn more about the rise of reproductive “rights”, there’s a really great documentary up on Youtube called “No Más Bebés.”

• Analysis & Exercise from Laila: 

  • In this chapter, we can spot so many ways the editorial world upheld fatphobia and racism. Namely, Harpers Bazaar editor Margaret Elizabeth Sangster promulgating theories of Anglo-Saxon superiority by featuring writers such as Edith Bigelow, author of “The Sorrows of Being Fat”, in which she described fatness as “the most undesirable state”. In one magazine article, Bigelow went as far as to say a fat society lady “will not be a social success unless she burnt-cork herself” and go to live in Africa where they value fat women (for those unfamiliar, the term “burnt-corking” refers to donning a form of blackface in which literal cork is burned to ash and then used as cheap blackface makeup.). If you were white and fat, you were not considered white at all as fatness was explicitly associated with Blackness and Africa. In other words, Harpers Bazaar was promoting a zero tolerance zone for fatness in America. Let us not forget, the requirement to be truly American has always been, first and foremost, to be white. 

  • Something to note was the historical exclusion of the Celts from elite white Christian life on the basis that they were not white. The writing of British Ethnologist James Cowles Pritchard purported the Celts, on the basis of their looks back then (short, tan) were Asiatic aka Arab or North African, Semitic, and therefore “African Kin”. Pritchard said “Whatever else they may be, the Semitic languages are first, African”. What truly caught me off guard was the eventual absorption of the Celts into the American mainstream during the 1880's through 1920’s better known as “racial rehabilitation”. Being finally granted white privilege meant the lens of discrimination could now be shifted from their backs onto a new target.

  • Exercise: Can you spot the pattern of colonial mentality and oppression that makes up the basis of our country? Who do you think wears the target on their backs in the present day? In 2020, who gets to be white in America? Also, can you spot examples in editorial (print and digital) that go against the grain of promoting fatphobic and racist norms?I challenge you to explore the ways you can divest your dollars from fatphobic and racist companies. Begin to intrrogate the ways in which your complicity helps contribute to the continued oppression of fat non-white bodies

• From Lynn:

  Podcast episode rec: Codeswitch: Is Beauty in the Eyes of the Colonizer? 

• From Sophie: 

  Sabrina Strings Interview on NPR!

Week 8 (7/30)

Chapter 6: Thinness As American Exceptionalism

• From Laila:

  • On “Aryan” Beauty and the Threat Of Contact Lenses” from the Gnarl 2 cluster of “A Very Large Array” (a collage poem project) by Professor Peter Schmidt, Swarthmore College

• From Lynn:

  • Listen to the School House Rock song “The Great American Melting Pot

  • In this Chpt we learned that the phrase “The Great American Melting Pot” originally referred to white Anglo Saxon Europeans immigrating to the U.S. and having babies with one another, melding together their “most attractive” (according to white supremacy) features and creating an attractive crop of white Americans.

    • Journal:

      1) Did you learn about “The Great American Melting Pot” in History class? What did your class talk about?

      2) How does School House Rock paint the idea of the melting pot? What do they focus on in this song?

      3) Is School House Rock propaganda? lol but like really is it?

      3) How did you feel reading this Chapter? I know for me, I felt both icky (about history I hadn’t learned) and repulsed (by the hoops Eugenicists were taking to qualify their anti-Black racism. Use the rest of your time to journal about what made you feel how and why!

  • From Yeli:

    • This week, Yeli is challenging fellow non-Black immigrants to journal about immigration and how the process is in relationship with racism and upholding colonization.

      • How can we as immigrants take up space in North America while acknowledging that we benefit from stolen land?

      • How do we engage in dismantling systems of oppression against Black communities?

      • How do we still benefit from these systems that also oppress us?

      • What is our responsibility to grapple with the violence that has occurred on the land we have made a home in?

Week 9 (8/6)

Chapter 7: Good Health to Uplift the Race

• From Laila

  • The modern phenomenon of vegetarianism has created an environment around the world that where some people feel it is okay to judge, morally punish, and cast guilt on the foodways of non-vegetarians, with an intolerance and ignorance that qualifies as racism- especially towards Black and indigenous peoples. We must remember large numbers of people still solely depend on what their surroundings offer, surviving as hunter-gatherers. In some areas where little or nothing grows people are often totally dependent on animals, fish, and plants both for food (and for making clothes and tools). 

WEEK 10 (8/13)

Chapter 8: Fat, Revisited

• From Laila:

  • This chapter really got me thinking about how we’re still being told being fat is a result of diet and lack of exercise, instead of acknowledging the research which tells us time and again it’s actually more-so due to social and environmental factors (and even genetic differences between races such as higher muscle mass and bone mineral density in Black women!). By keeping the emphasis on individual behaviours we blame people for their fatness, deem them irresponsible for their own health (as if thinness was a marker of good health?!) and demote them in our minds. The blatant ignoring of scientific research for the benefit of insurance companies makes me feel sad for how much self-blaming fat people put themselves through for simply existing, and especially for failing to “lose the weight”. And at what sacrifice to our mental health? At what cost to ourselves do we strive to attain a “thin” body? Isn’t our mind part of our body, and shouldn’t we value it’s health?

• From Lynn:

  • I have questions about how police and politicians excuse the murders of Black individuals by blaming “pre-existing conditions” and How medical malpractice against fat folks, especially fat Black women, is excused by framing fatness as a “pre-existing condition.” 

• From Yeli:

  • This chapter really encouraged me to question the “scientists” and authors of studies before buying in or believing in what’s being said, especially if it’s being used to cause harm. The fact that Keys was able to publish all sorts of studies legitimately and “repurpose” the BMI without any criticism at the time is absurd, given that he was open about his fatphobic beliefs. Sometimes people really love to believe that science can exist in an unbiased, completely objective manner, which is impossible because humans conducting the science are still flawed and racist/fatphobic/all the isms/phobias.

• Read the epilogue for next week.