Diet Culture & White Supremacy: How Accepting Your Body is an Antiracist Endeavor
Body positivity is all the rage these days, but how much of us actually believe it? I struggle with accepting my body as is, and I bet you do, too. I often fall into the category of “If I just lost __ pounds I’d feel good about myself.” But the truth is, feeling good about myself won’t be healed by weight loss or body change. The media and white supremacy contribute to this mental process of striving for a more perfect body.
Let’s start by examining the media. Looking back, 20th century photo editors spent hours retouching images of people. Technology has expedited this process. We no longer have to spend time in the dark room to make ourselves look “perfect”. With the touch of the button, everyday people can filter away blemishes, fat, imperfections, and wrinkles. Where does this standard of “perfect” come from? This question led me to do a deep dive into the messages we receive about perfection, and how they have evolved overtime.
Throughout time, there has always been an ideal standard of beauty. In Ancient Greece (500-300 B.C.), the ideal body was plump and full figured. During the Italian Renaissance, the ideal woman body had a round stomach, full hips, voluptuous breasts, and fair skin. Fast forward to more modern times: the 1960’s where women were expected to have an “adolescent figure”, or the 1990’s, where the desired look has been referred to as “heroin chic” (WTF, for real). This look is marked by pale skin, dark circles under the eye, stringy hair and an emaciated body.
Behind these standards is perpetuation of white supremacy. In order to fully understand this, we must knowledge how culture’s expectations favor the White body. Consider the following data:
“Science has proven that Black people, on average, tend to be heavier than white people not due to anything related to culture, but rather body composition and bone density. In fact, research presented at The Endocrine Society’s 91st Annual Meeting in 2009 concluded that body fat is likely to be lower in Black individuals compared to white individuals of the same height and weight. (Another 2012 study published in the journal Obesity concluded the same thing.),” (Greenwald, 2016).
This is just one factor in the twisted truth behind diet culture. White supremacy believes the White race to be the best, and at the heart of this movement is the desire to eliminate other races. White supremacy has an ideal that we all look the same. If “thin is in”, can you see how it is discriminatory to other races, primarily Black folks? The article above goes on to say,
“Rather than coming up with less biased measurements or even recognizing the bias within the research being conducted, most doctors and health experts continue to subscribe to the notion that Black peoples’ health problems are caused by obesity — something they could easily fix with the right diet and exercise regime.”
So when smaller, whiter, bodies are preferred, we can see how anyone with a bigger body, particularly Black people, are considered to be unhealthy? This instantly gives thin people a certain privilege as they maneuver the world. And people of color are further marginalized.
I invite you to explore the following resources and continue learning about this topic. In tandem, can you practice looking at your own body (as well as other’s!) with gratitude and admiration, especially fat bodies? Can you actively work to shift your thinking, trying to battle against our societal construct that thin is best? I’m committing to doing this work, and hope you’ll join me in this process.
* * *
Resources:
The Guardian, Thinner, smoother, better: in the era of retouching, that’s what girls have to be, by Rhinnanon Lucy Cosslett
Beauty Standards: See How Body Types Change Through History, by Vanessa Van Edwards
Unpacking the Racist Roots of Fat Phobia and Diet Culture, by Morgan Greenwald