Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls by Jes Baker Page B

The Queen Latifah Show , The Laura Ingraham Show , and several other media outlets with requests to appear and give interviews. Her project achieved what it was supposed to: It made her seen. But when The Huffington Post re-posted her TBINAA, a slideshow of “body image heroes” was included—and nine white women’s faces beamedat me with each click. The last woman pictured in the slideshow was Asian. If I am being honest, I felt the ugly tinge of jealousy creep up my spine when media outlets started calling me. After all, TBINAA started because of my choice to post a picture of my large body in just my undies on a social media page. I wondered, Where was The Huffington Post then? When I looked deeper at that ugly feeling it became clear it was not a personal jealousy about my gorgeous friend being seen in her brilliance. It was the bitter reminder of how often women of color, Black women specifically, are not seen.
    The same day I watched the slideshow of body positive heroines, sans any Black or brown bodies, TBINAA posted a clip of Glee ’s Amber Riley dominating the cha-cha-cha on Dancing with the Stars . There was nary a peep from the media about her beautiful example of movement, endurance, and power in a large body. Sure, several articles discussed what a great job she did. One even mentioned the fact that she was “plus-sized,” but no one described television star Amber Riley as a body positive heroine. Why? Because the social narrative is, “She is a singing Black girl; she’s supposed to be fat.” That narrative renders her body an act of happenstance. Her body “just is,” and therefore is not noteworthy. It would be like reporting that she has a nose. Of course she is fat, and her boldness in her particular body is nothing to aspire to.
    Gabourey Sidibe, the breakout star of the 2009 film Precious , defied all odds and persevered beyond most of the entertainment industry’s attempts to equate her with the illiterate food-addicted character she played in the film. Her out-loud, charismatic, ebullient personality and beauty continue to shine through, and yet she is not touted as a hero of body positivity. Her size and dark skin make her an outsider even in movements of inclusivity. Her absence from being included in any meaningful way in this dialogue is unsurprising but important. Black women have always found ways to live in our skin with a dignity the world has not afforded us. When Black women’s bodies are acknowledged, it is usually to pathologize them. A Googlesearch of “Black women” and “body image” leads to scores of Internet hits on the “obesity crisis” in Black communities. When the word “Black” is removed, the same search generates article upon article of white women embracing body positivity.
    In Western culture, white womanhood is held up as the epitome of beauty and desire. Part of the machine of size discrimination is stripping white women of that status as punishment for fatness. There is a way in which body positive movements both reject the notion of the body as object while reclaiming it as beautiful by dismantling the definition. Black women’s bodies have always been objects in the social sphere, but are never exalted as beautiful. The fat Black woman’s body has been rendered as an object of service, whether for food, advice, care-taking, or other areas, but it has never been something to aspire to, not a thing of beauty. The mammy, a stereotypical trope born out of slavery, validated large Black women’s existence only through their service to white women and white families. Think Gone with the Wind , the 1980s television show Gimme a Break , or the film adapted from the book The Help . Our society tells us fatness is not beautiful. Blackness is not beautiful. So, even while as a society we may be starting to reclaim size diversity as beautiful, the presence of Blackness complicates the