Fearing the Black Body - by Sabrina Strings (Paperback)

About the Book

"String's "Fearing the Black Body" critically examines the concepts of fat phobia and race"--

Book Synopsis

Winner, 2020 Body and Embodiment Best Publication Award, given by the American Sociological Association

Honorable Mention, 2020 Sociology of Sex and Gender Distinguished Book Award, given by the American Sociological Association

How the female body has been racialized for over two hundred years

There is an obesity epidemic in this country and poor Black women are particularly stigmatized as "diseased" and a burden on the public health care system. This is only the most recent incarnation of the fear of fat Black women, which Sabrina Strings shows took root more than two hundred years ago.

Strings weaves together an eye-opening historical narrative ranging from the Renaissance to the current moment, analyzing important works of art, newspaper and magazine articles, and scientific literature and medical journals--where fat bodies were once praised--showing that fat phobia, as it relates to Black women, did not originate with medical findings, but with the Enlightenment era belief that fatness was evidence of "savagery" and racial inferiority.

The author argues that the contemporary ideal of slenderness is, at its very core, racialized and racist. Indeed, it was not until the early twentieth century, when racialized attitudes against fatness were already entrenched in the culture, that the medical establishment began its crusade against obesity. An important and original work, Fearing the Black Body argues convincingly that fat phobia isn't about health at all, but rather a means of using the body to validate race, class, and gender prejudice.

Review Quotes

"Fearing the Black Body demonstrates how black women's bodies have historically been marked controversial ... Strings' work is also relevant to the awareness of black women in feminism, given how heavily women's body positivity factors into it."--Caroline Fernandez "The Journal of Core Communication"

"Fearing the Black Body participates in a critical discourse that exposes the convergence of anxieties about race and fatness as it manifests in our current fat phobia. The text successfully demonstrates how the Black body has been subject to ongoing surveillance, and more specifically how it has been co-opted as a site where struggles around race and class issues play out."-- "Fat Studies"

"A fascinating look at the intersections of anti-fat prejudice and anti-Black racism, as well as a solid reminder to keep asking questions."-- "Shondaland"

"A thoroughly researched exploration of the historical relationship between race-and weight-related prejudices ... This fascinating and carefully constructed argument persuasively establishes a heretofore unexplored connection between racism and Western standards for body size, making it a worthy contribution to the social sciences."-- "Publishers Weekly"

"In Fearing the Fat Black Body, Sabrina Strings fills what has long been a gaping hole in scholarship on fatness and body size. Her careful historiographical exploration of the racialized roots of anti-fat, pro-thin bias should figure prominently in any academic, medical, political, or popular discussion of the contemporary American 'Obesity Epidemic.' In looking at the complex intersections of race, gender, class, and morality in current American framings of fatness and size, Strings does not simply add race to the conversation but shows that any analysis of body size that does not center race is necessarily incomplete."--Natalie Boero, author of Killer Fat: Media, Medicine and Morals in the American Obesity Epidemic

"This accessible academic title ... makes a heavily cited case that modern society's idolization of thinness is less rooted in medical science than in racist ideas born during the Enlightenment."-- "The New York Times"

"This is an important, deeply-researched study of the racialized roots of fat denigration. It should be a must-read for scholars whose work focuses on the history of race, of gender, and of the bodyas well as by anyone who is interested in our deeply problematic contemporary culture of dieting and body shame."--Amy Erdman Farrell, author of Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body in American Culture

"Strings's work is deeply interdisciplinary, and some of the most compelling arguments for the relevance of these final chapters can be found off the page. In this way, Fearing the Black Body opens the possibility for us to consider how present-day attitudes toward race, health, and wellness are connected to older and complex historical narratives."-- "Early American Literature"

"Fearing the Black Body is a joy to read, smooth and erudite. And it is also a joy to experience, to feel Strings pulling the strands of the historical web closer and closer so that their knots and tangled intersections are clear to see. Most important, though, is the intellectual satisfaction it provides in giving a clear and well-argued convincing rationale for the origins, reach, and astonishing success of a bias whose history, as it had previously been presented, was patchy and inadequate."-- "Nursing Clio"

"A meticulous work that puts the past in conversation with the future and demonstrates how the desires of a few can be forcefully encroached upon others until they hold true for many ... reminds readers that policing weight, a la Foucault's 'biopolitics, ' is almost always about control as much as it is about a 'preferred size.'"-- "American Journal of Sociology"

"A much-needed examination of the racism and colonialism embedded within society's imagined dangers of fat (black) bodies."-- "Library Journal"

"As a sociologist with a rich understanding of social history and cultural studies, Sabrina Strings asks and answers new and immensely generative questions about the ways of thinking that rule the world. Her astute analyses reveal the ways in which seemingly innocent aesthetic judgments about womens bodies register the effects of deep historical currents of thought and practice."--George Lipsitz, author of How Racism Takes Place

"Dr. Sabrina Strings analyzes with keen insight and critical nuance the origins of anti-fatness and its relationship to racial subjugation ... a groundbreaking work."-- "Resources for Gender and Women's Studies: A Feminist Review"

"Once upon a time, fat bodies were celebrated in art, in newspapers and magazines, and in medical journals, but that all changed during the Enlightenment Era of the 18th century when fatness was purposefully intertwined with the idea that people of color were racially inferior savages. Sabrina Strings's incredible book analyzes how that shift continued to plague Black women. . . . Fearing the Black Body makes the convincing argument that the thin ideal has always been racist."-- "Bitch Media"

"Strings seeks to illuminate how our current fat phobia is rooted, specifically, in a fear of black women. [She] persuasively shows that ... the link between fatness, racial otherness and, especially, female blackness, looms prominently in the American cultural imagination."-- "Times Literary Supplement"

"Strings uses the methods of process-tracing and historical narrative to create a work of impressive scope that moves beyond the consensus of feminist scholars ... [Strings] has shifted the chronology of gendered and racialized anti-fatness, inviting scholars to discover sources that can amplify non-white and non-elite voices in this longue durée of fat history."-- "Journal of Interdisciplinary History"

"Traces centuries of racist pseudoscience up to the 20th century, demonstrating that today's ideal of thinness is inherently both sexist and racist."-- "Colorlines"

About the Author

Sabrina Strings is Chancellor's Fellow & Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine. She was a recipient of the UC Berkeley Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellowship with a joint appointment in the School of Public Health and Department of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. Her work has appeared in Ethnic and Racial Studies; Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society, and Feminist Media Studies.