“How the Use of BMI Fetishizes White Embodiment and Racializes Fat Phobia”

https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/how-use-bmi-fetishizes-white-embodiment-and-racializes-fat-phobia/2023-07

This article, written by Sabrina Strings, whom I met with, has been fundamental to my project and the research I have been doing, and it explains the origins of fat phobia. One of the main things I have been learning is that there is a belief around the world that says if a woman is bigger in size,

then that means that they are unhealthy, and everyone is looking down on them, like saying Poor thing, they don’t know how to control themselves or eat; they must not know how to manage their emotions; what a pity and this is something that is complemented with BMI because it is a study that people use very often, and if you do not fit into the categories, then you are overweight or underweight, and that means unhealthy, and that is not necessarily the case; they are not mutually exclusive. 

• What she is trying to express in this article is the fact that BMI is not a neutral medical tool; it is not scientific. It started as a way of saying that fat was not a white issue but a “problem” of non-white people, which made them bad or a problem or even inferior, and this was a way used to rationalize this theory as medicine and health; however, it is a way to rationalize the bias towards different races as well as beauty. If you don’t fit into this square or range, then you are incorrect. 
• This was something that started as racism, not health, in the 1700s because fatness was a common denominator in ethnic groups such as African and Chinese women, so this made them inherently less, and this was the “proof” that they used, which shows us that it was not about health; it was about finding a way to make different people inferior, but reality is that it was just different. 
• In the years 1800-1900, this theory was made official by eugenics. This science was used to make people think of differences as better or worse; some traits were considered more attractive, while others were considered worse. This was even backed by scientists such as Charles Davenport, who made the claim that being fat was a defect and stated that people who were racially Chinese or Jewish were the main people who suffered from “racial obesity.” This was when people started to believe it was a disease, not just an opinion or a fashion.
• In the Early and mid-1900s, there was the case of insurance companies having their own parameter in the form of a standard weight in their insurance policies to limit issues and make sure that whoever they were insuring was “safe” (One of the main things that we need to learn is that fat does not mean unhealthy and thin does not mean healthy). However, these standards were based on white men, not women, and did not consider other races. Then there were medical papers that were published saying that people who were overweight under the BMI standard that the cause of 95% of the people being overweight because of overeating and not having healthy habits; however, there is no real proof of this. It is just words. Still, they have power, and people keep believing this statement even without real scientific backing.
• In the 1950s and 1970s, a scientist named Ancel Keys gained attention. He actually created BMI, which was the easiest way to calculate who was overweight and who was underweight, and even though it had little scientific backing, it was still something that continued to be pushed, and he, as a person, referred to fat people as “disgusting and repugnant,” which shows us that he had ulterior motives based on his own images or his own opinions. 
• In the years of 1973-1995, BMI became the standard by which government and medical agencies measured bodies, and what is even scarier is that we still use it today (Why? When we have had all of these researchers talk about how this is inherently only made for a certain kind of person and body). These numbers weren’t shaped only by science, but by beauty standards, and what is sad is that it was tested on a very small group of people, so it didn’t apply to everyone. 
• Even though it seems scientific and natural, it is honestly just a new form of racism, but it makes it seem official.