Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia Free Audiobook Download by Sabrina Strings

Why do people fear fat bodies? In Fearing the Black Body, Sabrina Strings sheds light on how American culture has been produced by a white supremacist capitalist patriarchy and the ways in which it shapes "black" bodies. The book examines fat phobia as an example of how racialized white supremacist ideologies shape the social construction of all aspects of society, including our body size, performance, and self-esteem.

"I'm black, she's white" Sabrina sings to the chorus of the song that is playing over the loudspeakers in her head. "But I don't want to be fat like her," she says, staring at a spot on the wall in front of her. She inhales deeply, takes a sip from her bottle of water, and then lets out a shaky breath as she tries to calm herself down. Sabrina has been plagued with thoughts about being fat since childhood and likely even before that. But did you know that there was a time when it was acceptable for Sabrina to be fat?

In this audiobook, Strings states that "the idea of the fattening body has been central to anti-black racial ideologies in the United States. Fatness as a sign of black laziness was common in the antebellum period and has endured through today." She goes on to explore how fat hatred and weight discrimination have been used by white bodies since at least the 1600s.

"The Black body has been understood to be the physical, social and cultural embodiment of a threat: a threat to the White nation. As anthropologist Sabrina Strings contends, this fear of the Black body has long informed the ways in which White Americans have attempted to control and limit Black people's access to "their" bodily space."

Sabrina Strings's book highlights the importance of understanding how the Black body has been sexualized and used to control social norms, such as those relating to obesity. It also addresses the ways in which Western society has 'protected' itself from the presence of black bodies by instituting many social rules that have made it difficult for people to acknowledge the need for intervention. This has led to a culture where women of color are often blamed for their weight rather than encouraged to change or lose weight.

The history behind fat phobia is one that is deeply rooted in oppression and racism. Fatness was historically seen as a signifier of a person's moral and cultural character and often associated with the "uncivilized" people of African descent. Fat phobia as we know it today began to take shape in the mid 19th century when white women were encouraged to be thin by magazines, doctors, and diet books, who then turned that fat-phobic gaze towards black women .