Faqt black woman1/14/2024 ![]() Regardless of income, Black women consistently experience weightism in addition to sexism and racism. But many studies show that the stigma associated with body weight, rather than the body weight itself, is responsible for some adverse health consequences blamed on obesity, including increased mortality risk. Indeed, social determinants have been shown to be more consequential to health than BMI or health behaviors.ĭoctors often tell fat people that dietary control leading to weight loss is the solution to their health problems. It also perpetuates a misinformed and damaging message about weight and health. Today the idea that weight is the main problem dogging Black women builds on these historically racist ideas and ignores how interrelated social factors impact Black women’s health. Valorizing voluptuousness in Black women, these physicians claimed, validated their unhealthy diets, behaviors and figures. Later, some doctors wanted to push Black men to reform their aesthetic preferences. These presumptions were not backed by scientific data but instead embodied the prevailing racial scientific logic at the time. In the eyes of many medical practitioners in the late 19th century, Black women were destined to die off along with the men of their race because of their presumed inability to control their “animal appetites”-eating, drinking and fornicating. The men of Africa were said to like their women robust, and the European press featured tales of cultural events loosely described as festivals intended to fatten African women to the desired, “unwieldy” size. Nearly three centuries ago scientists studying race argued that African women were especially likely to reach dimensions that the typical European might scorn. This heightened concern about their weight is not new it reflects the racist stigmatization of Black women’s bodies. While there has been a massive public health campaign urging fat people to eat right, eat less and lose weight, Black women have been specifically targeted. Compared with their rates in other racial groups, chronic cardiovascular, inflammatory and metabolic risk factors have been found to be elevated in Black women, even after controlling for behaviors such as smoking, physical exercise or dietary variables.īlack women have also been identified as the subgroup with the highest body mass index (BMI) in the U.S., with four out of five classified as either “overweight” or “obese.” Many doctors have claimed that Black women’s “excess” weight is the main cause of their poor health outcomes, often without fully testing or diagnosing them. Black people, and Black women in particular, face considerable health challenges.
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