I don’t think anyone finds it irrational for a parent to be mindful of their child’s weight, especially when this happens:

One day Bea came home from school in tears, confessing that a boy at school had called her fat. The incident crushed me, but it was a wake-up call. Being overweight is not a private struggle. Everyone can see it.

Far too many of us know what it’s like to be called that horrid word, or disparaged because of our weight. We don’t want those kinds of pains for our children. No, I genuinely don’t think there’s anything wrong with considering this a call to action.

It’s the kinds of actions taken that are the damn problem, here:

I once reproachfully deprived Bea of her dinner after learning that her observation of French Heritage Day at school involved nearly 800 calories of Brie, filet mignon, baguette, and chocolate. I stopped letting her enjoy Pizza Fridays when she admitted to adding a corn salad as a side dish one week. I dressed down a Starbucks barista when he professed ignorance of the nutrition content of the kids’ hot chocolate whose calories are listed as “120-210″ on the menu board: Well, which is it? When he couldn’t provide an answer, I dramatically grabbed the drink out of my daughter’s hands, poured it into the garbage, and stormed out.

I cringe when I recall the many times I had it out with Bea over a snack given to her by a friend’s parent or caregiver … rather than direct my irritation at the grown-up, I often derided Bea for not refusing the inappropriate snack. And there have been many awkward moments at parties, when Bea has wanted to eat, say, both cookies and cake, and I’ve engaged in a heated public discussion about why she can’t.

But why wouldn’t she? Why wouldn’t she feel justified in her fight against her daughter’s impending doom… er, fatness? Every message she’s gotten about being fat, being overweight, being unhealthy has been so convoluted and conflated with industry-promoting pitches that it’s a wonder how any women are not treating their children so poorly.

Weiss weaves a tale of bystanders noticing little Bea’s weight increasing, and showering Dara with unsolicited advice on how to manage it, a pediatrician who suggests that Weiss put her daughter on a diet – ostensibly with no suggestion of which diet, no explanation of healthy or safe parameters for said diet for a seven-year-old – and loved ones insisting that Bea eat food while Weiss leaps over tables and slides under bannisters to head the plate off at the pass. I mean, this joint is wild:

I stepped between my daughter and a bowl of salad niçoise my friend was handing her, raising my palm like a traffic cop. “Thanks, I said, “but she already ate dinner.”

“But she said she’s still hungry,” my friend replied, bewildered.

I forced a smile. “Yeah, but it’s got a lot of dressing on it, and we’re trying–”

“Just olive oil!” my friend interrupted. “It’s superhealthy!”

My smile faded and my voice grew tense. “I know. She can’t.”

My friend’s eyes moved to my daughter, whose gaze held the dish in the crosshairs: A Frisbee-sized bowl bursting with oil, tuna, eggs, potatoes, olives.

“But it’s salad!” she ventured.

“Sorry,” I said, my voice rising.

“Oh, just a little!” my friend insisted, and pushed the bowl into my daughter’s eager hands, to my undisguised frustration.

I didn’t originally write on this story at first, because I wanted to wait, sit back and see what everyone else had to say first. I watched outlet after outlet after outlet question this woman’s parenting ability, call her names, mock her for caring about her child’s weight at all… but the most peculiar of these was Jezebel. Arguably one of the most fat-acceptance spouting, anti media-imagery, presumptuously pro-woman venues on the Internet, Jezebel managed to avoid laying the blame where [at least I think] it should’ve been laid (at the feet of a culture hyper-obsessed with thinness of women right down to their adolescence), but instead curled over and took a dump on this woman! Not once, not twice, but multiple times! With the announcement that Weiss has actually potentially scored a book deal for her story, Jezebel announced it – leaving me to assume they were planning on making Weiss their personal whipping girl – with a post dripping with so much sarcasm, it left me in need of a tissue to wipe my screen after I’d finished with it.

Every day, women are beaten over the head with the “reality” that it’s not important to be smart, successful, or even a go-getter – that “go-getterism” is instantaneously stunted by use of the word “b-tch;” as in, we love hard nosed bosses, so long as they’re not women… because then, we have to call her that beloved b-word. No, no.. it’s most important for a woman’s body to look the way society thinks it should look, lest we deny her favors like… I don’t know, the same wage as her thinner counterparts?

Every message in society tells us that being fat is wrong and bad. Having a body that doesn’t look like what we think is ideal… is bad. Wrong. Unacceptable. What mother, hyper-aware of the consequences that have befallen heftier women in her community, wouldn’t fight that for her child? Especially if she knows being overweight is a struggle, considering her own body image issues:

Growing up in an affluent, achievement-driven suburb, I had suffered through my own issues with food, eating, and weight. Though the rest of my family had a seemingly healthy relationship with food, I was constantly battling weight gain and asking my mother to lock up the peanut butter jar and the omnipresent box of Entenmann’s Pecan Danish Ring. Whether I weighed in at 105 pounds or 145 pounds hardly mattered – I hated how my body looked and devoted an inordinate amount of time to trying to change it.

Over the last 30 years, I’ve been on and off weight watchers, Atkins, Slim Fast, LA Weight Loss, Jenny Craig, juice diets and raw food diets. In my teenage years, I dabbled in the occasional laxative or emetic, and once fainted at a summer program in Vermont after three days of fasting. In my 20s, I begged a doctor friend to score me the prescription appetite suppressant fen-phen even after it was found to cause heart-valve defects and pulmonary hypertension. I have not ingested any food, looked at a restaurant menu, or been sick to the point of vomiting without silently launching a complicated mental algorithm about how it will affect my weight.

[...]

Who was I to teach a little girl how to maintain a healthy weight and body image?

If this lifestyle is all you know – if thinking and living like this is all you see in terms of how people handle weight issues… do you truly think there is any other way to handle [what your pediatrician describes as] your daughter’s weight problem? If all you know is to “secretly make fun of moms who were overly concerned with the organic lineage of their kids’ meals,” while also presuming that parents with “fat kids? Well, clearly, something about their child-rearing was deficient — a form of neglect, or a failure to set limits.” I mean, really – how many options do you see?

And, before we start to talk about how relevant this is to Black girls, I’d caution anyone to remember that as more Blacks move up in social class, more of us will face these issues and will, ostensibly, be forced to address their children’s weight and eating habits. If your friend’s don’t say anything (like Weiss’ did), then your doctor will (like Weiss’ did.)

There are so many questions to ask, but so, so little time. Let me get to the point.

We create, cultivate and perpetuate the culture in America that not only says this is the way to handle your weight; not only that this is an acceptable way to manage a child’s weight and pass down sensible and healthy body image to a young girl who was called fat by her peer, but also that this woman and her methods should be cheered and given a platform in the form of a book deal. We do this. Media does this. We consume this. We perpetuate this. Weiss is not acting alone in this.

I’m not willing to crap on this woman for her response to a problem. No one bothered to tell her how dire Bea’s situation truly was (or if it was dire at all.) No one bothered to explain to her how to handle the situation without traumatizing her child. No one even bothered to help Weiss, herself, develop sensible self-image… her child was a long shot before the game even started.

Alas, there is pride in this story:

As a result of her amazing efforts over the past year, Bea showed up at her doctor’s office for her eight-year checkup sixteen pounds lighter and almost two inches taller. She is now at a healthy weight. She looks great, and she seems to take enormous pride in her appearance. Incredibly, she has not yet exhibited symptoms of intense psychological damage.”

…but what happens when the next little boy who becomes angry with Bea decides to call her fat? You’ve already taught her that one little boy calling her fat was grounds for her to go on a year-long diet… what is she going to do when the next happens? She refers to the words “fat” and “diet” as being painful, but still puts her daughter on a diet and reacts to her being called “fat” like it was World War III.

But really, what is Weiss doing that isn’t “expected?” She was praised for what she did. It’s acceptable. Rewarded with a book that will, without question, be the Tiger Mom of the diet book industry.

Gross, yes. Her fault? Not entirely.We question her parenting, but don’t dare question ourselves and what, in us as a country, makes this something worth celebrating. They sit in their Vogue portrait like proud lionesses, satisfied with themselves. It’s not a story of a young girl losing weight and fighting her environment to survive – it’s the story of a young girl who got put through the ringer because of puberty. We don’t get to find out whether, had her mother switched up her meals a bit, the young girl would’ve simply evened out – two inches makes a big difference – as she grew. We don’t find out whether or not she’s scarred because of this. As Weiss wrote, “Only time will tell whether my early intervention saved her from a life of preoccupation with her weight, or drove her to it.”

Like, wow. She’s certainly more susceptible to society’s constant bashing of women, instead of prepared for her to come out on top, that’s for sure.

Until we take a long, hard look at the messages we send to women across this country about what kinds of bodies are acceptable in certain kinds of space, we will continue to read stories and essays of how women put their children through torturous regimens and pass their ludicrous self-esteem and self-image issues onto them, and we’ll continue to point the blame elsewhere… to everyone’s detriment.

Vogue Shows Us How Not To Manage Our Children’s Weight… Or Project Our Insecurities Onto Them is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. My Re-Dedication And My Goal Tree: How Do You Manage Your Goals?
2. My Thoughts On The Vogue Italia “Plus-Sized” Cover, “Real Women,” and Body Snarking
3. Does Your Doctor’s Weight Play A Part In Their Weight Loss Advice?

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THE “fact” that junk food is cheaper than real food has become a reflexive part of how we explain why so many Americans are overweight, particularly those with lower incomes. I frequently read confident statements like, “when a bag of chips is cheaper than a head of broccoli …” or “it’s more affordable to feed a family of four at McDonald’s than to cook a healthy meal for them at home.”

This is just plain wrong. In fact it isn’t cheaper to eat highly processed food: a typical order for a family of four — for example, two Big Macs, a cheeseburger, six chicken McNuggets, two medium and two small fries, and two medium and two small sodas — costs, at the McDonald’s a hundred steps from where I write, about $28. (Judicious ordering of “Happy Meals” can reduce that to about $23 — and you get a few apple slices in addition to the fries!)

In general, despite extensive government subsidies, hyperprocessed food remains more expensive than food cooked at home. You can serve a roasted chicken with vegetables along with a simple salad and milk for about $14, and feed four or even six people. If that’s too much money, substitute a meal of rice and canned beans with bacon, green peppers and onions; it’s easily enough for four people and costs about $9. (Omitting the bacon, using dried beans, which are also lower in sodium, or substituting carrots for the peppers reduces the price further, of course.)

Another argument runs that junk food is cheaper when measured by the calorie, and that this makes fast food essential for the poor because they need cheap calories. But given that half of the people in this country (and a higher percentage of poor people) consume too many calories rather than too few, measuring food’s value by the calorie makes as much sense as measuring a drink’s value by its alcohol content. (Why not drink 95 percent neutral grain spirit, the cheapest way to get drunk?)

Besides, that argument, even if we all needed to gain weight, is not always true. A meal of real food cooked at home can easily contain more calories, most of them of the “healthy” variety. (Olive oil accounts for many of the calories in the roast chicken meal, for example.)In comparing prices of real food and junk food, I used supermarket ingredients, not the pricier organic or local food that many people would consider ideal. But food choices are not black and white; the alternative to fast food is not necessarily organic food, any more than the alternative to soda is Bordeaux.

The alternative to soda is water, and the alternative to junk food is not grass-fed beef and greens from a trendy farmers’ market, but anything other than junk food: rice, grains, pasta, beans, fresh vegetables, canned vegetables, frozen vegetables, meat, fish, poultry, dairy products, bread, peanut butter, a thousand other things cooked at home — in almost every case a far superior alternative.

“Anything that you do that’s not fast food is terrific; cooking once a week is far better than not cooking at all,” says Marion Nestle, professor of food studies at New York University and author of “What to Eat.” “It’s the same argument as exercise: more is better than less and some is a lot better than none.”

THE fact is that most people can afford real food. Even the nearly 50 million Americans who are enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly known as food stamps) receive about $5 per person per day, which is far from ideal but enough to survive. So we have to assume that money alone doesn’t guide decisions about what to eat. There are, of course, the so-called food deserts, places where it’s hard to find food: the Department of Agriculture says that more than two million Americans in low-income rural areas live 10 miles or more from a supermarket, and more than five million households without access to cars live more than a half mile from a supermarket.

Still, 93 percent of those with limited access to supermarkets do have access to vehicles, though it takes them 20 more minutes to travel to the store than the national average. And after a long day of work at one or even two jobs, 20 extra minutes — plus cooking time — must seem like an eternity.

Taking the long route to putting food on the table may not be easy, but for almost all Americans it remains a choice, and if you can drive to McDonald’s you can drive to Safeway. It’s cooking that’s the real challenge. (The real challenge is not “I’m too busy to cook.” In 2010 the average American, regardless of weekly earnings, watched no less than an hour and a half of television per day. The time is there.)

The core problem is that cooking is defined as work, and fast food is both a pleasure and a crutch. “People really are stressed out with all that they have to do, and they don’t want to cook,” says Julie Guthman, associate professor of community studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and author of the forthcoming “Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice and the Limits of Capitalism.” “Their reaction is, ‘Let me enjoy what I want to eat, and stop telling me what to do.’ And it’s one of the few things that less well-off people have: they don’t have to cook.”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I, at this point in my life, simply couldn’t afford to eat processed foods. I couldn’t see myself spending $20 on one meal – I could make a pot of seafood gumbo for less than that and still have leftovers for days – let alone one whole day of cooking.

However, I think it’s important to remember the plight of the “working poor.” I get e-mails from people who ask me what they should do, because they don’t have a working stove (or, hell, any stove at all) or they struggle with the idea of cooking at all, because they never learned. Mom or Grandmom got hit by the processed foods bug, and she only passed down how to tear open the box.

Being able to cook is a privilege. It is a privilege of knowledge – having the know-how – and a privilege of access. I’m totally with Bittman on the idea that people do, in fact, have the time and often the money, as well. People who normally talk to me about their experiences with being a part of the working poor will often e-mail me and say “these are my limitations, help me make something of them.” They don’t say “it’s not doable,” as if to really say “leave me the f— alone.” One is, at least, acknowledging the shortcomings while, at the same time, acknowledging that perhaps they’ve been unable to accomplish the task at hand because of something they haven’t considered. The other, completely closed-minded and telling you “it’s not doable?” Yeah, that’s trying to shut down the conversation so they can eat their junk food in peace.

I think it’s also important to note that, as Bittman said, food isn’t always black and white. Just like he says, there is no such thing as an “only alternative.” The only alternative to your big mac isn’t organic, grass-fed beef. (There’s also, mind you, always the option to simply not eat any meat, but I realize that this is, for some odd reason, controversial.) The only alternative to fries isn’t carrots (or apples, for that matter.) Sometimes, when I hear people talking about the cost of food, this is used as a sticking point – “no one’s got all that money for all that organic hoo-ha and vegetarian-fed diet whatever.” That’s when I’m reminded of the convenience that junk food has afforded us.

It’s easy to get used to someone else doing the heavy lifting and the work of cooking for you. (It’s especially easy to make that correlation when one of America’s oldest brands was marketed based off the idea that she WAS a slave intended to harken back to the time when SHE would’ve been making your pancakes for you.) It’s easy to get comfortable with placing an order, never leaving your car, reaching out your window and grabbing your food, driving home (eating it along the way) and then sitting down at your table and opening the little packages like individually wrapped little gifts. It’s pretty easy to get used to that kind of convenience. In a country like ours, things are supposed to become more convenient. That’s how capitalism works – people make money by making life more convenient for you. (Do you buy products that make your life more difficult? I sure don’t.)

I’m also generally annoyed by the poo-pooing of food deserts, mentioned in a passing paragraph. I have no idea how anyone could measure who, of a demographic, could possibly “have access to a car,” but I’m particularly sympathetic to the issue because I used to have to call a taxi to pick me and my daughter up from the grocery store. I had no problem walking there, but I couldn’t possibly bring me, her, and an untold number of grocery bags home safely in the beginning. I feel like someone like Bittman should know better than that, but I am also reminded of the fact that his new book, “Cooking Solves Everything,” just hit shelves (it at least hit the Apple bookstore) a few days ago. The point of this article was to sell the premise behind the book, regardless of whether or not he explicitly stated such. (You know what’s the problem? Not money or access or time. It’s that you don’t know how to cook! But Cooking Solves Everything! Let me tell you how… in my book!) He’s smart, just not entirely transparent.

That being said, I think there was an interesting response in the comments area:

The problem is structural: American food subsidies are in all the wrong places, so high-fructose corn syrup is cheap and staples like dairy or poultry are expensive. There’s also no easy way to get to the grocery store, and there aren’t nearly as many of them: in Berlin, I had a choice of 3 grocery stores in 5-10 minute walking distance and dozens in 15 minutes with public transportation. Transportation, in addition, was reasonably priced and better, also as a result of state subsidies in the right places. Here, I have 2 grocery stores that are walkable, with boring selection at triple the price, and then… nothing. The next grocery store is perhaps 30 minutes one-way, if I time the Metra properly.

Sure, Bittman can assert that a roasted chicken with vegetables can feed a family of four, maybe, for one meal–provided that one has an oven for roasting, pans for cooking vegetables, oil, a family that has time to all eat dinner at the same time, etc., but with a McDonald’s meal, all you have to do is eat once for the day and it keeps you full. That’s what he seems to be missing: there are 2000 calories in a $3 or $4 McDonald’s value meal–you would be lucky if the whole chicken meal had 2000 calories in total (then split it 4 ways).

I’m from the “repurpose the subsidies” camp, but not a single thing about a McDonalds meal is meant to “keep you full.” People eat 2,000 calories meals every day – Cheesecake Factory, TGI Friday’s, Olive Garden – and none of that “lasts all day.” Hyper-processed food, as it is lovingly referred to above, relies heavily on refined starches, fillers and flours (in other words, refined calorie bombs combined with high fat content which turns dishes into calorie bombs. (This is why people report success with “cutting carbs.” It’s usually because the dominant source of carbs in one’s diet is hyper-processed food.) A McDonalds burger bun, upon chewing, gathers quickly with the saliva into one giant wad in the mouth and goes down the throat smoothly, rarely leaving a trace behind it. It was engineered to be that way. Hyper-processed.

Besides, calories don’t work that way. Memory doesn’t work that way. Time doesn’t work that way. The body doesn’t work that way. For the average person, they’ll eat again a few hours later simply because “it’s time to eat.” Therefore, if the “problem” we’re discussing, here, is obesity, then the cause of the problem would, again, be the junk food.

I’m also very wary of conversations about America’s food habits because that initial reluctance that people have is troubling to me. If I start to rail about the trans-fat in oreos, the first person to scream out “Leave oreos alone and stop being my nanny!!!” is usually the one who spends evenings on the couch after work with… you guessed it. Oreos. Food has become a crutch, in so many ways, that people have become addicted to it in one form or another – be it the convenience it affords them in removing some responsibility from their shoulders, be it the feeling of being taken care of, or be it the fact that they may simply have an emotional eating problem – and they don’t like the threat of their crutch being pulled from under them. That’s not to say that I judge, but I definitely wince. Hearing it is like nails on a chalkboard to me.

So, if you ask me if junk food truly is cheaper, I’d have to say no… I’d just also have to acknowledge the experience, knowledge, access and privilege that allows me to say as much, while still committing my time to helping others gain the same. Junk food may be cheap, but time is not, and I don’t think we can shortchange that reality.

My Thoughts On “Is Junk Food Really Cheaper?” is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. How Junk Food Affects The Body, Part 1
2. How Junk Food Affects The Body, Part 2
3. How Junk Food Affects The Body, Part 3

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I had lots of thoughts about this op-ed, simply because I struggle with the reality that so much of women’s body issues are tied up in dating and mating, not their own health. I’m not downing those who have made that decision – that’s not my place – I just wonder if those women truly wind up getting what they originally wanted in the end.

I’ll explain that later. For now, on to the article.

I had to chop this up into bits and pieces. It’s so hard to read, that every time I go to paste a new paragraph, I feel like sticking my virtual finger out and saying “B-b-but…” because it misses so much of the point.

Maybe I’ve been writing about this stuff for too long.

At any rate… the article starts out with a photo of Josephine Baker, with the caption “Josephine Baker embodied a curvier form of the ideal Black woman.” This highlights a huge problem with a lot of Black women as it is, today: we don’t understand sizes, our bodies or “curvy” because “curvy,” like “thick,” has been misappropriated so many times that it no longer has any meaningful definition.

“Curvy” simply means that you have curves. Josephine Baker – and, by correlation, Marilyn Monroe – does not have the same kind of curves that many Black women (hell, women period) refer to when the say “curves” today. Josephine’s waist isn’t any larger than a 28; her hips, no larger than 40 inches. Not by a long shot. She might be curvy, but she was small. Petite women and smaller women are also afforded the ability to be curvy. Maybe if we embraced and accepted that idea, we’d stop clinging to the notion that “curves” can only accompany a larger frame. It simply isn’t true, and I’m annoyed by the author’s attempt to use Baker’s photo to imply such.

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.

Surely, we don’t believe that all $174 billion of that is spent on the Black community, right? I mean, we’re what – 13% of the population? With approximately 60% of the entire Black population suffering from at least being overweight, we’re maybe 7% of the entire population. Do we really think $174 billion is being spent on us?

All I’m sayin’ is that this isn’t a necessary guilt trip. We know the numbers are bad. But taking it to this comparison… there’s a reason it hasn’t been done before.

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, “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.

So…are we “fat” because we want to be, or because “our men” want us to be? Wait…there’s more:

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.

A dancing teacher doesn’t have “fat” thighs, she has muscular ones. You don’t have to pray for them… you have to work for them.

How many men legitimately know what 200lbs looks like on a woman? If your husband is weighing you every morning and buying you super sized burgers and fries every time you hit 201lbs, your husband might be creepy. Regardless of how handsome, “sane,” tenured and successful he is, he is not excluded from being a scumbag.

Unless you are upwards of 5’9″, you’re going to experience problems due to your weight and the means by which you’re keeping it on, provided that it’s mostly fat. And if you aren’t experiencing them now, you may look forward to them in the future. The fact that a husband, who is supposed to want you around long enough and healthy enough for you both to live together forever, doesn’t know that and holds his wife to such a silly standard (Does he want her literally above 200lbs, or does he simply want her to maintain a curvy figure? Must her curvy figure be a 43-35-50, or would a 38-26-40 suffice?) even if it risks her health…. he’s a creeper. If your husband has the audacity to hinge the health of your marriage on you remaining a way that results in your jeopardizing your health, he’s a creeper… and you might wanna change the beneficiary on your policies. Sorry.

And really… “the sugar down below?” The food you eat might affect how “sweet” your “sugar” is, but unless his “stuff” is the size of a tree trunk, he’s not going to notice anything sexually that can’t be fixed with – yep, you guessed it, a little hard work. Emphasis on “hard.” Emphasis on “work.” Separately… and together.

…but I digress.

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.

Now, I actually ordered this book and, with any luck, will have it by Thursday. It’s a short read, but I don’t want to disparage a thesis I haven’t even read yet. However… this feels tone deaf to me. If a “fat Black woman” is supposed to serve as a political statement against the idea of the “fit Black slave,” where does that leave “fat Black men?” It’s far more likely to me, at this point, that the invisibility of Blacks to predominately-white marketing teams contributed to the fact that Black women don’t get the “message” to hyperextend themselves in the quest to be thin. Not that we passed down this idea that Black women “need to be fat to protest against the idea that we should simply be workhorses,” because if that were the case, then we would’ve stopped being nannies, midwives, or even…ahem…portraying them on film.

I’m still gonna read the book, though.

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.

…which is no different from Alabama, Mississippi, Virginia, Oklahoma, Texas or any other state that’s a part of the bible belt. Overlay a map of The Bible Belt…

…with a map of obesity rates…

…with a map of where Blacks are living in the US…

…and then overlay that with a map of poverty in the United States.

If you wanted to refute your own point about Black women being fat “because we want to be,” this was a great way to start.

The rest of the essay was all over the place – apparently, according to Mrs. Randall, fat Black women are the reason the $1 trillion will go towards obesity-related illness (not, say, poor prioritizing on behalf of the government… because we sure can find trillions of dollars when it comes to the defense budget or, say, our politicians’ own inflated salaries and benefits), “sliced cucumbers, salsa, spinach and scrambled egg whites with onions” is a great “go-to family dinner” worthy of mentioning in her essay, and mentioning the “six” almonds she eats with her greek yogurt was also important – but a few things stand out for me.

For starters, as the wife of a lawyer and a “writer in residence” at Vanderbilt,I can tell you that she has access to far more money than most Blacks in America. Why? Because approximately 50% of all Black wage earners are making less than $25,000. In fact? The number of individual Blacks making more than $50k? I can’t even remember the number, but I’m almost certain it’s not high enough (edited to reflect). (And before you rattle off all the affluent and upwardly mobile Blacks you know, also think about how small those circles are and how there are still well over 32 million self-identified Blacks in America. There’s a reason you wind up seeing the same folks at the same events.) The fact that she has that money is a large part of why real, legitimate issues like “lack of fresh produce” or “affordability” or “the time it takes to learn about cooking and actually cook” don’t make an appearance in her op-ed. This is the contingent that merely worries about their husbands leaving them, should they lose their collective booty (or, maybe not, because if he hasn’t left her over that “go-to dinner,” then…I’own know. He might love her more than she thinks.)

Secondly, can we briefly discuss the fact that there’s no legitimate information in this essay that we didn’t already know? Those of us who have the free time to commit to reading the NYTimes already know the dire straits the community is in when it comes to health, but was it supposed to be some epiphany that she chose to correlate “lack of education funding” to “fat Black women” (not, mind you, health concerns in the Black community, even though dialysis centers were mentioned)? Because we legitimately think that if the government was surprised with a windfall as a byproduct of the success of the “no fat Black chicks” campaign, it’d spend it all on education? Chile, please.

I also don’t know how to reconcile this idea that “our men want us fat” with the conversation we had a couple of weeks ago, discussing the fact that losing weight actually opens up your opportunities in dating, and women’s pursuit of such. It sounds much more like men trying to protect themselves from having to compete with other men for a woman’s affection…and for that to spill over into a marriage, where [ostensibly] you’re there ’til death do you part? It’s creepy.

And, lastly. I know, I know, I get it. We’re unique. We’re special. We’re Black. We’re different. But there’s not a single damn reason that applies to us that doesn’t apply to the rest of America, either. Everyone is affected by lack of knowledge. Everyone is affected by the lack of access to fresh produce and healthy meat. Everyone was bitten by the processed food bug and, although poverty disproportionately affects Blacks, everyone is affected by issues of time and affordability. Singling us out and then applying foolish reasons that sound more like Sheena Easton songs than legitimate husbandly concerns winds up harming us all, leaving those of us with legitimate concerns rendered invisible, and severely discredits those of us who simply don’t know better. It makes us look like the “burdens on the system” we’ve always been painted out to be, and plays right into the hands and mentalities of those who think we are lazy, shiftless, and foolish. Stop trying to separate us from the rest of society, and for goodness sakes, stop blaming Black men for our weight… because, truth be told, they’re just as overweight as we are.

The NYTimes Offers Reasons “Why Black Women Are Fat” is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

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1. Update: “Why Black Women Are Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?”
2. CNN Op Ed: “Black Women Ugly? Says Who?” & Consequences Of The Study
3. News: Fat Black Women Have The Audacity To Think Highly Of Themselves

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No, really. I’m very confused. Let me explain.

A few weeks ago, Marie Claire published this very damning article about health bloggers (many of whom are marathon runners) who inadvertently encourage unhealthy behavior and even – gasp! – eating disorders. The irony of this is that the cover of the particular issue that carried this article featured none other than Victoria Beckham who, while I won’t assume she has an eating disorder herself, most likely serves as “thinspiration” for a lot of eating disorder sufferers who’d literally die to look like her.

So… needless to say, I pretty easily decided that Marie Claire, complete with their “Get Sexy For Your Man!!!!111!1!”/”Lose That Last 5 lbs!!!!!11!1!1!”/”Lose 7lbs In 7 Days!1!!!!!” articles, is pretty darn out of touch with health and wellness. In fact, I never really cared about Marie Claire simply because they’re one of the perpetuants of that “something is wrong with you, buy my product to fix it!” mentality that kills the self-esteem of young girls and women everywhere. It sucks. They suck.

I just… I didn’t expect them to go out of their way to prove me right… and I didn’t expect them to do it not even a month after their last total bomb on those health/wellness bloggers. They just… they stay losing.

In the article titled, “Should Fatties Get A Room? Even On TV?“, the reading audience gets the honor of sitting in on the thought process of a total fat-o-phobe who tries to rationalize her fatophobia:

The other day, my editor asked me, “Think people feel uncomfortable when they see overweight people making out on television?”

Because I can be kind of clueless — I’m not much of a TV person — I had no idea what she was talking about, so she steered me to this CNN article, about the CBS sitcom Mike & Molly. As CNN explains, “the show centers around a couple who meet at an Overeaters Anonymous group [and] has drawn complaints for its abundance of fat jokes [as well as] cries from some viewers who aren’t comfortable watching intimacy between two plus-sized actors.”

My initial response was: Hmm, being overweight is one thing — those people are downright obese! And while I think our country’s obsession with physical perfection is unhealthy, I also think it’s at least equally crazy, albeit in the other direction, to be implicitly promoting obesity! Yes, anorexia is sick, but at least some slim models are simply naturally skinny. No one who is as fat as Mike and Molly can be healthy. And obesity is costing our country far more in terms of all the related health problems we are paying for, by way of our insurance, than any other health problem, even cancer.

So anyway, yes, I think I’d be grossed out if I had to watch two characters with rolls and rolls of fat kissing each other … because I’d be grossed out if I had to watch them doing anything. To be brutally honest, even in real life, I find it aesthetically displeasing to watch a very, very fat person simply walk across a room — just like I’d find it distressing if I saw a very drunk person stumbling across a bar or a heroine addict slumping in a chair.

Now, don’t go getting the wrong impression: I have a few friends who could be called plump. I’m not some size-ist jerk. And I also know how tough it can be for truly heavy people to psych themselves up for the long process of slimming down. (For instance, the overweight maintenance guy at my gym has talked to me a little bit about how it seems worthless for him to even try working out, because he’s been heavy for as long as he can remember.)

But … I think obesity is something that most people have a ton of control over. It’s something they can change, if only they put their minds to it.

(I’m happy to give you some nutrition and fitness suggestions if you need them — but long story short, eat more fresh and unprocessed foods, read labels and avoid foods with any kind of processed sweetener in them whether it’s cane sugar or high fructose corn syrup, increase the amount of fiber you’re getting, get some kind of exercise for 30 minutes at least five times a week, and do everything you can to stand up more — even while using your computer — and walk more. I admit that there’s plenty that makes slimming down tough, but YOU CAN DO IT! Trust me. It will take some time, but you’ll also feel so good, physically and emotionally. A nutritionist or personal trainer will help — and if you can’t afford one, visit your local YMCA for some advice.)

Then again, I guess these characters are in Overeaters Anonymous. So … points for trying?

Then again, I tend to think most television shows are a kind of junk food for the mind and body. The boob tube gives us an excuse to turn off both our brains and our bodies and probably does a helluva lot to contribute to the obesity problem, over all. So … I don’t know.

What do you guys think? Fat people making out on TV — are you cool with it? Do you think I’m being an insensitive jerk?

I have several thoughts as I read this.

1. Mike & Molly, a show that I don’t watch (because, quite frankly, it’s not SVU) about a topic that I’m not interested in (even though I do watch a show about a milkshake, a meatball and a container of fries that all talk.) I don’t watch it because I don’t do sitcoms… and considering the way this society tends to treat fat people, I’m concerned about a TV show with overweight characters making self-degrading fat jokes. I don’t personally like the tone that sets for people who are overweight, and I don’t like that the only way a TV show can have overweight leads is if the topic of the show is that they’re trying to NO LONGER be overweight… as if weight is all that fat people think about. They don’t work, raise families or any of that other cute stuff that thin people do… and even if they do, apparently, people like the author don’t want to see it. For those reasons, the show is not something I’m willing to support.

2. I don’t understand how having overweight TV characters “implicitly promotes obesity.” At all. Letting TV characters reflect the population that’ll actually be watching them is a promotion of obesity? So… is the current lack of overweight TV characters supposed to serve as some element of shaming fat people for, well… being fat? “You aren’t allowed to relate to the TV characters until you lose that weight, fatty!” C’mon, son. TV, and its celebrities… should not mean nor matter this much.

3. “Yes, anorexia is sick, but at least some slim models are simply naturally skinny.” Hold this thought. I’m going to come back to this. “Yes, anorexia is sick, but…” is all you need to remember.

4. “And obesity is costing our country far more in terms of all the related health problems we are paying for, by way of our insurance, than any other health problem, even cancer.” I need people to be clear. Can I get people-who-write-for-big-publications-and-like-to-call-themselves-journalists-but-might-not-be-one-so-much to DEFINE obesity for me? Obesity is defined as “a term used to describe body weight that is much greater than what is considered healthy.” And… what health problems are related to that? The same ones that you can get at ANY weight… the same health problems you WILL get at any weight if you eat like crap. See, thin mints of America, thinking like this is what has y’all thinking you’re ok to “eat ice cream when you feel like it because you won’t gain weight.” It’s not the weight that’s the problem.. its the habits and the consequences of said habits… and one of those consequences happens to be obesity. Attaching the problems to the weight is why America is so health-stupid now, anyway.

5. “So anyway, yes, I think I’d be grossed out if I had to watch two characters with rolls and rolls of fat kissing each other … because I’d be grossed out if I had to watch them doing anything. To be brutally honest, even in real life, I find it aesthetically displeasing to watch a very, very fat person simply walk across a room — just like I’d find it distressing if I saw a very drunk person stumbling across a bar or a heroine addict slumping in a chair.”

…is then followed up by…

“Now, don’t go getting the wrong impression: I have a few friends who could be called plump. I’m not some size-ist jerk.”

Because we’re all familiar with the “I’m not racist – I have Black friends! My Nanny was Black!” mantra. Do her friends know what she truly thinks of them and how “aesthetically displeasing” they are to her while they’re so busy existing?

6. “And I also know how tough it can be for truly heavy people to psych themselves up for the long process of slimming down…But … I think obesity is something that most people have a ton of control over. It’s something they can change, if only they put their minds to it.”

Check this out. “I know how hard it is… but its really easy! Just put your minds to it!” I’m just… I just.. I don’t understand this mentality. She complains about the cost of obesity-related illness in America, but then minimizes that entire issue to fat people just “not putting their minds to it?”

As someone who’s lost over 150lbs, let me tell you something. It’s not “really easy.” It’s not something that can be solved by just “putting your mind to it,” especially when you have no idea what you need to “put your mind to” in the first place. Especially when you don’t have access to the tools necessary to help you in your journey. I’ve done everything from lifting water jugs to jogging with my daughter on my back to help me reclaim my health. I’ve battled, struggled and cried trying to uncover the mental and emotional barriers that have kept me from losing weight. To minimize everything I’ve done, everything I’ve endured and the physical and emotional struggles I’ve had to overcome down to me being able to “put my mind to it” not only insults every fat person in America… but it insults me. It doesn’t give me credit for all the shit I had to conquer in order to be who I wanted to be, and that is a fit person who doesn’t suffer from or struggle with the mental strain of society’s moronic weight stigma… as reflected in this article.

Society perpetuates the very same notion that, later on, winds up being used against itself. “We hate fat people, even though 70% of us are overweight. Yay.” Bizarre. And moronic.

7. Here comes the obligatory weight loss advice. It’s not even terrible advice.. it’s just so… predictible. And while it’s still un-all-emcompassing, it’s “the cure to your fat woes that you’ve been looking for.” I’m glad she’s smarter than 70% of America.

8. We’re not even talking about overweight TV characters at this point. We stopped talking about Mike & Molly after the first paragraph. This entire post was an excuse to rail against those of us who are not the Victoria Beckhams of the world and remind us that our presence is undesirable on the TV screen because we are, well.. who we are. It was her excuse to air out her thoughts of fat people and how they’re just “lazy” because “it’s so easy,” and all they really need to do is just “put their minds to it…” and since they haven’t done that and seen results yet (no signs of whether or not a 300lb person has already lost 150 thus far and is still losing.. all that matters is that person is still fat and should go back into their cave until they’ve lost the other 150), they’re still lazy.

9. I wanted you to remember the “Yes, anorexia is sick, but…” comment because of the following:

PS: As for near-death, I think it’s fair to say I came fairly close to dying from my own eating disorder. (cf. here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/books/chapter-going-hungry.html) And while it took me a very LONG hard time to overcome what I had (anorexia that landed me, at 69 pounds, in the hospital for four months, and eventually turned into bulimia) I worked at overcoming it a long hard time. I think part of the reason I was so strident in my post is because I’ve had an eating problem with psychological and behavioral components that involved a lot of shame and body hatred (and a desire to de-sexualize myself). And–as someone who was a compulsive overeater for a time–I think there are a lot of similarities between overeaters and anorexics, which is perhaps why I was being (admittedly) rather self-righteous. I really do apologize, again, for my insensitivity.

You know who wrote that? The author of this article. She dropped this in the comments. Her earlier “weight loss advice” didn’t even work for her… but it’s the answer to you fat people’s woes.

Someone who overcame an eating disorder dropped this steaming pile of garbage on an editor’s desk as a proposed article? Someone who was anorexic and “eventually” bulimic felt it was appropriate – and indicative of her recovery- to write an entire post railing fat people for being to lazy to “just put their minds to it,” when she admits her own psychological and behavioral components that involved a lot of shame and body hatred?

A desire to de-sexualize herself?

Are you freaking kidding me?

WTF IS THIS? Are the overweight not allowed to struggle with psychological and behavioral issues? Habituation? Issues with sexuality? Are fat people only fat because they’re fat, but those thinmints with eating disorders, ohhhhh they’ve got emotional struggles that have to be respected and considered? Do we even make allowances for, get this – overweight people with eating disorders? Or do they not exist because “obviously the disorder isn’t working?”

She apologizes, but I don’t care. My ability to pity her for her struggles is hindered by her inability to acknowledge her own struggles, herself. My ability to empathize with her on her compulsion is hindered by her inability to empathize with me and people like me – regardless of whether they look like me or not – on our compulsions. We have the same freaking problems, she just had the “luck” (luck, as society would call it, not me) of still managing to be thin in the end. I was fat. Poor me, lucky her. I suppose if it were fat that was prized, I’d have the illustrious honor of talking about how disgusting it is to see skinny people even existing. I’d like to think I’d have enough class to keep my thoughts to myself, though.

Marie Claire, you’re killing me right now. First, you go out of your way to publish an article that alludes to marathon running health bloggers as having eating disorders (and even triggering disordered eating behavior in their readers) for being so health-focused… then you follow that up with a post that, if I were a different woman, might’ve shamed me into feeling like I’d need an eating disorder. Y’know, especially since I would’ve tried the article’s “weight loss advice” and it would’ve failed… since it certainly didn’t address emotional eating, lack of access to healthy food, lack of resources to prepare said food or anything else that isn’t so glaringly obvious and “easy.” Perhaps if your readers spent their money buying carrots instead of your mag, and walking instead of visiting your site… they’d all lose weight?

Aw, if only it were that easy.

Shoutout To The Fat-O-Phobes: Marie Claire vs Fat TV Characters is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. The Fat-O-Phobes Are Showing Their Behinds Again

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 43 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: anti-fat, anti-fat society, bad advice, epic ranting, fat on TV, marie claire, maura kelly, mike and molly, obesity, society

You then immediately pour salt all over the dish, as a means of preventing yourself from eating the rest.

Is there a place for this kind of behavior?

Food destruction, vaguely, is the idea of literally rendering a plate of food inedible – by way of mustard, excessive salting, ketchup, okra snot, hot sauce, that strange silica gel stuff you find in shoe boxes or goodness knows what – so that you won’t consume the rest. This isn’t to be confused with the proper etiquette practices of placing your napkin or your silverware across your plate to notify the service that you’re finished with your meal, though.

Recently, Marie Claire spent a little time lambasting health bloggers (apparently, like myself) and questioning whether or not they encourage unhealthy habits, where food destruction was mentioned. Even though the Marie Claire article has its own large handful of problems, it did make me do a little more reading on the topic of food destruction. Not because I’m interested in destroying food now (Me? Destroy food? I’m too cheap for that.), but because I’m actually someone who can understand why someone would destroy food and as someone who has been there before, I can see it in a different light now.

One of the maligned bloggers, Heather, co-wrote the following on the topic of destroying food:

I usually put my napkin in my plate when I am done eating. Mark detests this and routinely removes the napkin from my plate.  My hunch was that he wanted the leftovers under the napkin, so I started asking him whether he wanted it before I “napkin’d” the plate. The napkin signifies that I am done, kind of like an out of sight, out of mind kind of thing. I learned that Mark perceived it as a type of food destruction; it made him feel uncomfortable for me, I think.

I am generally too cheap and too appreciative of food to destroy it, but I have (very recently) thrown away a whole batch of cookies because I could not stop going back for “just one more.” In a perfect world, I would have cookies, put away cookies,  step away from cookies, and have a nice day. [Un]fortunately, I am not perfect.

In the same post her co-blogger, Mark, countered with the following:

If you have an unbridled sensation to eat everything in sight you might consider mixing your peas and mashed potatoes once in a while. Second thought, bad example; peas and mashed potatoes are a match made for my mouth. Let’s talk battery acid and hamburger meat instead.

Utterly destroying your food (in the literal sense, not in the “you dude, you just destroyed that steak” sense) might be a practical tool for some people who have bigger problems than… well, food destruction. Putting some rocks and sand into your Lobster Bisque to save your life isn’t madness, it’s just survival of the fittest.

However, if you’re an otherwise normal person I would suggest a dab of discipline over a dash of diaper meat. Don’t destroy your food.

He said more about food destruction being “a slap in the face to the poor and starving,” but I don’t really find that relevant to food that’s already been bought and paid for… unless there’s some restaurant allowing you to return a portion of your food so that you only pay a portion of the price… and the rest goes to starving children in third world countries. It’s just a weak attempt at guilt.

After watching that series on How Junk Food Affects The Body, I have the following question: If someone has allowed themselves to enter that wash-rinse-repeat cycle of “feeling bad, knowing [insert food name] will make me feel better, pursuing and eating said food, feeling good temporarily from the high, crashing from the high, feeling bad”… what would be so wrong with actually recognizing that you are in the middle of said cycle, and breaking the cycle mid-way?

I can think back to when I first started learning just how our brains react to sugar and how the brain’s response is similar to the response to heroin. I’d always say to myself, “Aw, it won’t be so bad,” as I tested the theory out by eating some crap I had no business eating… and sure enough, if it gave me that strange “Mmmmm” feeling, if it had too many chemicals in it, or if it had a few specific characteristics (like, being made at a large franchise, big company, or chain bakery)? I felt my control slipping away. I felt my inability to keep myself from continuing to eat it… and the only thing that’d keep me from continuing my complacency in the cycle would be to toss it. Sometimes, I’d just let it meet my favorite friend, Mr. Garbage Disposal.

I question Mark’s stance because it implies some element of will power, and I know that the chemicals in most food are put there to supersede our will power. It also implies that hunger is there for a reason and, while I don’t disagree with that, I also think we sometimes confuse hunger with craving.. and psychology (and, hell, marketing) even says that something as minute as a memory can trigger a craving that, for a lot of us, can be confused with hunger. They’re simply not the same.

Then again, maybe I’m not the “otherwise normal person” he’s referring to. Interesting… considering this definition of normal – “approximately average in any psychological trait, as intelligence, personality, or emotional adjustment” – and the fact that the average American is, essentially, overweight and may be suffering from the same issue.

When I cook at home, I have will power enough to determine my appropriate portions. When I dine out, I have to interfere some secondary way – like ordering a much smaller dish, or having the server take away half of it in advance. I’ve yet to destroy food like tossing hot sauce on cheesecake, but that’s because I no longer eat cheesecake often enough for it to matter. If I were placing myself in that kind of situation regularly, I can’t say it’d be that easy. That leads me to my next point.

My experiences with having to throw away food have taught me a valuable lesson that comes from a place where my excessive cheapness intersects my desire to make smart decisions. I used to forget that the aim of the game wasn’t to be able to eat what I wanted without penalty, and just fret about burning the rest later during some hellish bout with the treadmill… it was about developing the ability to say NO to the things my brain was once addicted to. If I am facing a situation where I run the risk of having to “tamper with my food” in order to maintain my level of self-control… I stop myself before I place my order. If I find myself messing with some ingredients to make something-I-have-no-business-eating, I stop myself, take a long drink of water, relax and step away. As someone who can admit that I was truly a sugar addict, I can approach my addiction from a place of awareness… and learn from the situations where I had to render my food inedible instead of continually putting myself in the position of having to turn my plate upside down and smash the creamy goodness underneath.

Of course it tastes delicious. It wouldn’t sell if it didn’t… but I know better. I know that the stuff inside messes with my head and if it’s going to cause me an inordinate amount of guilt? It soooooo isn’t worth the hit to my self-esteem to eat it. Food – namely, food that alters my ability to control myself – is not that deep. I’m glad I can say that now.

Having said all that… is food destruction a bad thing? If it operates as a cycle of guilt, then I can absolutely see that being a problem. If it’s a part of an epiphany that says “Maybe I shouldn’t order this any more if it’s going to trigger this ravenous reaction within me,” though? It might not be so bad.

Is There Ever A Reason To Destroy Your Food? is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

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1. Another Reason To Ditch The High Fructose Corn Syrup
2. No Myths Here: Food Stamps, Food Deserts and Food Scarcity
3. Food Guilt and Food Shaming Are Not Your Friend

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 32 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: destroying your food, disordered eating, food destruction

Weight is a messy topic. It just… is. I write about it the way that I do because when I write, I’m blogging to myself. I don’t “fear” regressing back into my old habits, but writing about these topics helps me reinforce the fact that I not only understand this, but I have a record of my understanding to help me regroup should I need a “refresher.” There’s only been one time that I’ve written a post and regretted it, because I didn’t write it the way I’d want someone to have said it to me.

There’s a weird dichotomy going on, here, though. People often struggle to not say what their “real” thoughts are about overweight people, but the things they actually do say often still lack compassion. It’s not a matter of “babying” someone, but it is a matter of being mindful of their feelings. People generally don’t use compassion or sensitivity when dealing with overweight people – how many of us have stories of being told we’re going to be some variation of “big as a house” for eating something? – because they think that’s going to help compel us to lose weight. That’s not to say that it’d be better to dangle the metaphorical carrot in someone’s face – “Don’t you want to get a man, girl? Lose that weight! Come on! Hup! Two! Three! Four!” – but that is to say that the appropriate conversations aren’t being had.

There are, however, a few things I’d noticed in all of the comments I’ve received on that post thus far:

1) People feel some kinda way about the prejudices they hold against overweight people… and they should. If I see an overweight person in the gym, they could’ve just started their journey today or three months or three years ago. They could’ve lost one pound or one hundred eleven pounds thus far. If I look at you today and see an overweight person, what you look like today says nothing of your ability to “control yourself,” especially if you being 260lbs today means you are happy because you’ve lost 65lbs thus far and intend to keep going.

The number of people in those comments protesting my comment about “not wanting to date a fat person” was bizarre to me, because you could’ve looked at me one day and saw a 230lb brick house who had impeccable control… impeccable control that dropped me down 100lbs from that point. In short, judging my 230lb frame can’t tell you anything about how far along I am on my journey, or whether or not I’m even on a journey. You’d need to – gasp – get to know me to learn otherwise. You should feel some kind of way about the fact that your pre-conceived notions prevent you from that.

And, to make it clear, if you think that means I feel some kind of way about the fact that people judge me, I don’t. People judge me every day. I’m also not hurting for friends.

2) If you’ve been overweight your entire post-adolescent life, you have no idea just how prejudiced people are towards you. You’d never think that your weight being considered so unsightly would change the kind of service you receive at a restaurant, but it does. You’d never think your weight would play a role in how people treat you at the gym, but it can. (You’d never think that’s the reason why you’re encouraged to spend so much time in the cardio section instead of the weights, either, but it’s highly likely that it plays a role.) You’d never think those soft snickers are due to someone having the balls to crack jokes about you within faint earshot but not having balls big enough to say it loud enough to get stomped out for it. There are lots of things that our minds black out, choose to not focus on or simply allow us to ignore because focusing on it would be too painful. It’s the same kind of pain that leads to the desperation people feel in wanting to lose weight so badly that they take the eating disorder route. (Want to know why there are so many stories about the increased prevalence of eating disorders in Black women? Start here.)

3) People like to act like we all haven’t seen at least ONE episode of Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Stop playing.

Aside from the fact that I don’t write about overweight men because I’ve never been one, let’s stop fronting like overweight men aren’t out here winning in the media every single day. Biggie was stealing your girl and offering her cheap juice and scrambled eggs, while your fit ass was turning around to order a bottle of cab at the club. Uncle Phil had a dream house, the ill job (and paycheck) and a beautiful wife with a great figure after having three children.

Homer Simpson got fired, rehired, blew his last money at a dog race and brought home a mutt instead of a paycheck on Christmas, almost cheated on Marge several times, is of questionable intelligence and hygiene… and still has a wife that is decidedly slimmer than the other women in her neighborhood – compare Marge to, say, Mrs. Lovejoy. I’ll wait – who still loves him unconditionally and has a great figure after three children. Should she? Of course. She’s his wife. Find me a TV wife who can say the same about her husband.

Family Guy. Another bumbling idiot who still manages to have a “gorgeous” wife with a great figure after three children.

According To Jim. The George Lopez Show. King of Queens. C’mon, man.

Are women out here being society’s definition of unattractive and still “winning” like this?

So, no, fat men don’t need to be discussed here. The media has y’all covered.

4) People genuinely underestimate the meaning of the phrase “lifestyle change.” That means, yes, who you date will be affected by and changed by your efforts to make fitness a part of your life forever. Are you going to bust your ass to lose 50lbs, only to date and marry a man who whines about how much time you spend working out? Or are you going to accept that you need to include “likes to work out” or “enjoys being active and adventurous” on your list of priorities? Here’s a secret: most people don’t have a problem with being more active especially if it means these are your dates. Most people have simply never committed to being more active on a regular basis and would welcome and meet the challenge of keeping up with a more active partner. My fiancé isn’t The Rock, but he doesn’t bristle at the thought of packing up the dogs and the jogging stroller and setting out for a few miles on his day off, and our idea of a “date night” is… the gym. This brings me to my next point…

5) People genuinely get a kick out of oversimplifying weight and weight loss. If you put weight on, it’s because you’re a slacker/a lazy bum/an emotional wreck. There are well over 1,000 posts on this blog. They’re certainly not all about “eat less; move more.” Weight, our bodies, our minds, our lives… they’re far more complex than a four-word edict that is touted as the end all be all to our body woes.

6) People lie to critique other people’s reasons for doing things… myself included. I had to think long and hard about Crunk’s post because, to be honest, I was taken aback by it. Of all the reasons to want to lose weight, why that one? But the reality is, we’re all compelled to lose weight for any number of reasons, and no one is in anyone else’s shoes 24 hours of the day, 7 days of the week. I remember all those nights I wound up wasted at the club because I spent the night hugging the bar instead of being asked to dance. It’s a big part of the reason I eventually just stopped going to the club – my ego as well as both my wallet and my liver were taking a beating.

Maybe that’s the thing that brings you to your “come to fitness” moment. Maybe it’s the fact that you can’t be the kind of couture-touting diva that you fantasize about unless you get down to a good size 8. Maybe you hate that you can’t walk down – not up, down – a few stairs without feeling winded.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that judging what brings people to their “come to fitness moment” isn’t fruitful. All you can hope for is that they do what they’re doing in a way that promotes both mental and physical health, hope it brings them happiness and hope that they experience success from their efforts.

Lastly. And this is, quite possibly, the most frustrating of them all.

7) People like to sweep under the rug the fact that these generalizations exist about overweight people… while still benefiting from the fact that they exist.

I find that mad disingenuous. I didn’t attack the reality that people have preferences. I attacked the fact that society has prejudices and they influence what we find attractive, desirable and acceptable. Taken from a comment I left on the post:

What if I brought up the salary gap in white collar companies between the thin and the not-thin? What if Crunk was saying that she believed her income was being adversely affected by her weight, so she was going to lose? We’d all be like “Hey, do what you’ve got to do to get that money, but damn if it doesn’t suck that this is the reason why you have to do it.” THEN, this blog post would be all about the things you learn about how people’s perceptions of the overweight affect the salary they offer them, or whether or not they’re offered a salary at all…and if you DO lose weight and find out just how much money you were missing out on, you might be so crushed that you decide to work someplace else, instead. This isn’t a man-hating diatribe. This is “Hey girl, hey…this is how it is and you might not’ve known that before, but understand that your weight may matter far more to others than it does for you… and, even if you DO change it, it might not yield the desired results.”

My weight today tells you just as little about my ability to control myself (you don’t know whether my weight is coming up or down) as it does about my ability to do my white collar job. Appearances matter…and they apparently matter less for the men than they do the women. That’s why this is a feminist issue.

And, on that note, I have a date with my yoga mat.

Size Politics: Dating, Salaries, And Friendships is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. The Politics Of Safety For Women
2. “Dating While Fat And Feminist,” And The Nasty Things You Learn About People After You Lose Weight
3. Big Love: Dating While Losing Weight

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: dating, employment, friends, friendships, lifestyle changes, men, money, relationships, sex, weight

An OBVIOUS product of the photoshop diet. Do not be fooled!

I keep on looking at the fitness-related commercials, and I pay close attention to the “before” and “after” shots. Those are usually the most telling in regards to who they’re trying to target as well as what they want their target market to believe their product can create.

For example – the “before” and “after” shots for “a successful nutrition program that you have to purchase over the phone” might look like “a frumpy middle-aged woman” as the before, and a bikini competition model as the after. Like, it’s clearly a body that I can personally see came from extremely hard work. Do they really expect me to believe that all those muscles came from “a properly balanced diet” that, more often than not, consists of extremely processed foods? Please.

Or… let’s talk about the time frames on those photos. “I lost 20lbs in 6 weeks!” which, to me, more often looks like “I lost 50lbs on The Photoshop Diet!” because those photos were a product of some very creative airbrushing, not very hard work. And sure, they’ll have the disclaimer of “Results were a product of proper exercise and nutrition… plus our product!” Well, get outta town. Really?! I wouldn’t have guessed.

…and about those disclaimers. Regardless of whether or not they say “results may vary” or “results created with proper exercise and diet” or even “results are a product of fat-sucking aliens and drinking cyanide,” it doesn’t ever matter.. does it? All we see is “OMG LOOK AT WHAT SHE DID AND SHE USED THIS PRODUCT? OMG MUST HAVE!”

My questions, really, are about how we perceive the marketing meant to show us what “successful weight loss” looks like. I have my theories, but I’m much more interested in what you have to say. Is a successful weight loss story a matter of “appearance?” Does a success story have a certain look? Is it a mental thing that can’t be seen (and if so, why is that never in the marketing?) Is there a time frame applied – as in, they have to have kept the weight off for x amount of days/weeks/months/years – before we can consider someone a success story? Do we only consider it a success story if they achieved the weight loss through certain means (or rather, do we adequately consider how they might’ve truly lost the weight?)

P.S.: I’m talking about the success stories that we see on TV – commercials, infomercials, and even weight loss TV shows. Not blogs or bloggers – that means not me, either!

What Does A Success Story Look Like To You? is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. The Story Of Bottled Water
2. Understanding Calorie Counting: Preparing Yourself For Success
3. The Anatomy of A Diet: Why They Work, and Why The Success Never Lasts

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Post tags: mentality, success story

flickr: marcopako

With the help of Jackie Fowler, who has a “supplemental nutrition card” or Oregon Trail Card, Fox 12 visited an in-store Starbucks within a Safeway in the town of Salem. Fowler purchased a tall Frappuccino and a slice of pumpkin bread — and paid for both using her Oregon Trail card.”It’s crazy,” Fowler told Fox 12, showing off the receipt for $5.25.

“They’re overpriced as it is,” said Fowler of the specialty drink. “That’s money that somebody could be eating with — a loaf of bread, a gallon of milk.” Fowler, who made the purchase only for the purpose of Fox 12′s story, says she thinks it’s a huge misuse of the food assistance program.

A spokesman for Safeway told Fox 12 the store recently made the change as an added convenience to customers.

“We think that compliance with state laws is something we can easily do,” Dan Floyd told Fox 12.

According to federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) guidelines, people cannot buy foods that will be eaten in the store or hot foods. However, luxury items that are allowed include soft drinks, candy, cookies, ice cream, even bakery cakes and energy drinks that have a nutrition facts label.

First, let’s be clear, here, on a few things. There are currently around 46 million people on food stamps, at the last numbers I saw from this summer. There are somewhere around 39 million Black people in this country. Even if every single Black person in America – yes, even those lovely 1%ers – were on food stamps, there’d still be 6 million more people for which we’d need to account. I say this for a very specific reason.

With unemployment at 8.6 percent, that means that approximately 13.3 million people who are eligible for employment are, in fact, unemployed. If only 13 million people in this country are unemployed, yet 46 million people are on food stamps, I think it’s safe to say there may be a few income-generating, tax-paying employees of somebody’s company in that 46 mill. The recipients of SNAP benefits are not, in fact, all some form of unemployed leech. There’s a reason why I start off with this, as well.

Let’s talk logistics, briefly. When I lived in Miami Beach, I didn’t see Starbucks in the area where I lived. There was one single Starbucks north of Lincoln Mall (16th; numbers go up the further north you go), and that was on 45th. Beyond that? Nada. (I even checked Google Maps because I genuinely can’t remember any. If you care, you can see for yourself.)  Hell, you look at any area in central Miami-proper – Little Havana, Little Haiti, take your pick – know what you see? You certainly don’t see Starbucks. That’s not coincidence. That’s strategy.

Starbucks, much like Whole Foods, is strategic with where they’re putting their establishments. They’re not going to put a Starbucks in, say, inner inner city Brooklyn, where people can get coffee for $0.75 a pop and couldn’t care less whether or not you get whipped cream or a caramel frappiato (I wouldn’t know what it’s called; I’ve never ordered from one.) Even I could see how that’d be a bad business move. You don’t put businesses who charge luxury prices for every day items in places where people have a difficult time affording the necessities of life. Not because it’s “wrong” morally to charge what you want, but simply because when forced to choose, it’s highly likely that your business is the one that’d lose.

But wait… there’s more.

The people who want to conflate this kind of spending with “buying luxury items like properly raised meats and cheeses,” can stop. Any moment now. I defend the “food stamps at whole foods” crowd because properly raised foods should never be considered a “luxury” in a country proudly billing itself as the richest in the world. Any person who looks at their budget and genuinely finds that they, after having already seen that they qualify for assistance, have a difficult time affording food, should consider applying… and I’m serious. The fact that our fruits and vegetables are grown the way they are – farm labor resembling indentured servitude; meat having to be cleaned with ammonia just to make sure you don’t get too much e.coli in your purchase; pesticides; chemicals, fake flavorings and fillers – is what results in our adulterated food supply. It is not food. It is “food facsimiles” or even “edible foodlike substances,” and a person who wants to eat the way they are supposed to shouldn’t be chastised for such simply because you struggle with justifying spending the money on you and yours. We are in a bad way, as a country, if we can look people in the eye and tell them actual food is a “luxury” and if they don’t like it, they should “have a coke and a smile.” Ridiculous.

Here… is my point, in all its glory. Even though I defend, adamantly, the “food stamps at whole foods” users, this annoys the hell out of me. Not because a mocha choca latta yaya is as “non-essential” or “non-vital” as it gets, but because of the negativity it casts on both food stamp users and Black women. You know what I mean. Because of Reagan, we constantly see food stamp recipients as poor, black, female, unmarried, single parent, whatever. Maybe it’s because I’ve never ordered from a Starbucks, but… this isn’t an inner-inner-city phenom, if you ask me. I’m pretty grossed out by this altogether. However, I feel like this affects college students or “starving artist” types, both of which by and large do not fit the stereotype that President Reagan left us with when he referred to the “welfare queen.” When we think of “food stamps,” we think of “poor people.” When we think of poor people, we think of Black people. And, even though this country (and its wealth) was built on our backs, we’re considered lazy freeloaders by way of our gene pool. Journalistic efforts like this are merely used to further the stereotype. “‘Mack-eye-ah-toes‘ on the taxpayer dime?” Why, how dare you?

I also can’t say that a single person who has read this story, pictured a “starving artist” or a “college student” in line at Starbucks – the ones I suspect would most benefit from this knowledge – holding out their EBT card and asking for pumpkin bread. Instead, they probably saw some Black chick with fresh finger waves and a baby on her hip, holding a EBT card in the hand holding her baby and a brand new iPhone 4s in the other, yelling out “Can I get one of those frah-pah-key-know things?” and telling’ her child, “Shut up, Lil LaNayNay, I’m tryna get my drink on!”

And that, right there, is what annoys me about this the most of all.

Every time I see an “investigative” report about SNAP/food stamps, it’s painted as “look at what these [assumedly Black, always Black] freeloaders [because freeloaders have to be Black, amirite?] are doing? See why we need to change this?” All due respect to those of you who give enough of a damn to do this kind of reporting, but are you bothering to ask why a person can get a coffee for $3, and it’s still cheaper than a full head of fresh broccoli? Are you bothering to ask why our government can subsidize the creation of most of the garbage in this country that’s making us sick, but not subsidize the grocery stores to allow them to sell produce to SNAP recipients at discounted rates? Is that worthy of coverage, or would you rather exploit the weaknesses of the [working] poor, because no one is going to defend them? Would you simply rather highlight “omg, it’s possible to shop at Starbucks with taxpayer money” because it’s not interesting enough to prove that the more egregious fiscal faux-pas are happening far higher up the pay scale? Or maybe because you don’t want to remind the “middle class” just how “lower” they truly are?

Listen. I’m all up for some journalistic muckraking. I’m even up for “picking on” the government. I’m not, however, down with beating up on poor people because there’s a loophole that most of them don’t even have access to in order to take advantage of it. It reeks of “slow news day.” Do your job and cover something more interesting. Start with this. Go.

Who’s Buying Starbucks With Food Stamps? is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. No Myths Here: Food Stamps, Food Deserts and Food Scarcity
2. Does Your State Allow Fast Food Purchases On Food Stamps?
3. Clean and Healthy Eating on Food Stamps

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Post tags:

Victim blaming. The idea that a victim has culpability in being victimized. Hold on to that definition for a minute.

We’d been sitting on the phone for a little over an hour, at this point. I laid sprawled out across my bed, nail file in hand, beaten-up cell phone attached to my face, listening to him talk. I’m not entirely sure what I thought he might be doing on the other end of the phone, but I remember the point where I legitimately stopped “half-listening” and had to sit up, anxiety overpowering my obsessive desire for perfectly straight nails.

“I mean, it’s hard to say it, but I’ve been raped before.”

“Wait, what?” There was a long pause before I could finish. “What happened?”

Apparently, as a basketball player in school, he went home with one of his team mates to spend the night at his house instead of going home. That night, sleeping on the couch, he woke up to find a woman – his friend’s mother – on top of him, taking advantage of the fact that he’d developed an erection in his sleep. He was terrified, confused, and – I could tell – crushed: this was his “first time.”

He never told his mother. She’d never understand. Men don’t get raped. Men do the raping, right? She’d simply tell him to never speak of it again… so he figured he’d get a jump start on that and not speak on it at all. This left him with countless misunderstanding about masculinity, his place in society, and whether or not he should trust his own body. It led him to misunderstand what “signals” are and what part of himself allowed this to happen.

He was a kid who got a hard-on in his sleep. That’s it.

As I recall this unfortunate story, I sit here, right now, with my jaw completely and totally in my hands. I am dumbfounded.

Across my screen flew this link, and I immediately felt anxiety all across my chest, my arms and down my spine.

A few…quotes… of… interest:

It seems as if the considerable push back again victim-blaming has pushed all the way past prudence and levelheadedness, making anyone who suggests that “women can actually be taught how to behave too” insensitive or a “rape enabler.”

…as the article continues, and lines such as “Consent can be withdrawn by the words “no “or “stop” and in many states, a woman doesn’t have to say no at all. Consumption of alcohol can prevent a woman from being able to legally offer consent” begin to seep in, the tone seems to shift from “men need to take full responsibility for their actions” to “men need to take full responsibility for their actions…and women have carte blance to act as recklessly and stupidly around men as possible without any trace of accountability.” and I just can’t agree anymore.

Sparkling little beauties, those quotes.

I look at those quotes, and I am astounded by the naivete they display.

People far more eloquent than myself have commented on the foolishness of telling victims (and potential victims) that they have some culpability in their ability to be victimized. I’d be a fool to re-mow that neatly manicured lawn.

However, I think we need to fully understand what the world looks like in a space where it is acceptable to tell people that they can protect themselves from being raped. It’s easy to talk about the immediate consequences of a society that thinks that women invite attack by “dressing like sluts” or by “drinking too much” (and yes, I am saying “women” on purpose, despite the story above) and how wrong-headed that thinking is, but what does the world look like when you are told to live in constant fear of being victimized?

You know what it looks like? It looks like young girls, suffering from the advances of grown men who should know and be encouraged to do better, who carry their books across their chest because their breasts attract too much attention. It looks like Mothers of young girls, buying their pre-teen and teenaged daughters giant sweaters to wear to try to hide their breasts, because they “know the boys will stare.” And, right now, as someone says, “Of course they will stare!” I have to wonder – do we even bother to tell our boys (and, hell, grown men, too) how wrong that is? That no, it is not simply “hormones” and “natural urges” to gawk at and objectify a young girl because she’s got a large rack?

A victim-blaming world looks a lot like Mothers calling their daughters (or someone else’s daughter) “fast” for attracting too much male attention, instead of wondering about, asking, or checking the men lavishing attention upon her (particularly when it appears that the male in question is hella old.) I remember hearing “Mmmmmm, she fasssssss…” all the time, but not once can I recall hearing anything similar for men. Also worth noting, Google apparently doesn’t know the male equivalent of “fass.” Neither do I… and I’m pretty sure you don’t either.

A victim blaming world looks like women who disconnect from their bodies – caring for them and appreciating them – because they are going out of their way to discourage rape. You know, because they have to do what they can to assume responsibility for rape, right? A victim blaming world looks like a place here young girls are discouraged from learning about their bodies because if they actually started to love and appreciate the things about them that signal their femininity – curves, for example – then it’d be their fault that they attract attention and, eventually and potentially, rape. It’d be their fault. You know, for dressing like sluts.

A victim blaming world looks like the women who participated in this post, who thought that they were raped because they were just “too damn sexy” for a rapist to even bother to ask whether or not she deemed him worthy enough to receive her body. It looks like women who do not and may never understand that rape isn’t about you being “too sexy for a rapist to wait for your consent;” it looks like women who will never understand that this violent, reprehensible crime wasn’t about them as people, individuals, human beings at all.

A victim blaming world looks like a space where women believe that the reason they were raped was because they were too attractive and, therefore, must remedy this situation by making themselves unattractive. Throwing away makeup, no more high heels, no more fancy dresses, and no more svelte figure. (We can talk, all day, about what’s wrong with society thinking these are what make a woman attractive, but it doesn’t change the fact that this is what society thinks is attractive.) It is a space where women “make themselves ugly” by “making themselves fat.” It is a space where women cope with that fear (of it happening again) and that shame (because, you know, they have to take responsibility for their rape, too) by eating with their emotions. Except… fat women can be victimized, too.

A victim blaming society looks like a space where women, taught to perpetually fear assault, don’t know how to respond to men who say “Damn, boo, can I get that?” or the man who says “Good afternoon! How you doin’, miss?” In a victim-blaming society, every man is Schroedinger’s Rapist – every man is a potential rapist, and I have to treat you as such. A victim-blaming society also is the space where the victim is also chastised for being an angry and bitter Black woman for not speaking to said potential rapists. We are expected to swallow our fear and efforts to protect our vulnerability so that we can speak to you, potential rapist, because how dare we not respond to you?

A victim blaming world looks like a place where men can be victimized, and because we’re so used to women being the victim… we don’t know what the hell to do with male victims. Do we… tell him it was his fault? Do we… give him the screw face and tell him he should’ve gone home? Do we… question his manhood for being overpowered by a woman? (Remember, we tell men don’t hit women.) Or do we high five him and tell him “Dude, old chicks are the BEST first time! I had one my first time, too!” And, do they never understand that this, too, counts as rape?

A victim blaming world looks a lot like a child-ass curfew for a grown ass woman. Because she’s not supposed to be out after dark anyway.

A victim blaming world looks a whole hell of a lot like women who intentionally avoid alleys, construction sites, overpopulated street corners, large groups of men and certain stores because they are notorious for catcalling and street dominance. We don’t say “Hey, guys, you don’t show your masculinity by publicly dominating and embarrassing a woman.” We tell women “Dress in a manner wholly unacceptable to you to avoid being raped.” Because, of course, they have responsibility in this, too.

I said this a long time ago, and I’m saying it again – not only is rape about a rapist having control, but victim blaming is about controlling the female population: what better way to cajole women into standards of purity, decency, “learning how to behave” and sobriety than dangle the threat of “Well, if you don’t, you’ll surely invite rape upon yourselves?” What better way to get “these hoes” and “these broads” to understand that they don’t “know how to behave” than to help drive home the point that rape happens because women do bad things? Better yet, bad things happen to women who aren’t perfect, or at least striving to be. And who defines that “perfect?” Certainly not women.

That’s what “rape responsibility” and “victim blaming” look like – each phrase looks like another way to tell women that they can have the very essence of their humanity, femininity and womanliness taken advantage of if they don’t adhere to society’s standards. The message cant simply be that we need to lay the blame at the foot at potential rapists to take control of and responsibility for themselves and stop raping, no… it’s “you do things that invite rape… like leaving your house.” You aren’t an “acceptable” rape victim if you a) weren’t chaste before the attack; b) wore anything above the knee; c) wore anything form fitting (mind you, all three of these are marks of whoredom); d) were out past your grown ass woman society-imposed curfew (only whores are out after dark); e) had on red nail polish or red lipstick (only whores do that, of course); f) do anything that requires you to leave your house unaccompanied by a man (you lesbians? y’all are out of luck, here); g) are an actual prostitute (they’re whores for a living… of course they deserve to be raped.)

Think about how many women you know who break those rules on the daily. Now, think about the fact that, of the few rapes that are actually reported, only 20% of those actually end in conviction. While that may speak to the theory that many acts that are reported aren’t actual rape and the jury was simply effective in figuring that out, that kind of fail rate also means that more than a few actual rapists are walking these streets with us… and therein lies the rub.

When will we ever see advertising, blog posts, books and TV specials telling men how to be men? How to treat women with respect – yes, even when they show little respect for themselves (whatever that means), we should still feel called on to respect them – and how to value sex that consists of two people who are sober, able and capable of feeling and expressing not only passion… but consent? How to take no for an answer? How to appreciate but not objectify? How to safely approach a woman you’re interested in without being creepy, being obnoxious or making her feel like she needs to break into a full on jog to get away from you? When will the media ever set its sights on telling men how to be men for men’s sake, instead of telling Black women to be what men want them to be… because the height of Black womanhood is “finally getting a man?”

We’re won’t. We will, however, see perpetuation of the “there are no Good Black Men” myth. Women will desperately seek out one of the remaining twelve Good Black Men, jumping through various hoops and contorting themselves like Cirque du Soleil acrobats (or Magic City strippers, take your pick) to be deemed worthy. Other women will snag whatever raggedy man they “can get,” ignoring his faults because they have fallen for the “get a man” mentality: they believe that “the worst thing a Black woman can be is alone.”

And that’s why I know things won’t change. After hundreds of comments, the original author of the post didn’t take it upon himself to apologize for throwing grenades and smiling at the damage (I’m sorry, but bringing up potential server costs and popularity – Facebook likes, son? – is not only tres gauche but tacky as every available f-ck.) Instead, he apologized for “being so flippant.” His male privilege flew out of his zipper, and he’s sorry that you’re offended by the sight of it, but at least you get to see how big it is. Stop playing… ’cause I’m still not impressed.

A victim blaming world looks like a space where a grown ass man can bring up rape on a “humor” website, say he “definitely reached for the inferences” he made about the article he read that “inspired” his post, say he “shouldn’t have brought it up” on his site and pair that with bragging about the hits the post got him as well as “all this success has undoubtedly made my large head even bigger.”

It’s a world where we use sexual violence to garner attention, and wax faux-apologetic for it. In the words of the great philosopher, Pharrell, “Got damn. It’s a new day.”

Y’all can have that, though.

What A Victim-Blaming World Looks Like To A Victim is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. World AIDS Day: Go Get Tested!
2. “World’s Fattest Woman” Too Overweight For Medical Help?
3. Genetically Modified Foods: The World According To Monsanto

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 21 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: sex

Brooklyn Heights, NY

There is a trigger warning for violence and general issues of safety, here. Please protect yourself.

An important part of this journey, for me, has been learning more about myself – paying more attention to the way I do things and the why behind the choices I’ve made. In the past six or seven months, I’ve learned some really nasty things about myself… not nasty because they’re so bad, but nasty because I’m pretty sure it says something about me.

Ask me if I care, though.

When I was 18, I moved out of my mother’s house. Left her house for the dorms, and left the dorms and moved into a house with a couple other people. It wasn’t in the safest environment, but it didn’t matter – I was pulling so many double shifts at work that I barely noticed. I, eventually, would go back home around age 21 to have my daughter.

At this point, it gets tricky. Once I was stable, I moved her to a gated community in Miami. Complete with security code entrance, security patrolling the neighborhood and even its own emergency response system, I felt safe there. I felt like it wasn’t a big deal to be out with my daughter after dark, walking around the neighborhood.

Eventually, I would move her (and our new puppy, Sushi) closer toward the beach, where it was less secluded, but because it was Miami Beach, cops patrolled the area every ten to fifteen minutes. I felt, again, safe. The island was no wider than maybe four or five street blocks, and I knew what those street blocks looked like. They were clean, loiterer free, frequent police visibility… safe. If I wanted to walk take my dog for a brief potty walk in a short dress, I could do that without being audibly harassed.

But when I moved to New York…

Let’s just put it this way. In a span of 16 minutes, I had 8 different men inappropriately speak to or compliment me on my body. I had a pair of men who followed me up a street all but outright demanding that I talk to them, and when I didn’t? They proceeded to discuss my underwear and how “scandalous” they must’ve been.

The Mister, as much as I love him and as much as he does to make me feel safe when I’m in his presence, has a full time job. And, unfortunately, it’s not to be my bodyguard.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about myself, it’s that as a survivor of sexual violence – and, let’s face it, I was kidnapped as a child (and while you probably didn’t hear about it, rest assured that I can clearly recall at least 6-8 cop cars rescuing me) and, though the ordeal didn’t last very long, it has affected me as an adult – my safety is invaluable. My mother left Cleveland for Carmel in my teens – left her family and friends behind – because she knew, but never outright said it. She never plainly expressed it to me, but she knew she needed to get me some place where it wouldn’t be a problem for me – instead of, say, a boy – to take the trash out after dark. (Never mind the fact that most of my friends were joining “gangs” at that age and my Mom wasn’t having that sh-t.) That’s why it was so easy for her to welcome the pregnant me back home. We all know what it’s like for young pregnant girls who have no support system. Being back at home, 22 and pregnant, gave me the support I needed to start the business where I could afford that community in Miami.

Street harassment promotes a paralyzing fear in me… and it originally didn’t. Not because either of my experiences with having my safety shaken actually began with street harassment, because that’s certainly not true. Honestly, had it not been for my being followed by two men who didn’t like the fact that I was actively trying to create boundaries and choosing to deny them the pleasure of my company, I might’ve been able to overlook the “Babys,” the kissing-at-me-like-I’m-a-dog – yes, like a female dog… a bitch, if you will – and-expecting-me-to-come-so-you-can-pet-me-on-the-head-and-call-me-a-good-girl, the compliments thinly veiled in sexual innuendo… and I might’ve even focused less on the van of old male pedophiles – possibly in their late 40s – trolling for young Black girls fresh out of class to try to “pick up” in their van and, ostensibly, turn them out.

When you see all of this, experience and encounter all of this on a regular and consistent basis, it promotes fear. It compels women to react not out of their own choice, but out of fear. (I’ve long said that men policing other men’s sexuality is in direct correlation with the fact that men don’t want to be subjected to the same treatment that they bestow upon women – “What, I look like a b-tch to you? You gon’ disrespect me by kissing at me to come talk to you like a female or something’? Those bitches are the ones you kiss at! Not me, you faggot!” – and, therefore, contributes to the problem that is hypermasculinity.) Women act out of fear… not out of a desire to choose their own destiny, even when that destiny is so simplistic as “what to wear that morning.” Because, remember, if you’re wearing a short skirt and you’re raped on a street corner… it’s your fault. You shouldn’t have been wearing that. Hell, you probably shouldn’t have been out of your house. Why aren’t you barefoot and pregnant, again?

And, as a byproduct of blaming me for the bad things that happen to me, it has had a direct effect on me. I hate leaving the house and, when I do, I’m wearing the Mister’s sweat pants, his coat, and his t-shirts, with two giant dogs in tow. I’m always feeling like it’s my fault – even after I’ve written countless times about how it’s no one’s fault but the person who does the harassing – and that I shouldn’t be wearing such a form fitting pair of pants/that skirt/that jacket/that t-shirt in the first place… but I want to wear it. I’ve earned the ability to look the way I do in it, and I have the right to wear what I please!

That intersection of earning the body I have and a fear of “inviting” – whatever the hell that means – harassment has resulted in me hiding in my bedroom. Ever since I moved here. Literally. I rarely go out, and if I do, I’ve got the almost-hubby with me. I have a gym in Brooklyn Heights and Midtown to escape to… and I fear even leaving my house to get there. As a young girl growing up in a predominately-Black environment, you learn early on that “outside” is no place for you to feel safe. You equate “away from outdoors” with safety pretty quickly. If being followed by two men who’s parents never taught them boundaries makes you uncomfortable, well… you don’t have to deal with that when you’re inside. If you’re horrified by the sight of old ass pedophiles looking for young girls to snatch up, asking them if “they want a ride,” then you don’t have to deal with that when you’re inside. Bothered by the number of times strange men feel comfortable demanding your attention? Go inside. Highly unlikely to find strange men there.

And, worried about having your safe haven of “inside” invaded? Well, that’s what the two big ass dogs are for. Sala? Sala answers the door before I do, and while the UPS guy knows Sala… a strange man does not. Sushi? Well, Sushi barks softly and carries a big bite.

I’m sorry to say this, but it’s just not safe in the hood for Black girls… or those of us who were, once, Black girls. Or any girls, for that matter. The politics are so far from being equally beneficial that Black girls will never see the privilege of peace from sexual violence (or the threat of such) that most men have. The police are rarely there. The men aren’t there to “police” the behavior – as I’ve said before, it’s not even a matter of “Do you not respect this beautiful Black queen, my brother?” it’s simply “Dang, dude, just chill. That’s not how you talk to women.” – and provide even a modicum of safety. The women aren’t even there – if they live in that neighborhood and know how bad it is? Chances are, they’re keeping their asses in the house, too. How many of us, as minors, weren’t allowed outside? They’re trying to keep their children in the house, too… it isn’t until we’re teenagers that we start feeling entitled to roam those great outdoors and screw it all up.

So, who’s protecting Black girls? (It could also be asked “who is protecting gay Black men and the boys who are trying to “protect” their girl friends, but I am neither of those and am not writing about those. Just know that it doesn’t escape me.) Who is making our communities safe for us to walk through? In an essay I read on Ebony, a young girl was in a house with both her brother and her friend and, as three boys demanded entry to their home… once they were granted access, chased the girl upstairs and attempted to rape her. Her brother’s friend was sitting in the same room with the attempted rape, anddid nothing. The brother, who opened the door, never came upstairs to help his sister. Is this my daughter’s fate? Shit, is it mine?

I won’t lie – this conversation is often debate fodder for the almost-hubby and me. As a man, his idea of safety isn’t “Will you be raped? Kidnapped?” – it’s “will you be robbed?” Ask any woman – we might still be shaken by it, but any number of us would’ve preferred to be robbed. All he could really “get” was that this was no longer Biggie and Jigga’s Brooklyn, and it took a lot of tears and a lot of long talks to get him to understand why that’s not everyone’s experience. (Again, for “women,” the default feels “white;” for “Black,” the default is suspiciously “male.” Hmm.) Buying a house for “the value” isn’t, actually, valuable to someone like me. We reflected on the number of times he was asked, as a minor, to accompany one of his friend’s sister to the store, to school, back home, and so on. I told him that, while it was nice to have him around after work and that sleeping next to him is the best sleep I’ve ever had in my life, who is going to protect our children and me when we’re out? Would I fear buying nice things and keeping them in our house because I wouldn’t want to lose it in a robbery, the one “safety” issue he understood?

I can’t live in a space where I’m not comfortable with walking freely at any hour of the day or evening. I know that privilege… that pleasure, and I won’t give it up for anything. My heart is fighting against it. I can’t live in a space where literally no one feels inclined to ensure safety… and, to the detriment of the Black community, that is places where Blacks tend to live the most. It has also made me understand New York real estate that much more – the cheapest places to live are “the least safe,” and are also places where this harassment runs rampant. For many reasons, these places are also predominately Black. The perpetual fear that Blacks are scary and bad and dangerous – ahem – also plays into the reality that becomes the “white flight” and the prices people will pay to avoid “the scary Blacks.” It’s obviously not because something is inherently wrong with my people, it’s because – much like a frat house where it becomes policy to give girls roofies so that you can “score” with (read: rape) them – the behavior goes unchecked. It’s because there are no consequences. The main inhabitants are the ones who benefit from the policy (of compromising the safety of women), therefore no one is inclined to actually report it. There’s no one reminding anyone how wrong it is to challenge a person’s safety, especially women… not because “they are women,” but because they are consistently seen as “weak” and “helpless,” two qualities often targeted to be taken advantage of.

Couple all of this with the way Black women are encouraged to fear police, as if police are any more dangerous than many of “our” neighborhoods… and it feels like we’re intentionally engineered to have no advocates in our corner, and very few people will understand that. Not advocate as in “bodyguard,” but advocate as in “willfully and thoughtfully considering women and their experiences.” Add to that how many of us are shunned for not wanting to live in the thick of all of this foolishness? We’re selling out, we’re assimilating… and many of us might be, but is that always the dominating concern, here? Absolutely not.

Even after having learned and realized all of this about myself, the fact remains that I still have to be here. I still have to be around people I don’t want to be around. I still have to worry about whether or not the next pair of men who follow me up a street demanding my attention will decide to take it by force. I still have to worry about being deemed a piece of walking property, considered owned-and-occupied when walking with my fiancé, considered “vacant, ready and waiting for occupation” (much like a hotel) when I’m alone. I’m still parsing out what this means for me when I leave my house and walk/bike through Brooklyn, because I’ve been so uncomfortable with the places I have gone, that I’m woefully unable and lacking in the desire to find spaces and places that are for me. If I don’t even want to leave my bedroom, how or what is my first step?

For starters, therapy. It’s absolutely not sensible to fear leaving your own house… but, I do. I’ve fantasized about packing up my raggedy duffle bag and leaving, running back to Miami or Indiana with my mother, but I can’t let this defeat me. I’m better than this. It’s irrational to think I shouldn’t be more aware of my surroundings and environment, but it’s equally irrational for me to think that the only way to be safe is to hyper control my surroundings by never leaving the house. I’m proud of myself in that, with all this stress, I have yet to eat my emotions or even consider risking my progress, but the goal is to replace emotional eating with mentally and physically healthy ways to cope. This isn’t it.

The second is giving myself something to do to keep me out of my own head. The purpose of my studying to become a certified personal trainer was so that I would have reasons beyond myself to get out of the house and put in some work. Training for a race – just have to pick the right one – should also do the trick. Reading books, playing games… anything to keep me out of my own head. Occupying my damn time.

The third thing I’m doing, quite frankly, is for my own sanity. I’m taking a kickboxing class. Something to make me quicker, faster, stronger… better. A class that could make me feel more capable of protecting myself if and when something happens will help me fight the “helpless” and/or “she can take it” stigma society puts on me.

I can only do so much… it just happens that I can, at a bare minimum, do what I can to help myself.

The Politics Of Safety For Women is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Size Politics: Dating, Salaries, And Friendships
2. Update: “Why Black Women Are Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?”
3. An Open Letter To Skinny Women

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In a couple of weeks my mother turns 65.She takes yoga and Zumba every chance she gets and if you sneeze more than twice around her, she’ll cook you a pot of collard greens. My mother believes her collard greens can fix just about anything.

She has a fiery personality that can rub people the wrong way. But those who know her don’t mind, because it was that same fire that helped her overcome poverty, beat cancer and protect her five cubs.

My mother is a black woman.

And she is beautiful.

So to the editors of Psychology Today who thought it was a good idea to post a blog item calling black women ugly, I suggest you watch your back… my mother’s cubs are looking for you.

And we are not happy.

Satoshi Kanazawa’s post, “Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?” appeared Sunday and quickly circulated around the blogosphere. It drew a great deal of criticism, which I suspect led to the post being pulled, though you can still find it elsewhere on the Web.

While it’s not quite as bad as Golfweek magazine putting a noose on its cover in relationship to a story about Tiger Woods, it is still rather disturbing that Psychology Today’s editors needed public outcry to clue them in that the post was offensive and irresponsible.

It’s challenging enough to see popular culture publications such as People and Maxim struggle to include black women in their annual most-beautiful listings, but at least their editors don’t try to justify their choices under the guise of science.

“Because they have existed much longer in human evolutionary history, Africans have more mutations in their genomes than other races,” Kanazawa’s post read. “And the mutation loads significantly decrease physical attractiveness.”

I do not dispute Kanazawa’s credentials as an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics, but I do wonder why he even approached the topic.

I question a methodology that asks random people to judge the attractiveness of other random people without taking into account the influence of background and culture. Without taking into account a Westernized standard of beauty that has not only haunted some black women into buying cream to bleach their skin but prompted some Asian-Americans to undergo surgery to make their eyes more European looking.

That’s not to say white skin or round eyes are necessarily unattractive. Rather, a system that declares one set of physical attributes as the standard to which a multiethnic society must adhere is destructive.

And racist.

And yet as much as I detest Kanazawa’s post, I do recognize it as just another chapter in the ongoing assault on black women in our culture.

He says they’re ugly.

The statistics say 42% have never been married.

Some rappers say, well, we know what they say… and apparently we don’t mind, because they keep topping the charts.

If you comb through Donald Bogle’s book “Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films,” you’ll find a long celluloid history of black women being portrayed as anything but beautiful. Their sass is a constant source of comedic relief, but rarely are they seen as complete human beings, to be romanced or capable of being vulnerable.

Nowadays the most popular black female characters in film are not even played by black women. Tyler Perry’s “Madea” and Martin Lawrence’s “Big Momma” characters are unflattering caricatures of figureheads who for generations on top of generations held the black community together.

Funny, maybe.

Fair, definitely not.

His write-up continues on the CNN website, and is worth you clicking over to check it out, if for no other reason than to make sure he and his post get credit for bringing CNN that kind of traffic. Maybe they’ll see it’s worth posting uplifting commentary about Black women. Giant hugs go out to Granderson for using his platform to get this message out (and if only he could manage to also moderate those comments, but I digress.)

I’ve no desire to get into a “woe is me” parade, here, but the perception of Black women is affected by a lot of things… all of which make it difficult for us to exist the way we want in our day to day lives. We are always assumed to be the “lowest common denominator” (do we automatically assume every white woman is a single parent, poor, and moves her head and neck around like crazy whenever she’s upset?), always assumed to be promiscuous, and must always be “strong like bull.” We can’t be who we are – or work toward being who we aspire to be – without being told that there are reasons to focus elsewhere. We can’t even walk down the street in peace, in most cases.

It’s difficult to be us, but we still do it. And according to that faux-study – the only thing that was interesting to me about the entire “study” – we still think highly of ourselves despite it all.

I saw someone comment on the study and state that “we” – meaning Black women – are the only ones who continue to consume media that denigrates us. I disagree. We’re denigrated as women – something we share with all women, and that plight shouldn’t be minimized – and then we’re devalued as Blacks, something we share with all minorities, regardless of race. And we all still consume this media because many of us still feel like we have no other choice. I’ve always felt like the problem isn’t, so to speak, the consumption of media. The problem is what we do with what we’ve consumed.

Something awesome happened the other day. We all consumed, so to speak, the horrific post by Kanazawa, and what did we do with that? We complained. We wrote letters. We tweeted (twote?) about it and called it to the attention of others. We e-mailed our contacts. We shared with our peers – Black, white, Latina/o and otherwise – what foolishness was passing for science, and we built up among our collectives a very strong stance that we wouldn’t tolerate this from outlets to whom we extend credibility. If Psychology Today were going to maintain its credibility and respect, it would need to address this matter.

Needless to say, all that tweeting, facebooking, emailing and whatever else (carrier pigeon?) we were doing got the attention of the right people. Sent to me this morning by @YoungFlynMommy:

Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa stooped to new levels of awfulness in his post claiming “black women are significantly less physically attractive than women of other races.” His racist remarks could cost him his job at the London School of Economics.According to the Guardian, many LSE students lodged complaints after Kanazawa’s offensive post made the rounds. Said Sherelle Davids of the LSE students’ union, “Kanazawa deliberately manipulates findings that justify racist ideology. As a black woman I feel his conclusions are a direct attack on black women everywhere who are not included in social ideas of beauty.” And Amena Amer, the union’s incoming education officer, said,

We support free speech and academic freedom, but Kanazawa’s research fuels hate against ethnic and religious minorities promoted by neo-Nazi groups. Not only does he use the LSE’s credentials to legitimise his ‘research’ but this jeopardises the academic credibility of the LSE.

The union has voted unanimously that Kanazawa should be fired. Now the school has launched an internal investigation that will evaluate his claims and decide whether to punish him. They’ve already issued a public statement saying he doesn’t speak for the LSE: “The views expressed by this academic are his own and do not in any way represent those of the LSE as an institution.”

Amer is correct that Kanazawa’s comments are an embarrassment to her school. Even if his views are his own, as long as they continue to employ him, they’re implicitly vouching for his merit as a scholar. And unless they’re prepared to say that his bar graphs about black women’s supposed ugliness are actually good science, it’s time for them to let him go. [source]

So no… the problem isn’t consuming the media. The problem is choosing to do nothing about it. We did something about it… and not only did we send a message to Kanazawa that his poor standards are a problem; not only did we send a message to evolutionary psychologists everywhere that a social construct – like beauty – cannot be explained through genetics; not only did we send a message to racists everywhere that their imperceptive attempts to sneak in racist “studies” will always be sniffed out and justice will be metted out for it; not only did we all speak out against such foolishness together?

There was an outpouring of reminders that there is love and support for Black women out there. We just have to be more judicious in surrounding ourselves with it.

CNN Op Ed: “Black Women Ugly? Says Who?” & Consequences Of The Study is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Stupid Study: Why Black Women Are Fatter, Dumber, More Manly And Less Attractive Than Others
2. Black Women, Relaxers, The Uterine Fibroids Study, Early Puberty & Journalistic Credibility
3. Update: “Why Black Women Are Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?”

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 15 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: black women, cnn, kanazawa, lz granderson, media, psychology today, relationships, society

No. I’m serious. That’s the “food culture war.” “You may not like what I eat, but I’ll defend to my death my right to eat it.”

The right to eat complete and total garbage processed food is even painted as patriotic – the “right of the ‘real American’”:

In her book Diet for a Hot Planet, Anna Lappé writes of a sly technique advertisers often use, “The food industry…is skilled at inoculation messaging, and part of its success comes from the ‘we’re one of you’ pitch.” She adds later, “The message, whether from Perdue, Nestle, or Cargill, is that these companies are like us; they care about the same things we do. It’s a message that forms another strand of the inoculation strategy.”This “we’re one of you” ideology coupled with the food product’s corresponding affordability is slick marketing at its best.

You may remember a similar strategy used by Sarah Palin and John McCain in their 2008 Presidential campaign. Palin’s constant invocation of Joe the Plumber, Joe Six Pack, and soccer moms was the same “we’re one of you” rhetoric. Palin worked this angle again recently when she came running to the defense of the “real” Americans as she personally gave out cookies to elementary school students in her effort to stop the food police from depriving children of their god-given right to eat sugar-laden, processed foods. [source]

Let me explain my problem.

When I hear of people bucking the “system” – that system that seeks to define what “good food,” “real food” and “healthy” really are and what they really mean – I hear people who are making a case against government intervention.

And trust me… I get it. I may get it from a different angle, but I get it. I don’t want government involvement in dealing with food because it’s already shown me that it does a piss poor job of doing that. This isn’t where most of these people are coming from, though. This is coming from a place of “You’ll take my Big Mac from me when you pry it from my cold, dead hand.”

It comes from a place of privilege. It comes from a place of “I can make the choice to eat better. I just don’t want to do so.” Emphasis on choice.

And on any other day, I might accept the assertion that this is a class issue – that food is often a burden of money, one that people don’t want to take on which is why it is so easy to embrace and defend those who provide us with inexpensive offerings regardless of quality – but only if that math is carried out to the remainder, which is that “class” is often used as code meant to exclude Blacks from “the upper class” by default even when the Blacks in question are inherently not lower-or-even-middle class.

When we make food an issue of choice, there is an underlying understanding that everyone, in fact, has that choice to make. There is an accepted belief, in conversations about choosing to eat healthily, that everyone stands between a produce section and a frozen TV dinner section and, invariably, chooses at their discretion. There’s an underlying acceptance in these conversations that food deserts do not exist. That food deserts don’t exist in inner cities… mostly populated by Black Americans. There is an acceptance that food availability doesn’t need to be discussed, because all the people involved in the conversation have access.

Is that a happenstance? A mere coincidence? I might’ve thought so before, but now? I’m not so sure.

Here, on BGG2WL, we talk – often – about how to make healthier living affordable. How to get multiple uses out of each inexpensive item at the store. How to be resourceful. But guess what – the very nature of the fact that we are, in fact, visibly Black while living healthily? This pretty much excludes us from being counted as “living proof of the benefits of healthy lifestyling,” or even “people who show concern for our environment.”

A lonnnnng time ago, I read a comment on Racialicious that fits into what I’m saying here, and it needs to be highlighted. Again.

It reminds me of the “bike to work” movement. That is also portrayed as white, but in my city more than half of the people on bike are not white. I was once talking to a white activist who was photographing “bike commuters” and had only pictures of white people with the occasional “black professional” I asked her why she didn’t photograph the delivery people, construction workers etc. … ie. the black and Hispanic and Asian people… and she mumbled something about trying to “improve the image of biking” then admitted that she didn’t really see them as part of the “green movement” since they “probably have no choice” –

I was so mad I wanted to quit working on the project she and I were collaborating on.

So, in the same way when people in a poor neighborhood grow food in their yards … it’s just being poor– but when white people do it they are saving the earth or something.

And YES black people on bikes and with gardens DO have an awareness of the environment. Surprisingly so! These values are in our communities and they are good values. My Grandmother was an organic gardener before it was “cool” –My mother believed in composting all waste and recycling whatever could be reused– it was a religious thing. God hates waste. [source]

Again, the focus on “choice,” something that – as we see often here on BGG2WL – not everyone is afforded. There’s also that class/race-defaulting thing going on here, too – if “poor people” (who are, assumedly, of color – and don’t we all assume poor people are people of color?) are just being poor by growing their own food (’cause, y’know, they can’t afford to pay all that money to eat garbage) and “white people” are assigned the noble position of “saving the Earth” by growing their own food… what are poor white people doing when they grow their own food? I mean, they’re poor, yes… but they’re not default poor, which is Black or “Brown.”

There’s an unwillingness to see food as an issue that goes beyond choice… an unwillingness to go beyond the anecdotal “There’s a grocery store in my inner city and those people still eat like crap! Food deserts don’t exist!” message that pops up in conversations about accessibility. We can never address the real causes and solutions to food deserts because we’re so busy debating their existence.

We can’t accept that there are places where people aren’t afforded that choice and move from there because we’re too busy having to contend with this element of white populism that rejoices in not knowing things. We spend far too much time dealing with people who refuse to go beyond their front yard – or their citiy’s “downtown,” even though it is clear that food deserts often are not that far away from the average person – to understand the plight of others, simply because it is not their plight. We spend too much time with people who very well may, in one form or another, subconsciously suppress “food availability” as a Black issue…. and we all know that that’s a step toward populist acceptance of the idea that “labeling something a Black issue means that white America doesn’t have to address it.” Y’know, because us Blacks aren’t “real Americans.”

Again, the rejoicing in not knowing things.

The thing that makes this even more annoying to me, though? The fact that what makes a real and genuine acceptance of food deserts so far out of reach… is the fact that we can’t even get a national conversation about what “real food” actually is. Why? Again, because the status quo is fueled by a marketing ploy that knows that white populists, those who can afford – it is assumed that they can afford it, yes, “because they’re white” – to eat like crap, don’t want to know. It’s that simple. Talk about the purity of food is written off as, as I saw in the comments for an NYT op-ed, “the insistence on purity by the entitled and privileged.”

So desiring purity of the very things required for our survival is akin to racial cleansing? Now, we can’t even educate the public on how to make choices – if and when they are, in fact, faced with that choice to make – because being educated is too much intervention, and the public should be left to its own nutrition and educational devices in regards to learning what and how to eat. Besides, who could ever think that Perdue and Nestle would make harmful food? They’re one of us.

Again with the not knowing.

And shouldn’t it be an issue? Shouldn’t it be a big damn deal? Shouldn’t it be a concern of society that there are people who, in fact, don’t have access to the education for and tools of healthy lifestyling? That there are people – Black and white – who suffer from this mentality of “everyone has the opportunity to make these choices?” Considering the vast majority of Americans classified as overweight and obese, shouldn’t there be a loud enough battle cry of “discuss accessibility!” to make people take notice? Not if they’re too busy engaging in a culture war where they decided, early on in the battle, that they don’t want the appropriate weapons with which to fight – knowledge.

My point is this: although it’s really cute to watch “real Americans” complain about the attack on their culture and watch “liberal elites” mock them by calling themselves “food snobs” while “physically moving to other cities to ‘prove’ that healthy lifestyling is possible“…both sides dismiss, to a disgusting degree, the fact that people – beyond the poor and (assumedly) Black – still do, in fact, lack the access and education necessary to make healthy lifestyling possible. And until we establish this as fact and address these issues first, this talk will never be seen as anything more than “cute ramblings” of those who rejoice in not knowing things.

The Unbearable Whiteness of Eating: How The Food Culture War Affects Black America is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. The Choice Between Food As Culture and Food As Medicine
2. How Junk Food Affects The Body, Part 1
3. How Junk Food Affects The Body, Part 2

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 22 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: culture, culture war, food culture war, populism

I'd rather see a positive photo of Black women, as opposed to a Black man in a fat suit being used to represent me.

To make a long story short, a blog post appeared asking why Black women are, well, so fat. The post came attached with a photo of – get this – Eddie Murphy in a fat suit as an illustration of what the target of this post, “fat Black women” (as they were called repeatedly in the comments,) really look like. Like men in fat suits.

The post included the following:

To you unhealthy size 16 women who write all these “We aren’t all a size two posts”. Please sit down and just accept that you are overweight and stop glorifying it. If you are heavier than your man (unless you just like your men bony) then you should be ashamed of yourself.

My goal here is to get you to accept that most of you don’t really have a handle on your health and that you were NOT born to look like a hippo. [..]

Stop trying to justify your fatness.

So… let’s talk. Aside from the fact that the post was written by the same person who wrote something titled, “Hood Chicks Are People Too;” aside from the fact that the post was written as if the author got picked on by a group of “fat Black chicks” and then ran home to pen her rant; aside from the fact that the entire thing is so juvenile, I probably shouldn’t even address it here… there are two important things to witness, here.

Firstly, this was written on a site that, from what I’ve seen, aims for a comedic approach to semi-sensitive issues. I get that. I suppose it was “gun for overweight Black women” day. I guess I get that, too. The interesting thing, though, is that while the post tried to say “concern,” the comments left you to find these treasures:

You don’t need to be a medical professional to see that some people too damn big

…and…

Obese people resemble Hippos…*shrugs*…if they like looking that way..then they dont have to read any further..I will not apologize for stating my opinion..no matter how mean it may seem.

…and…

This post isn’t about being skinny..it’s about being healthy..you must be overweight and unhealthy…keep on being that way if that’s what you want…I dont want that for you..but I can’t stop you from enjoying another 3000 calorie dinner tonite

…and…

If an obese woman believes she looks good that size then she won’t do anything about her health..she looks like a hippo and has 20 s rolls on her body. She is not THICK..she is LUMPY…and there is NOTHING RIGHT with that..nothing AT ALL. Sure it’s insulting to say hippo…but maybe ..just MAYBE if I didn’t say say “big is beautiful” less of you would be inclined to keep slowing killing yourselfs [sic] and jacking up your insides…

…last one, I swear…

morbid obese people look worse than hippos

So on a site that tries to bring humor to serious situations decides to let one of its contributors tackle the issue of overweight Black women with a “serious tone,” underestimates the amount of women it would piss off because they are the target of the article (and ceremoniously represented by a picture of a Black man in a fat suit) and THEN goes on to just straight up fling hate? Because saying a group of people who are, by appearance, morbidly obese (a clinical term related specifically to the correlation of height and weight, NOT appearance.. so that’s a fail on its face) look worse than hippos is not even insulting. Those kinds of generalizations are hateful.

To imply that a woman should feel shame because of her body is astounding to me. That a woman who has pride in who she is should not simply because she is overweight? Isn’t this the same notion that American society slams us with every single day? “You don’t look like me, so be ashamed of that.” It appears in various forms and is echoed from various mouths, but society is full of people who use appearance to give off that “I’m better than you, get on my level, and until you do get on my level you are a ‘less than’.” vibe. It’s meant to fill a void – there’s nothing internal to make them feel good about themselves… so they grab for external reasons to feel good. Meh.

I’m pretty much over the author. There is one last piece of business I’d like to tend to, though.

I happened to see this comment:

curious, don’t take this the wrong way, on average, what do you eat everyday? Give me a breakdown, How many meals and what is it and how many snacks. I may be able to help you. But you gotta commit. I have a lot of overweight friends that “claim” they want positive advice but when you give it to them, they never follow through and make excuses as to why they ate something bad, or ate excessively. I’m 32, I weigh 98 pounds and I look like I work out, but I don’t. [...]

I want to put you on to an easy way to drop at least 20 pounds without even really doing much. So if you are open to suggestions, holla back.

…it received this response:

1.Eggs, soy milk, turkey sausage (breakfast)
2. apple (snack)
3. chicken breast w/ salad (lunch)
4. banana or cherries (snack)
5. Turkey w/ broccoli & mushrooms (dinner)
*nothing but water w/ meals*

…the 98lb nutritionist (who later clarified that she is 4’11″) then told her the following:

First mistake, that Breakfast is no good. LOL!! You need to minimize that, that’s the easiest meal to minimize.

Eggs AND sausage is two fatty items. What about Sausage, 2 links, French toast, and a grapefruit. If you do eggs, do them boiled, eat the white part only. Or just a bowl of cereal by itself. No Oatmeal or anything with a lot of grain.

The apple is good, Green ones are the best.

Lunch. How about a Chicken Cesar from Panera or something. Not a whole breast AND a salad, combine the two. Rotate every other day, do a Plain Cesar at least twice out the week. I do Plain Cesars.

Soda, one a day if you must.

Since you are tying to lose weight, the banana is no good. Eat another green apple, or watermelon. Or Fruit Snacks or a smoothie. Don’t know if ya’ll got Smoothie King, but the mango one is the bomb!!!

Dinner can be the same, cut out the mushrooms though, you don’t need those and the Turkey, that two proteins at once. No bread, if so wheat only.

Or, if you eat a big Breakfast, eat a light dinner. [...] Don’t eat after 8:30pm.

I cannot say this any louder, and I cannot stress this enough. Just because someone is proportionate… doesn’t mean they have the market cornered on how to get proportionate or how to stay there. Someone who is 4’11″ and 98lbs is not running into the same problems as someone who is 6′ and 300lbs with weight maintenance. Not only is this piss poor advice (don’t eat eggs for breakfast, but eat French toast? allowing soda? Skip the fruit, but have some fruit? No oatmeal? Oh lawdy, the BGG2WL girls would have a field day with that.) but it is misguided – are we talking health or “getting skinny?” Are we even encouraging a healthy perception of self? Or are we shaming women into feeling horrible about not being skinny and “looking healthy,” then giving them bad advice without helping patch them up after the emotional breakdown we try to cause? Or do these people even give enough of a damn to bother?

I know my questions will go unanswered, and that’s okay. I also know that I’m not even included in the demographic this original article targeted, and that’s okay too. The fact remains that I am always going to be the same person I was at 328lbs, and that person is still sympathetic to the struggle of losing weight and becoming healthy, no matter how far I’ve “made it.”

The fact also remains that the focus on “looking healthy” as opposed to “being healthy” is the same misinformation that compels women to remain unhealthy. Think about it – telling me that I need to be skinny to be healthy, and I never reach my region’s definition of skinny (I doubt Los Angeles and Atlanta have the same definition of skinny)… I’m gonna give up and go back to what I’m doing. “Screw healthy. These pringles are callin’ me.”

All I’m sayin’ is I like my fatophobes the same way I like my anecdotal nutritionists – silent. I know that an article about the perils of “being fat” tends to make the “not fat” crew feel a little better about themselves… but for the love of everything healthy, don’t cloak your insults in faux concern and please don’t make the problem worse by offering your pseudo-advice that works for you to people you don’t really give a damn about. Neither of you are helping.

The Fat-O-Phobes Are Showing Their Behinds Again is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 57 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: anti-fat society, bad advice, epic ranting, fatophobia, faux concern, mentality, society, stupid

I think people who really have your best intentions at heart are allowed to express their concerns to you about becoming healthier; however, there is a thing called tact! – Chanel

i’d rather not have anyone call me fat except for me. I decide when I need to hit the gym and i decide when and if i am happy with how I look. – Elledub

Honestly, though I may dislike hearing it, I think my family and friends should be allowed to call me fat. I’ll tell you why. As I’ve stated before (maybe not here, but on my blog or Twitter), I didn’t really notice the weight gain. I knew it was creeping up, but I still looked (in my mind) pretty good. When people started making comments, inclusive of a student that had absolutely NO tact whatsoever, I took stock in what they were saying and decided that I needed to do something about it. – Tracy

Honestly, anyone who loves me had better tell me if I’m picking up weight. – Winnie

I wish to God one of my friends or family members had had the courage to tell me I needed to do something about my weight a few years ago. [...] Now that most of the excess weight is gone, everyone is all “OMG, you look great”, but I can’t help but to wish someone had remarked on my weight before. But that’s easy to say on the other side of the fence… – Sister Toldja

I think that “other side of the fence” is a big part of this. As I wrote about the conversation between my Mother and my sister, it’s hard for me to think about what my response would’ve been to someone telling me I was gaining too much weight. I mean, I was a snappy chick… quick to rain jokes down upon the head of anyone who was willing to step to me about my weight. I could only imagine what kind of torrential terrible twenties tantrum fit I might’ve thrown had someone told me that I was any less sexy, dope, amazingly gorgeous, downright stunning and perfect than I believed I was in my own head.

And that’s not to say that being overweight means that I couldn’t be sexy, dope, amazingly gorgeous, downright stunning and perfect. It means that since I saw “fat” as a flaw (and let’s face it, most of us do), having someone remind me of a flaw I was diligently ignoring felt like the chink in my armor turning into a hole. And that’s, well… unacceptable.

I think of the countless times my girls tried to get me to hit the gym with them. My best friend, an avid runner, actually offered to walk with me one day. (Do you know how hard it is to get a runner to slow down for your slow behind?) My mother made side salads for dinner, while making sure that the more calorie-heavy parts of the meal were “all gone” by the time I’d go to fix my plate. Apparently, everyone had something to say… but no one was saying it. Meanwhile, I was gaining weight at a rate of about 20lbs a year.

Am I making that gain everyone else’s fault? Nope. It’s my body, my responsibility to learn how to care for it, and care for it properly. However, what kind of climate was I creating where the people around me couldn’t even tell me – in love and in kindness – that something was going on with me? Couldn’t express their concern for me?

Frankly, I ain’t the one. I can’t afford to be the one.

Let’s say that you and your girls are getting ready to hit a major event. Before you all walk out the door, you check each other out to make sure you’re all looking good. Isn’t the expectation that one of them will tell you if you’re the one looking a mess? We expect our friends to tell us if we’re looking a fool before we walk out of our houses, but they can’t tell us we’ve put on too much weight?

Is it the fact that we, as women, tend to be so objectified – everything has to do with sexuality and sexual appeal – that we’ve equated “you’re gaining weight” with “you’re unattractive?” Are we so used to everything being about attraction, that being told we’re packin’ on the pounds must also be about being attractive (or, in this case, less than attractive?) It couldn’t simply be a “Hey… check on your health.” type situation? It has to be about “cute?”

Or is it the fact that everyone’s threshold is different? Southerners have a different definition of “putting on weight” than Northerners. Miami’s definition is different from Houston. Mississippi wouldn’t understand California. An extra ten pounds vs an extra hundred or so. For someone to acknowledge that I’ve put on the pounds, when “put on the pounds” means “ten pounds” to them? I won’t even lie. They just might get the finger.

I think about myself now. I get at least one comment/email/tweet/anonymous whatever a week calling me a “fat bitch.” I usually laugh, but every now and again I raise my eyebrow and wonder… “Once upon a time, I couldn’t get people I love to tell me I was too big. Now, I’ve got strangers telling me I’m fat? What part of the game is that?” 330lb Erika might not’ve had that reaction. 180lb Erika, however… is tickled.

It goes back to that “other side of the fence” note I made earlier. Looking at the person I am today, I can acknowledge that this is the person I needed to be to get to where I am. Allowing the people I love to feel comfortable addressing my flaws might’ve helped me become this person much earlier on in my life. If I keep them close to me because I trust their influence to make me “better,” why exclude health? Why exclude weight? If the people who love me want to offer me solutions, why not be open to them? What do I have to lose?

And let me clarify.. I’m talking about people who love you. The ones invested in you as a person. The ones who are there for you at your worst. They deserve to be able to help make you better, and enjoy you at your best. We can talk about “haters,” but I fully believe they’re not worth talking about. Nor are they worth thinking about. People who mean you no positivity aren’t worth time or brainspace.

No, really. I mean that. So those family members who insist on spitefully bringing up your weight – the ones you know mean you no earthly good, and usually never have any support to offer you beyond “Yo booty gettin’ kinda big” – you can give them a polite “I’ll take that under consideration,” and change the subject… while mentally giving them the finger.

My plea is just that we not shut out the people who we trust to see the worst of us. Don’t prevent them from helping to develop the best in you: the healthy you! I’m talkin’ about those people who – like my friends (who, I’ll have you know, are still my tried and true friends fat or skinny) – are willing to walk through the fire with you, support you and offer you solutions to help you get to where you want to go. Where you need to go.

This journey isn’t one that we can go on alone. You will always need a support system that will giggle with you at your failures, cheer you on through your successes, and help you learn from both. You trust them to have your back, so trust them to tell you about something you might be overlooking… like your weight. If you love them and they love you (and you know it), give them a chance. They very well may have the answers, resources and support you need.

Be happy, but most importantly… be healthy.

Who Should I Allow To Call Me Fat? is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: blackness, fat, mentality, social eating, stigmas

Hoppin' John, the Black New Year's staple of black eyed peas and veggies (yes, veggies...)

A couple of years ago, John McWhorter wrote the most ridiculous thing I’d read in a long time for The Root, attempting to refute both basic Capitalism and common sense by implying that “food deserts don’t exist and, therefore, are not the reason why Blacks in America are fat” because, basically, “Blacks don’t want healthy food, y’know, since they’ve always eaten fried chicken and fritos since they’ve been free in this country.”

And, no, I’m not overexaggerating:

Culture, too, creates a palate — and to point that out is not to find “fault.” Example: Slavery and sharecropping didn’t make healthy eating easy for black people back in the day. Salt and grease were what they had, and Southern blacks brought their culinary tastes North (Zora Neale Hurston used to bless her friend Langston Hughes with fried-chicken dinners). Fried food, such as fried chicken, was also easy to transport for blacks traveling in the days of Jim Crow, when bringing your own food on the road was a wise decision.

But that did help create what has lived on as a palate even after the circumstances that created it have changed.

Excerpted from The Myth of The Food Desert: Where The Root Went Wrong | A Black Girl’s Guide To Weight Loss

And ever since I wrote my post in response to that, this has been on my mind. Where does this idea that all soul food has ever consisted of was fried food, cheap food and garbage? Why is it so easy for us to assume that obesity is “so prevalent” (I use those quotation marks for a reason) in the Black community because of something inherently wrong with Black culinary culture? Why is it so easy for us to believe that the flaw was, immediately, us and not, say, food manufacturing in this country? It was us – our fault, the fault of our culture – for why we are, collectively, fat. Nothing else is even worth considering?

McWhorter says, “Culture, too, creates a palate – and to point that out is not to find ‘fault.’” No, it’s not to “find fault,” it is to “lay responsibility at the foot of culture,” or to “place blame” in said culture’s lap. To try to head me off at the pass by saying that blaming culture is “not to find fault” doesn’t make it so.

“Salt and grease were what they had,” “Fried food, such as fried chicken, was also easy to transport for Blacks traveling in the days of Jim Crow, [because, since you knew that no restaurant would be willing to accept your little colored money,]“… statements like these both astounded and intrigued me.

When I think back to my almost 100 year old great grandmother and her garden in Selma, Alabama, I don’t remember all-fried everything. I don’t remember “salt” and “grease.” I don’t remember “fried chicken,” and am pretty sure she’s never cooked it for me. I got that from my Mother, arguably 50 years younger than Aunt Sissy.

Then, I listen to what my peers are saying around me. Such denigration for what they’ve identified as stereotypical “soul food,” a culture rich in flavor, skill and – yes – nutrition. After reading approximately 9 books on African, Caribbean and diasporic African foodways as I healed from an annoying leg injury last year, I can straight up and down say that most of these people have no freaking idea what they’re talking about.

How do you go from gumbo, crab cakes, deviled eggs, and roasted pork (possum?) to “soul food wasn’t nothin’ but salt and grease?” How do you go from a plant-based diet (yes, our ancestors, despite the drop ins of pork and other meats, ate a plant-based diet) rich in fruits and vegetables, light on meat (because, hey hey, they couldn’t afford it), and supplemented with unprocessed grain as a filler, to having some man in an Ivory Tower tell you that the reason your people don’t eat healthy food is because they have a hereditary slave palate that determines whether or not they are healthy eaters?

Let’s get something clear. Black Americans aren’t the only ones overweight in this country. Black Americans bought into the same swindle that the rest of the country bought into and were hurt even more because, while the rest of the country had enough money to pull itself out of the rabbit hole of processed food and obesity, Black Americans by and large did not. Two thirds of Black America may be fat, but guess what? Two thirds of America is fat, too.

Soul food is not to blame for our nutritional woes. A willingness to blame soul food for Black America’s current ailments resulted in complaints about “vegetables being boiled to death” replacing what used to be excitement for receiving a plate of braised string beans with corn bread. Why corn bread? Simple: the corn bread was used to sop up the “pot liquor” from the string beans. (“Pot liquor” is what’s left in the pot after vegetables have been treated. Studies – studies, mind you, that were done long after our ancestors were doing this – show that vegetables that are boiled actually have the vitamins and minerals boiled out of them, resulting in a vitamin-rich broth left in the pot after all the servings.

Hell, the corn bread of today isn’t even the corn bread of yesterday – is your corn meal organic? Your ancestors’ corn meal was. Is your corn meal from genetically modified, hyper-processed corn kernels? Your ancestors’ corn was not. Do you have a propensity for “sweet corn bread?” That’s neither a “North” nor a “South” thing – that’s a processed food thing. You can thank “Jiffy” for the popularity of sweet corn bread.

You can also thank processed food for the increase in saltiness in soul food, too. Sure, soul food always used cured pork, but it was used so sparingly (very rare was the occasion that a Black family had access to the “better” parts of the pig and, therefore, were reluctant to squander what they had access to by eating whole parts at a time.) that it would’ve never had the same effects it had today. (And, while there are studies out regarding hypertension in the early 1900s, there are far more mitigating factors in blood pressure than simply “salt” and “smoking.” Think “factory conditions,” for starters.)

You know what else you can thank processed food for? Your “fat” tooth. Fried chicken was fried, not deep fried nor triple battered. It also wasn’t fried in genetically modified oils, replete with omega-6 and considered to be deleterious to one’s health. We didn’t stick solely to the “fat parts” of the animal. Hog jowls, pig’s feet, sweet breads, pig intestines? All low in fat and incredibly high in protein. And before anyone brings up “macaroni and cheese” to me, let me make life easier on you: macaroni and cheese, though it is a soul food staple now, did not originate with African Americans.

Who is cooking soul food seven days a week, three times a day? No one, that’s who. For all of you people who consistently advocate for “cheat meals,” isn’t your “cheat meal” that Sunday dinner when Big Mama throws down for the whole family? Isn’t that Sunday dinner the only meal you’re eating that big throw down? And, furthermore, aren’t you eating Big Macs, Chicken McNuggets, Whoppers, Lean Cuisines and goodness knows what else during the week? The height of processed food? But it’s Big Mama’s “cheat meal” every Sunday that you want to blame. The rest of America isn’t sitting at Big Mama’s table, but they’re certainly in line at the drive thru… and they’re just as overweight as the rest of us. Mexicans that come to America and eat their traditional dishes using American ingredients? They’re gaining weight, too.

Neither our pies nor our cobblers had two crusts – again, processed food. (I am totally guilty of this.) Manufacturers were eager to sell us the idea of a two-crusted dessert because it’d require us to use up our butters and flours faster, thereby needing to purchase more at a faster rate. Our banana pudding wasn’t made up lazily of “nilla wafers.” It was pound cake, with arguably less sugar. We didn’t use white sugar – couldn’t afford it – we used molasses, far easier on the blood sugar levels and still could be reduced to be made sweeter. The sugar we did use, was purified with ox blood, lime, egg whites and a blanket. Not dimethylhexachloroferodextrol. (I completely made that up, but damn if it doesn’t sound an awful lot like what’s in the food now.) Our rices were, by default, brown and wild – there was no hulling of rice grain, thereby making it “white,” until around 1902. Processed food, processed food, processed food.

The willingness of the Black community to assume that the reasons why we are experiencing unfortunate circumstances is because of something inherently wrong with ourselves and our culture, instead of acknowledging that those same unfortunate circumstances have befallen everyone in society… as cliche as it is to say “that’s self hate,” I don’t know what other way to put it.

I started the month off with the lead in from “The Problem With Processed Food” because, quite frankly, there is a lot of road to hoe, here. Just last week, I attended a seminar for personal trainers [insert innocent face here], and one of the only other Black women in attendance approached me and, after lengthy conversation, said “Man, it’s that soul food. It’s killing us.” All I could do is smile and say, “I don’t know, but whatever it is, we’ve got to do something.”

I just… I wanted to hug that woman. Hug her and tell her, our culture didn’t do this to us. The disparaties in income did this to us. The availability of fresh produce, or lack thereof, did this to us. The trust we placed in food processing and manufacture did this to us. The same things that did this to the rest of our country, are the same things that did this to us, and it’s time that we stop pretending otherwise. Stop buying into a mentality that says Blacks are inherently bad and wrong, and any problems that affect us specifically (regardless of whether or not they affect others) are our fault as Blacks and not as Americans or even as human beings. I’m over it, and I hope you are, too.

Neither Soul Food, Nor “Slave Food,” Made You Fat is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 21 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: african americans, blackness, crab cakes, culture, gumbo, john mcwhorter, macaroni and cheese, slave food, soul food, the root

I’m not writing this post for awareness – it is my sincere hope that you are already aware of the person I’m referring to – but I do write it for solidarity.

A young boy – someone’s son – was walking, minding his business when he was followed in a car by someone serving a volunteer role as a community watchman. That volunteer community watchman got out of his car, approached the young boy and demanding authority that was not bestowed to him in any official capacity and attacked the boy when he wasn’t granted that authority. That same volunteer community watchman then shot that boy when he wasn’t given that authority.

I am not a Black man, and I cannot identify with their experiences with the police or authority figures in general. I may be able to identify with being hypersexualized no matter where I go, what I wear or how I behave… but I simply cannot identify with being harassed by police. In fact, I value police.

But we’re not talking about police. We’re talking about a volunteer community watchman – the community he volunteered to watch didn’t even think enough of his services to pay him for them. I’m incredibly familiar with gated communities. Even the cheapest ones know the importance of at least giving you an official position. He didn’t have a uniform. He didn’t have a badge. How the hell did he identify himself? “Freeze! Volunteer community watch official! Identify yourself!”

And that is where my concern comes in. What made a 25 year old man think he had the right to demand any special kind of authority from a young boy, to the point of shooting him at close range in order to finally get it? George Zimmerman wasn’t a police officer, had never been employed by any form of law enforcement, was considered a nuisance by the community he volunteered to “protect,” and even had his record expunged for battery against a police officer. He even lied about having a clean record at the scene of the crime when asked by police.

This is where I identify, here. As a woman, the thought that my child, my daughter, should be expected to obey any man on the street – because that’s who George Zimmerman was… any old regular ass man - and give him the authority he demands, lest she (or he, if I have more children) be shot to death and the killer never see the inside of a cell… if you can look yourself in the mirror, eye to eye and say that doesn’t terrify you, you should never have children.

And that’s just as a Mother. As a survivor of sexual violence? The thought that I, me, myself, me, I should be expected to obey any man on the street – because that’s who George Zimmerman was… any old regular ass man – and give him the authority he demands, lest I be shot to death on the street and my killer never see the inside of a cell… if you can look yourself in the mirror, eye to eye and say that doesn’t terrify you, you should never…what? Never leave your house?

I can’t lie. If I was in Trayvon’s situation? Ol’ dude might’ve never been able to reach for his weapon. I might’ve broken BOTH arms after I kicked him directly in the nuts. At least I’m honest. I’m a dirty fighter.

What message does this send our Country? What message does this send to people who have children who look like Trayvon, or people who identify with Trayvon? What message does this send to people who look like or identify with George Zimmerman? What message do the police send when they commit such grievous acts of impropriety?

But after the shooting, a source inside the police department told ABC News that a narcotics detective and not a homicide detective first approached Zimmerman. The detective pepppered Zimmerman with questions, the source said, rather than allow Zimmerman to tell his story. Questions can lead a witness, the source said.

Another officer corrected a witness after she told him that she heard the teen cry for help.

The officer told the witness, a long-time teacher, it was Zimmerman who cried for help, said the witness. ABC News has spoken to the teacher and she confirmed that the officer corrected her when she said she heard the teenager shout for help.

The Sanford Police Department refused to release 911 calls by witnesses and neighbors.

Several of the calls, ABC News has learned, contain the sound of the single gunshot.

Lee publically admitted that officers accepted Zimmerman’s word at the scene that he had no police record.

Two days later during a meeting with Trayvon’s father Tracy Martin, an officer told the father that Zimmerman’s record was “squeaky clean.”

Yet public records showed that Zimmerman was charged with battery against on officer and resisting arrest in 2005, a charge which was later expunged.

Zimmerman has not responded to requests for a comment.

“I asked [the police] well did you check out my son’s record?” Tracy Martin told ABC News in an interview Sunday. “What about his?…Trayvon was innocent.”

You may choose to not sign the petition. You may not choose to call and call and call and call. But remember, this situation and its popularity sends the message that any “suspicious looking Black boy wearing a hood and walking slowly in the rain” that you know  – it could even be you… who among us doesn’t look “like a boy” when we wear a hood and walk slowly in the rain? – is up for being shot to death by any random stranger.

And, because of that, I stand in solidarity with everyone who believes this is an outrage, and that justice for Trayvon’s murderer must be meted out expeditiously. ASAPtually, actually. Because just as we deserve safety from “suspicious individuals walking our neighborhoods,” we deserve safety from vigilantes who use incredibly excessive force to demand levels of respect they don’t deserve. If laws need to change, then change them. If precedents need to be set, then set them. But there is no way this man, this volunteer community watchman, should be allowed to murder a young boy and then go home to pet his dog and watch TV as if nothing happened.

Our lives are worth more than that. And these people need to start acting like it.

Sound off, y’all. I’ve got to go hug my daughter.

In Honor of Trayvon Martin is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

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Lucky me, I didn’t get it once. I got it at least once… a day.

While my time in Cleveland as a kid was spent in areas that could’ve seriously benefit from the privilege that the gentry (those who do the gentrifying) brings with it, my home in Indiana? Let’s just say that it’s highly unlikely that it’d ever need more money to come in. Needless to say, my experiences with gentrification are pretty non-existent.

But what is gentrification? It is, in a nutshell, when money (or perceived money, which is more important than the actual money, to me) moves in. I used to assume that it was about race, much like this guy:

“I used to think it was about race — when white people moved into a black neighborhood,” said lawyer Charles Wilson, 35, who lost to Marion Barry in the 2008 Ward 8 D.C. Council race. “Then, I looked up the word. It’s when a middle-class person moves into a poor neighborhood. And I realized: I am a gentrifier. I couldn’t believe it. I don’t like that word. It makes so many people uncomfortable.”

“Actually, I thought it was if you see a white guy in Anacostia, listening to an iPod, jogging or walking a dog!” joked Sariane Leigh, 33, who writes a blog called Anacostia Yogi, putting her hand on her hip and waving a sweet-potato fry for emphasis.

The friends fold into laughter. They agree not to use the G-word, at least for one night.

Gentrification is always a delicate topic, especially in a city where it usually has meant well-to-do whites buying up affordable houses in predominantly black neighborhoods. The trend is reflected in recent census figures that show that the District is no longer a majority-black city and by ever-whiter neighborhoods such as Shaw and H Street Northeast.

But black gentrification is increasingly redefining the G-word and changing the economics of places like Anacostia. [source]

Why am I bringing this up? After leaving Bar Sepia one night, we passed by one of the mister’s old standard bodegas (basically, a convenient store), but he did a double take… and eventually, a full stop.

“Wow, man,” was all I heard. “Gentrification is real.”

The bodega wasn’t simply a “bodega” anymore. It was, apparently, an organic produce store… with respectable prices. Hell, I can’t even get that.

Like race, money comes with its own assumptions. When money moves into a community, the police presence increases. Why? Because no one wants to bring their money into an environment where it’s bound to be stolen, and everyone knows that. When money moves into an area, businesses are quick to follow (specially if the promise of increased security is looming)… businesses providing services and products that the entrepreneurs believe would be profitable there. I mean, that’s basic capitalism. You go where the money can be found.

This has a strange effect on the availability – and quality – of food in an area. If increased presence of money means increased produce… then increased produce – by nature of trying to one-up their competitors – means increased presence of organics, which means increased presence of local produce… which eventually means decreased price. Competitors are constantly trying to one-up each other, and they do that by decreasing the price of the necessities while offering special and unique products at a premium.

This is a strange situation. Gentrification, that which has been cast off as such a dirty word (and has people, like the above, ashamed to no longer be poverty-status poor?), is actually making food cheaper. I mean, damn – never in my life have I seen an organic red pepper go for $0.99.

But is it always just the money, or was originally right? Is it who (rather, what race) is bringing the money? And furthermore, can the race element be overlooked if other “hipster/urban yuppie-ish” businesses are thriving in the area? (Let’s not play coy, here – as much as I love my yoga, seeing three yoga studios on the same block is the epitome of overkill.) A couple of weeks ago, I received the following comment from Dee, a Chicago reader:

I live in Chicago, which is a very segregated city. I do know that there are some great produce markets with good-quality, cheap produce in many of the predominantly Latin@ communities. I know that the food deserts in the city are all in predominantly African American communities — and that at least in Chicago, food access is correlated to race but not income (food deserts in poor, working class, and middle class communities.) (If you are really curious about food deserts in Chicago, there are good study reports here http://www.marigallagher.com/projects/ — I am a teacher and therefore I’m particular about language and citing my sources.)

…which takes you to this .pdf file, dated June 2011, that provides this not-so-awesome statistic for Chicago:

About 70% of the total Food Desert Population is African American. The remaining 30% is roughly an equal split of whites and Latinos.

There’s also a map in that .pdf and, if you know anything about Chicago and its “South Side,” well… let’s just say it’s easy to guess where those food deserts lie.

Now, I’m aware I went from New York City to Chicago in a matter of a few paragraphs, but it all – at least to me – ties into this:

It reminds me of the “bike to work” movement. That is also portrayed as white, but in my city more than half of the people on bike are not white. I was once talking to a white activist who was photographing “bike commuters” and had only pictures of white people with the occasional “black professional” I asked her why she didn’t photograph the delivery people, construction workers etc. … ie. the black and Hispanic and Asian people… and she mumbled something about trying to “improve the image of biking” then admitted that she didn’t really see them as part of the “green movement” since they “probably have no choice” –

I was so mad I wanted to quit working on the project she and I were collaborating on.

So, in the same way when people in a poor neighborhood grow food in their yards … it’s just being poor– but when white people do it they are saving the earth or something.

And YES black people on bikes and with gardens DO have an awareness of the environment. Surprisingly so! These values are in our communities and they are good values. My Grandmother was an organic gardener before it was “cool” –My mother believed in composting all waste and recycling whatever could be reused– it was a religious thing. God hates waste. [source]

Again, the focus on “choice,” something that – as we see often here on BGG2WL – not everyone is afforded. There’s also that class/race-defaulting thing going on here, too – if “poor people” (who are, assumedly, of color – and don’t we all assume poor people are people of color?) are just being poor by growing their own food (’cause, y’know, they can’t afford to pay all that money to eat garbage) and “white people” are assigned the noble position of “saving the Earth” by growing their own food… what are poor white people doing when they grow their own food? I mean, they’re poor, yes… but they’re not default poor, which is Black or “Brown.”

Excerpted from The Unbearable Whiteness of Eating: How The Food Culture War Affects Black America | A Black Girl’s Guide To Weight Loss

And, to me, this also very much ties into the original reason I began writing about food deserts in the first place, and that was a posting on The Root that proclaimed that Blacks have some form of hereditary slave palate that prevents them from even wanting fresh produce and quality meat, should they choose to eat it. Don’t get me wrong – it’s a ridiculous theory, but being ridiculous has never stopped a ton of people from believing it, before. It’s only a bigger deal here because that stereotype is affecting whether or not areas that need the healthier produce actually get them.

The article I quoted above speaks of Anacostia, a DC area said to be rife with “crime and violence, now offers yoga studios and chai lattes.” On that link you’ll find a map of businesses, libraries and hospitals in the Anacostia area, with one little organic grocery claiming to be “the first organic grocery store east of the river.” I can’t help but compare that to the area of Brooklyn I called home for a week or so, and the multiple organic spots we had access to within walking distance.

So, what do I get from all this? While gentrification plays a huge part in where businesses go, the money will have a hard time overshadowing the race if it is assumed that, simply because of your race, you won’t have an interest in what’s being offered. I don’t really know how to combat that.

While gentrification absolutely has its pitfalls – “Not everyone, of course, could stay. As neighborhoods gentrify, buildings are sold, landlords raise rents, and some people are forced out. In an ideal world, you wouldn’t have to wait for the dual bugaboos to arrive before you get a decent grocery store or adequate police patrols.” [source] – and its shortcomings, I’m inclined to presume that one of its most peculiar shortcomings is that even the Black members of The Gentry will struggle with overcoming the stereotypes of being “default poor.”

BGG2WL In NYC: The Effects Of Gentrification On Food Availability is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: anacostia, BGG2WL In NYC, brooklyn, capitalism, chicago, food availability, food desert, food deserts, gentrification

Until…

I just so happened to read Naked & Unashamed, and catch this quote at the end:

“People have to be comfortable in their own skin before they can be comfortable with someone else’s.”

Since this is a website about embracing oneself, being aware of one’s shortcomings and loving oneself enough to put in the effort to make ourselves better, I had to take a stab at it.

In all honesty, I’m beyond the video. I do enough analyzing all day… I’m not really moved by a music video, no matter how compelling it may be. I’m way more interested in the reactions to the video than I am the video itself.

Among one of my favorites, we have this:

“Typical…black women stripping nude in a video and debasing themselves. And you wonder why you are the least respected and sought after.”

Obviously, I don’t agree with that, but there’s a larger issue at play, here.

Sports Illustrated can have an entire magazine devoted to white women in swimsuits – suits, mind you, made of much less fabric than what Badu was wearing before the blurring began. SpikeTV can host some of the most misogynistic garbage I’ve ever seen (though, full disclosure, I do my fair share of laughing at it, too… What? They show CSI repeats.) Playboy has women showing their cookies, their cupcakes, their twinkies and their muffins. That’s just what they do. They model... They act – it’s a job… It’s Playboy – what do you expect?

A Black woman appears in a music video – saying nothing about whether or not she’s fully clothed – and she’s “just a video ho.” A Black woman poses in a bikini in a magazine, and it’s “She couldn’t wear more clothing than that?” A Black woman working on her flexibility must be doing it for sexual reasons. Don’t let her admit she takes a pole dancing fitness class.

Hell, Badu even tweeted the link to the video that inspired hers – a white male/female duo running Buck. E. Naked through Times Square, NYC. They’re just lovable, playful scamps running ’round an already sinful city, though. No big deal there. Erykah, however, is showcasing why no one loves Black women… by doing what the hell she wants to do in her music video.

There’s “debasing” going on, alright. It’s not self-imposed, though.

“People have to be comfortable in their own skin before they can be comfortable with someone else’s.”

Either we’re apologists for the sexuality of our non-Black counterparts, or we have set standards so high for Black women that exploring ourselves is no longer acceptable. We’re doomed to be one monolithic mass, regardless of our individuality… because someone we don’t know – someone who, essentially, doesn’t really give a damn about us – insists on trying to save us from ourselves. Since, y’know, we’re turning ourselves into whores. We’re always seeking to make a Black woman somebody’s Jezebel, in dire need of our “help.”

Not familiar with Jezebel?

The portrayal of Black women as lascivious by nature is an enduring stereotype. The descriptive words associated with this stereotype are singular in their focus: seductive, alluring, worldly, beguiling, tempting, and lewd. Historically, White women, as a category, were portrayed as models of self-respect, self-control, and modesty – even sexual purity, but Black women were often portrayed as innately promiscuous, even predatory. This depiction of Black women is signified by the name Jezebel.

There’s also this one, that I love:

Next, there is Jezebel, the bad-black-girl, who is depicted as alluring and seductive as she either indiscriminately mesmerizes men and lures them into her bed, or very deliberately lures into her snares those who have something of value to offer her.

I can’t help but wonder if our need to make a Black woman into a Jezebel comes from our failure to understand ourselves: what parts of us are sexual in nature, what is not; what should be seen as sexual, what should not; what should be considered hazardous, and what is harmless exploration – the kind from which lessons are learned.

Am I an advocate for sexual irresponsibility? No. Am I saying it’s ok to “be a slut?” If we share the same definition of “slut” (see: sexual irresponsibility), then I’ma go on and say “no.” Make no mistake, I don’t give passes for behavior that is not my own. However, I am a hippie at heart, and while I have my own standards for how I behave and interact with others in public, I can’t force those standards on others. I’ve never turned down the opportunity to offer up my opinion when asked for it, but making judgments and imposing those judgments on others as guidelines by which they must abide… are two different things entirely.

And while there are many who might not see – nor care about – what I’m saying here (and that’s okay), it’s worth pointing out – when we, as Black women, insist on reducing even the most innocent of our actions to Jezebelism, we perpetuate the notion that that’s all Black women are. That’s all you can expect of them. Being the Jezebel. Being the sirene.

Having said that, all I have from here are questions. Are so many of us so uncomfortable with the concept of sexuality – our own sexuality – that we can’t even identify when something is sexual or not? Has it stifled our intellectual understanding of sexuality? If we have “passes” to dole out, why are we not doling them out for ourselves? Do we often see inherently sexual messages in inherently non-sexual situations? Collectively, are we so repressed and limited in our self-comfort, that we can’t help but to project this repression onto others? Why care so much?

Must we make everything a Black woman does publicly be about her “whoring?” Or, are we really just projecting our own discomfort on other women who look like us? Like I said: from here, all I’ve got is questions. Well, questions… and this:

“People have to be comfortable in their own skin before they can be comfortable with someone else’s.”

On Badu and Our Bodies: Are We Comfortable In Our Own Skin? is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

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Post tags: black women, blackness, celebrities, mentality, sex, sexuality

I’m not going to quote the whole darn thing, like I usually do, because I’m sure you’ve probably already read it. That being said, I am going to highlight a few things that stuck out to me.

No one in this boot camp works out to be model thin. And nearly to a person, they reject any notion that they should, or that that standard is even cute. Or realistic. Or mentally healthy. That’s especially true of Gibson, 41, who has been a fitness instructor for 12 years, though you wouldn’t necessarily know it by looking at her.

This photo of Michelle appeared on the cover of The Washington Post with this story.

Like many black women, Gibson describes her 5-foot-4, size 14-plus physique as “thick,” and considers herself ultra-feminine — no matter what the mainstream culture has to say about it.

She’s one of the most full-figured women in the gym, but she’s in love with her body. And it’s a sentiment that syncs perfectly with a recent survey conducted by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation that focused on African American women. The poll found that although black women are heavier than their white counterparts, they report having appreciably higher levels of self-esteem. Although 41 percent of average-sized or thin white women report having high self-esteem, that figure was 66 percent among black women considered by government standards to be overweight or obese.

…

At this gym in Capitol Heights at the crack of dawn, and in myriad other places, that thinking has made black women happier with their bodies than white women in many ways. And in some ways, it’s put them on the slippery slope toward higher rates of obesity.

…

In the Post-Kaiser survey, 90 percent of black women say living a healthful lifestyle is very important to them, outranking religion, career, marriage and other priorities. Yet two-thirds report eating at fast-food restaurants at least once a week, and just more than half cook dinner at home on a regular basis.

For Cuff, being healthy doesn’t mean being a size 2: “That’s not what I grew up seeing. It wasn’t in my makeup. It’s not about trying to identify with somebody else.”

Even when celebrities such as Queen Latifah and Jennifer Hudson have touted dramatic weight loss in magazines and commercials, they have largely retained their curves. Among black women who want to lose weight, having model proportions is often not the goal.

For 10 years, Joseph Neil has worked with people of all races across the Washington area as a full-time trainer and certified nutritionist. Black women usually come to him with a body-mass index (a measurement of weight to height) of 29, while for white women it’s usually 22 or 23, he says. Anything over 25 is considered overweight.

He attributes the higher BMI among African American women to work demands, which he says lead to fast-food lifestyles, less exercise and fewer healthful eating options in majority-black places such as Prince George’s County.

Among Neil’s clients, white women “are self-conscious about the numbers. They say I want to weigh 110, 115, 120.” Black women, who always say they want to keep their curves, “give me sizes — 6, 8, 10, 12.”

“White women are not coming to a trainer saying I want to be a 12. Every white woman who wants to work out and train wants to be petite, petite, no curves, no hips, no butt, nothing, just toned,” he says.

…

In 2008, Heather Hausenblas, a University of Florida professor of exercise physiology, co-wrote a study looking at the role the media played in body image among white and black women. Both groups were exposed to the ideal tall, thin white woman’s physique, and their moods were compared before and after. White women felt badly about themselves after viewing the idealized physique; black women were unaffected.

Black women “are just not comparing themselves to these white models,” Hausenblas says. Caucasian women are internalizing the images; black women are not.

And it’s the internalizing that damages women’s self-esteem. Right after Adele won six Grammy awards, Vogue sparked an uproar by Photoshopping an image of the buxom British singer to make her appear thinner for the magazine’s March cover. It’s the kind of falsehood and manipulation that makes women and girls starve themselves, experts say.

New York-based writer and image activist Michaela Angela Davis calls it the “one act of cultural violence that we didn’t endure” — the one way that black women “being ignored by the media and all things glamorous worked for us.”

Is that lack of pressure changing as young women — black and white — aspire to look like Tyra Banks, Halle Berry or Beyonce? Possibly. There is anecdotal evidence that the number of African Americans seeking treatment for long-hidden eating disorders is on the rise.

Meanwhile, for young black women, the hunger to be seen, to be part of the beauty conversation, has often meant accepting even demeaning portrayals, says Daphne Valerius, 30, who produced an award-winning documentary in 2007 called “Souls of Black Girls.”She points to the proliferation of images of gyrating, scantily clad black dancers and models in music videos, social media sites and elsewhere as particularly poisonous.

“I have cousins who are 13 and 14,” Valerius says. “That’s the image they are seeing of themselves in the media.”

Still, the range of what’s considered beautiful for African American women remains more elastic. Black women were excluded for so long, says Davis, “we got to judge ourselves.” And cultural supports sprang up to help.

There’s a lot going on, here. I mean, a lot.

To be honest, I’m a bit dumbfounded by the slant. I’m dumbfounded that we can look at studies that show overweight women of color view themselves better than thin white women, and think that the Black women are the anomaly. We don’t see it as peculiar that white women don’t think higher of themselves. We think there’s something wrong with fat women valuing themselves greater than society thinks they should. We think it’s okay for thin women, the ones usually rewarded and praised in society, to think so little of themselves. That doesn’t strike us as newsworthy or worthy of introspection.

In other words, if you’re fat and have the audacity to still think you’re worth something, society’s going to put you on a petri dish and nitpick you apart until you value yourself as little as they do. I mean, come on. You’re fat. Surely you can’t be all that.

That’s creepy to me. That’s also not where a healthy body image or a healthy journey stems from, either. Lots of people lose weight because they learned to hate their former selves, hate fat and, essentially, hate fat people. I don’t think longevity – in other words, maintenance of any weight loss that stems from that kind of hatred – can stem from that kind of place.

There are lots of misunderstandings – at least, from where I sit – about body image in this country. Even in my journey, I’ve struggled with the realities of going from one size to another, and the smaller I became, the more people tried to pile on to stop me. The more that I navigated spaces where non-Blacks were more prevalent, the more I was asked, “So… how much more do you have to lose?” As if to imply, “Clearly, you’re not finished losing weight, right?”

It’s hard for a Black woman who has to integrate these spaces to not feel some kind of judgment about her body, even if only implied. It is, conversely, very easy to write that judgment off as being merely cultural differences and go on about one’s merry way.

I feel like this article spurned a lot of different feelings in me, because so much of it is sooooo much more complicated than “Black women are fat but still feel good about themselves. What gives?” and I feel like this doesn’t do it any justice.

Our society has this weird way of implying that if you don’t look, behave or perform in a fashion that is pleasing to my eyes, you will be spotlighted, given the choice to comply, and either be welcomed back into the fold for complying or eternally ostracized for your non-compliance. Black women are constantly being called out for having bodies that are “unpleasing to the eye,” given the opportunity to change those bodies, and are then ostracized (read the comments of that article) for their non-compliance.

But then, something peculiar happens. Black women…are perfectly fine with that. Who wants to contribute to a society that tries to devalue them because their bodies won’t conform to someone else’s standards?

I support that.

Michelle Gibson, the woman who gave her story for the start of the article (and is, I assume, the woman in the photo standing tall and proud in her sports bra), mentions being overweight and still “would run circles around the average person.” I ain’t mad at her – I’ve talked repeatedly about one being able to be both “fit” and “fat” at the same time. I, also, am intrigued by her statement of, after trying Jenny Craig and Nutrisystem, that she “came to realize that she has to have some freedom to eat.” I don’t generally consider those companies “food” providers, so I honestly can’t call that “eating.” At 5’4″ and somewhere around 180lbs, and that active? I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that her comments left me wondering about her diet and what she calls “freedom to eat.”

Speaking of “freedom to eat,” it was great to see mention of the rise of African Americans receiving treatment for eating disorders. To me, it just underscored the reality that far too many of us are lacking the knowledge of how to make food work for us. On one end of the spectrum, we’re so eager for control that we’re trying to control an inanimate object like food but on the other end, using euphemisms like “I need freedom to eat” sounds more like letting food control you. (And no, that’s not to say that I think that’s what she’s doing, but the phrasing sounds annoyingly familiar.) We’re disconnected from our original understanding of food, and its affecting our ability to manage our bodies in safe and healthy fashions, regardless of whether that body is a size 6 or a 16.

I don’t know how to say this without it sounding much worse than it’s actually meant to be, but the reality of it all is that I can’t help but wonder if all of the Black women surveyed were being truthful about their levels of self-esteem… or if their understanding of self-esteem is the same as the surveyors’ understanding. Not to say that it is impossible for a Black woman who is overweight to have high self-esteem, and that be the end of it, but to say that I can’t see too many Black women being willing to admit, to a stranger, no less, that she has a lack of self esteem. It is socially acceptable for Black women to be virulently headstrong, suffer in silence and admit their shortcomings to no one. Could you imagine being surveyed about your weight, and being asked whether or not you had high self-esteem? Would you say you did, even if you didn’t, simply because you “know” that you’re not only a representation of yourself, but every other Black person – not just the women! – in America? Isn’t that the general understanding for Black women? That we put ourselves and our individual well being aside for the greater good, even if its against our best interests? The good ol’ Black Tax at work again.

Now that I think about it, the frustrating flaw in the survey – at least, to me – is that a woman should have low self-esteem simply because she is obese. The two shouldn’t be connected, and that’s not where healthy body image or a mentally healthy journey towards wellness springs from. You can love yourself and have high self-esteem without having the perfect body; but you can also love yourself, have high self-esteem and understand that there are some things that you want or need to change… and those things don’t make you “worth more” in the eyes of the person who matters most – yourself – because you were already worth all the Jacksons (Andrew or Michael… take your pick.) I don’t even think the interesting thing is the subjects of the survey, anymore. I’m more intrigued by the surveyors, now.

I can’t be the only person out here dumbfounded by this, can I? And don’t you worry – there’s far more that I found strange, but I’m not about that 2,500-word-article life… and I’m sure my readers aren’t, either. What do you think?

News: Fat Black Women Have The Audacity To Think Highly Of Themselves is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

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I. Am not. The Food Police.

That’s right.

And before I dig any deeper into that? Let me clarify with what I define as “The Food Police.”

“The Food Police are the busybodies — activists, trial lawyers, and troublemakers — who would have the government intervene in everyday nutrition choices under the pretense of ‘protecting America’s Children’.”

And before you jump in and tell me there’s nothing wrong with the government doing that… let me remind you that almost every single time that the government has intervened in the nutritional lifestyle of the public, it has proven to be problematic.

And why would it not happen that way? We elect lawyers and other similarly-degreed individuals to our government, and we ask them to take the information sent to them and use it wisely to make decisions on our behalf. Who do you think is paying for all of that information and those studies that they’re reviewing? Surely, our government cannot afford it. Industries who are most affected (either for the positive or for the negative) by a desired outcome are the ones most likely to spend the money on a study, pay for lobbyists to kiss the behind of whatever congressman in charge and provide “campaign donations” to those most able to help them further their goals.

And really? Let’s keep it real. For a product to be approved for sale… it only has to prove that it is not harmful. Not that it actually has benefits… but that it won’t kill you. Enter: GRAS, or Generally Recognized As Safe. “Its benefits, as we see them today, outweigh the problems…. as we see them today.” Never mind the fact that “the problems” may very well appear tomorrow.

My favorite example of this? Margarine. Yesssss… margarine. Margarine was pushed onto us in response to the “OMG – butter has saturated fat!” message. Yes. We were told to eat a completely artificial product – loaded with trans fats at the time – instead of simply balancing our intake of the real thing. Surely enough, it was a cancer-causing agent, causing countless cancer-related deaths.

As I said, the larger food manufacturing grew, the more we were distanced from it’s production, and the less oversight we were granted to it’s creation and ingredients. Because (in my opinion) the government wanted to simply do what it could to ensure that the US had a consistent food supply, lots of leeway was given to big food factories to help ease them along their way in supplying our supermarkets with food – glorious food! Want an example? The food industry was able to get the FDA to change the law – imitation foods that weren’t nutritionally deficient in comparison to their whole counterparts didn’t have to be clearly marked as “imitation.” (You can skip the below quote if you like because I’ve quoted it before, but it’s valuable enough to read twice.)

The 1938 Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act imposed strict rules requiring that the word “imitation” appear on any food product that was, well, an imitation … [And] the food industry [argued over the word], strenuously for decades, and in 1973 it finally succeeded in getting the imitation rule tossed out, a little-notice but momentous step that helped speed America down the path of nutritionism.

… The American Heart Association, eager to get Americans off saturated fats and onto vegetable oils (including hydrogenated vegetable oils), was actively encouraging the food industry to “modify” various foods to get the saturated fats and cholesterol out of them, and in the early seventies the association urged that “any existing and regulatory barriers to the marketing of such foods be removed.”

And so they were when, in 1973, the FDA (not, note, the Congress that wrote the law) simply repealed the 1938 rule concerning imitation foods. … The revised imitation rule held that as long as an imitation product was not “nutritionally inferior” to the natural food it sought to impersonate—as long as it had the same quantities of recongized nutrients—the imitation could be marketed without using the dreaded “i” word. — In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto

[..]

I do want to go back to the point about the FDA’s law about imitation substances, though. It does a lot more to the food industry than you think it does. Take a loaf of bread, for example. Bread has maybe five ingredients in it – flour, water, sugar, salt, and yeast – but if you look on the label for the bread in your house right now? You see what – hyphenated chemicals. The food industry now has the ability to put anything in your food, so long as it is not deficient in the nutrients that science recognizes are valuable… in comparison to the food it imitates.

So, if the foods aren’t nutritionally deficient, why is this a problem?

Well, how much credit do you give food science? The rule is simply that the foods cannot be deficient in nutrients that science recognizes as valuable. What about what science hasn’t spotted yet? What about all these hyphenated chemicals that science hasn’t identified (or is prevented from identifying) as harmful to our health?

And before you call me a conspiracy theorist, consider this: it took science decades to recognize that trans-fats – once a massive part of margarine and other major foods – were hazardous to our health. Believe it or not, the government still allows trans-fats in foods, and actually allows food manufacturers to lie about how much trans-fats are in their foods. (More on that later.)

And that’s another thing – our government can only be reactionary. Because of the predicament they’re in – they can’t really test for anything with such a limited budget, and they certainly can’t keep up with all of the products flooding the market every single day. It simply isn’t possible. They can approve something today, and weeks – years… maybe decades – later discover the hell they’ve unleashed upon the public.

I’m not even going to get on the problems with school lunch. Just know that the USDA’s standards… don’t meet mine. And anything I pack for my child has to compete against whatever neutral-colored gobbledy gook they’re serving with that sugary milk colored with Red-400. Thanks. (Oh, and don’t you worry – I will get to the school lunch issue, too.)

I’m sorry, but I don’t know that I love the idea of these lawyer-turned-politicians determining what it is that I should be eating. I already know what I should be eating: the stuff that comes out of the ground, and the occasional bit of animal or animal by-product (cheese, milk, etc.) We all should know that.

But if I’m not The Food Police, then what on Earth is this site for?

People who use the term “Food Police” tend to fall on either side of the following spectrum: Either they reeeeeally want lots of legislation, or they reeeeeally don’t.

Am I the only one who sees the problem with this? All this talk about whether or not the government should be involved… and no talk of how to involve ourselves in making better decisions.

It doesn’t take a federal law to tell you that a cheeto isn’t grown on a vine… or grown at all. It doesn’t take federal mandates to explain to you that a fake food can never nutritionally replace a real one. At least, it shouldn’t… and that’s why, even though I don’t want to be aligned with The Food Police, I for damn sure don’t want to be aligned with those who are anti-TFP, too.

Why? Because those people not only want the government completely out of our nutritional decision making… they also want to keep us from ever learning about how to make the proper decisions. Why? Because knowledge is power.. and the more knowledge we’d develop, the more we’d realize that we shouldn’t be buying these phony products. Heaven forbid food manufacturers be compelled to create quality.

I get those people commenting on this site, too – some comments I approve, many others, I don’t – who mistakenly align me with the TFP camp. I don’t need a government to determine what’s acceptable for me to eat. Thousands of years of human existence on this Earth does that just fine. Where’s the push to educate people? To help us make our own decisions?

That’s where my site fits in.

I write about what I’ve learned that has helped me reclaim my health. My community, my stores, my options all facilitate that. I write in hopes that someone else will gain a little insight into how I’ve achieved what I have thus far, and that perhaps it can help someone else do the same. How often is this information available out there? For free even? C’mon. Really.

To put it bluntly… I don’t care what you eat. I do care that we all have accurate information about how dangerous and questionable some of our choices are. People take risks every day… and when they know the risk associated with their decisions, that’s one thing. A lot of this food stuff? The real answers are kept from us because manufacturers know full well we’d reject their products. I think that is wrong.

As often as I write about the “Come to Fitness” moment, I also write about how people have to make that realization on their own. It’s easier for me to live the knowledge I’ve acquired, answer the questions as they come to me and hope that we all can make better-informed decisions because of that enlightenment. Me trying to force you – someone I don’t know, don’t live with and aren’t personally invested in – to eat how I think is best without any consideration of your budget, your resources, your time or your abilities? It’s unfair.

That’s the real reason why I write about these issues that aren’t just “Swap this with this and save calories!” Because the reality is… it takes more than that. It takes making sure that we are aware of what we need to live healthy lives, so that we can begin to demand it. If we know that we need access to these things, we can show that the demand is there. If we never learn, we never demand and we continue to only get more of the same. I’m not pro- or anti-Food Police. I’m pro-”enlightening-and-educating-the-public-so-that-we-can-demand-more-of-our-food-industry.” And neither side does enough of that for me.

So, until they do… I’ll be over here writing… and sangin’ in the background.

I Am Not The Food Police is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. No Myths Here: Food Stamps, Food Deserts and Food Scarcity
2. Hierarchy of Food Needs: How Do You Get GOOD Food When There’s No Food?
3. Neither Soul Food, Nor “Slave Food,” Made You Fat

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: FDA, government, school lunch, the food police, usda