I have been reading the book Fear the Black Body by Sabrina Strings, which was recommended by both Zulinka and one of the people I interviewed, and it has made many interesting points even though I have not finished it.
One of the main points that the book starts with is how doctors and philosophers could not understand why people were starving when there was plenty of money for people to be eating, and how the ideal body had changed since now the description of people’s bodies in the United States was thin and pale, and this was called an epidemic. There were two sides to the argument: some people thought slenderness was a matter of fashion, while others considered it an American shortcoming and linked it to subjects such as religion and morals.
One of the main issues we see is how roundness and a more volume-heavy body were connected to blackness. This is a history that starts to be explained in the sense that it was anti-African and that the fact that they had more volume in their body was considered ungodly because it must have meant that they were eating more and that was gluttonous. One of the ways they started this was by the fear of the fat black woman, and this came from religious ideals on how to go against a certain race but then discipline white women: “synchronized repression of ‘savage’ blackness and the generation of disciplined whiteness”. The idea behind this was to create a society where there were some people who were above others by telling them that the thin ideal was better because that was the reality of Europeans and Americans, and then degrade those who were not the same, even those who could be considered white (Irish, Russians).
This chapter starts with a story about a girl named Katharina, who was a slave in Antwerp and was drawn in 1521; she is described as having a round face and a plump body.
One of the main things that is interesting is that English women in the Elizabethan era did not just paint themselves as whiter, but actually painted themselves black to show the difference and make themselves look like the beauty ideal. This was definitely supremacy culture, and something that was very interesting was the fact that in England there was not a glamorization of black people like they were in other countries in Europe; there was, from the beginning, a deep disdain, but they did not enter the slave trade until later than the other European countries, such as Portugal. (page 55)
The slave trade had a tremendus effect in england and holland throught the creation of sugar and how it started to be so highly available that now people were having it as a daily luxury which ment a lot of people in england who were middle class were starting to become fat. (57) The word obesity was used for the first time in 1620 in Oxford from the investigation of people in England getting fatter. The growth of the wellness gout, this was called before as the king’s disease, robust habit
The main thing that we are able to see in the introduction is the fact that she talks about the fact that fatphobia is actually about racism and not actual health concerns, which is one of the main arguments which is said in the mainstream media today. (An example I thought about when reading this is Lv Schmit an influencer about weight loss who speaks of portion control and excessive steps in order to live in a perfect body and she does not speak of nutrients or muscle density just thinness and this might work while she is in her 20s but what will happen when she is older and has just been eating what she wants but with small quantities).
The way that she is explaining this is by mixing a lot of multidisciplinary ideas including history and her own analysis with what was going on at the historical time and the different resources we have from back when all of this started in the renaissance era when there started to be a mix of races in europe not just white europeans.
She asks the question of why, when people think of fat women, there are a lot of times when fatness is directly correlated with black bodies because of the stereotypes out there. (Is there a connection of this to Medellin? Do we not want to look anything different from Europeans?)
A large conversation or point that is made throughout the book is the fact that, mostly in America, there is a clear disdain for fat bodies, and women try to be as lean as possible. (I believe this comes to the point where it has become almost a sickness where they cannot rest and they have to be active all day and counting their food, even though they have tried to move on from this and have more food freedom is what it is called it is something that is constantly on women’s minds and it has even gone as far as to become a social media phenomenon were they speak about what they eat and the work outs they do daily).
One of the main things the author talks about is how this is a subject that has been constructed there was not always the idea that one has to be as thin as possible but it is something that has evolved and in her opinion it has evolved at the same time as racism, she also explains how there have always been different bodies in different societies and most of them at one time or another have been appreciated or admired, for example the fact that in mediaeval times a more voluminous body was preferred by many but as most things in this world this evolved and I believe that this evolution is the reason why we are in the ozempicedemic today.
I believe that this is a book that is not just written as a piece of academic work but that it was intended to be an intervention to help us understand why we view bodies the way they are viewed because as I have read in many sources about history repeating itself it is very important to understand our history in order to not keep on repeating it and this is a good way to start looking at our bodies differently and look more at the core problem than the overview. However I don’t think it got the attention it deserved and should be known more by different forms of media because I have found it a very hard book to read and I don’t think people who are specifically interested in this subject will actually sit down to read it for extended periods of time so it might have been interesting to have maybe a smaller more easy to read version of it in order to get it to be more widespread.
In this chapter, Strings goes back in time to the 15th and 16th centuries to examine the body ideals of the time and how they evolved. I think it is very important to look at why things started in order to understand their effect on today’s society.
One of the main things she looks into is religion and the way that in the 15th and 16th centuries there was mostly a wave of Christianity in Europe, but following the protestant reformation, specifically in England and France, and how this led to there being much more thought and energy being put into the body and what it looked like, as well as what it meant. However one of the main arguments to there being a preference to large bodies was the fact that society thought it represented wealth and this is something I hear in my family even today, saying that when someone looks to thin it means they look poor or as if they don’t have enough food however this is also a problem because even if discrimination or negativity and out hin bodies is not the same as Fatphobia it is still not right.
One of the main things that she does during the first chapter is the fact that she went back before there was exposure to black bodies in Europe, which started through the transatlantic slave trade, which was the reason that the distinction and preference for a certain body came from.
One of the main things that I find very interesting was the knee-jerk change that happened when black women were brought into the picture, because if they had been of a different shade, they would have been considered some of the most beautiful women and the standard to follow, but since they came in a different color, they needed to go against everything they believed in order to make themselves different. There was also a complete change in narrative, saying that the Africans had no self-control and were indulgent, and this was the reason for their bigger bodies, which is a complete hypocrisy because it was seen as a good thing in Europeans but as a terrible quality in black individuals.
There were a lot of words used by the travelers who were the ones that saw the most black bodies and they called this individuals as primitive, lazy, uncontrolled animals and this was just a way to rationalise to themselves that they were better than them and this was the reason why they could be enslaved and treated as less than which lead to there being a shift in dynamic and making two things that should have never been put together blackness and fatness and they were synonymous with each other.
The history of how this were represented were different in every country and there is a lot of history behind it because in a lot of catholic images there are pictures of black people as slaves or helpers to the superior as they would have been described white people however this was not something that happened in England until the start of the slave trade and at the beggining of black people being included and introduced into early european society through the slave trade they were a hot new fun commodity even so that even a de medici girl asked for the blackest girl they could find because she thought it was interesting however as time went by they stopped looking at them as curiosity and started looking at them with disdain and as if they were no longer interesting they had enough, however in England they did not go through this they immediately went to hatred and discrimination when they started arriving through the slave trade.
There was a lot of talk about gluttony, not just in food but also in alcohol, and this was widespread in letters travelers sent home and in authors’ writing during the Enlightenment.
During the eighteenth century in England, there was a change that many feared because it seemed to threaten how they described society, moral order, and organization, leading leaders and high-profile figures to change the rules about what should and should not be done. With these new social norms of etiquette, there were new ideas about how men and women should act in certain contexts, how they should eat and drink, and about having restraint when it came to food, and I think this was just another way to control what was considered the common masses.
Thomas Muffet was trained as a doctor, but his investigations led him more toward the idea of how to prepare food properly, what food should be consumed, and how to avoid needing or wanting food. Maybe looking at this could be connected to the current trend of fasting as a tool for weight loss.
The idea of the slender physique began as a notion of racial superiority; the aesthetic emerged in the eighteenth century, due to a new idea of the reappearance of religious movements. There was also a large amount of fear of immigration by people who were considered “part-Negroid”
I was walking to the library at school this week and came across this piece. I thought it was very interesting because, to me, it felt as if your body is behind bars and you are trapped in your own body, since it has the figurine of the body inside. When I saw it, I thought about how there are a lot of women who feel as if they are trapped in their bodies because what they are told the standard for how they should look is very different from what actually happens with their bodies. Many people go to war with their bodies in order to feel beautiful, and if they don’t reach that standard, they have a problem with it. I just thought this was an interesting representation of that.
This weekend, I had the opportunity to visit Kensington Palace and see the exhibit about the last princess of Punjab, where I learned about the interconnected family between the English royal family and the royal family of Punjab. There were three last princesses of Punjab in India because none of the seven descendants had children, making them the last princesses. They were all very significant and important, with all three being female rights activists in various forms, and one of them being openly in a lesbian relationship, which was uncommon at the time. The point in all this is that at the end of the exhibit, we were asked to participate in what I can only assume is some sort of intervention, where we were asked to tie a piece of fabric around the bars in a specific color based on which of the women we learned about during the exhibit we found the most inspiring. I thought that was a very interesting way to get people to interact with and think about the exhibition, specifically these inspiring women. Since I am thinking of maybe doing something with cloth, I found it very interesting and took note of it as some sort of inspiration for a future intervention.
This week I was scrolling through instagram and I came across the first image shown above and I was so interested in it and the idea of shrinking your body to the most possible small version no matter the cost and then I was interested in what the other pictures she posted were and I saw the second one were she is a normal girl and I was just very curious about what the message she was trying to spread. Her name is Winita Zesu and she is an Ethiopian model and influencer and she has had several scandals when it comes to food even if it was done just in order to gain visibility, one thing that kept coming to my mind is how it made me scroll into the next page and this made me think do I need to do something this aggressive in order to get noticed during my interventions?
Last week I had the privilege to speak to the activist Tigress Osborn, she is the current director of NAAFA (National Association to fat acceptance) in the United States and is a known fat activist. I had a very interesting 30 minute conversation with her and got her consent to record the conversation so I was able to make much better notes after we completed our conversation.
The Organization of NAAFA has done a lot of great things for people over the years since its founding in 1969 and the reason for its founding was because the founders wife was considered a fat women and suffer from severe criticism and her husband got so upset he decided to do something about it and his reaction was to create this organization. “It has been a comfort to people, a source of education, a source of confidence, but also a space for advocacy and political activism fighting size discrimination”.
She started to be involved in the organization when she was 18 and there were local chapters even if they are not in place today in Boston where she went to school and she took part in a workshop for fat women even though she was not fat at that point but that was her identity and her families having been a bigger teenager and looking different to what fashion magazines told her she was supposed to look like and she knew from her family history that being fat was going to be a part of her future. After this she was not involved for many years but being aware that there is an organization out there which spoke out to fat people and it made her question a lot about weight loss and diet and think about if it was okay to be fat or not. She also talked about the context of the time she was a teenager having Richard Simmons on TV and Americas biggest looser which really impacted body culture and the relationship to it.
After a while she moved to Oakland, California and she created a nighttime event which was a plus size club event and it was a hip hop party which was centered around women of color and fat women which lead to fashion events and an interesting thing about Oakland is that there is a multigenerational community of movement having to do with marginalized bodies. The way that she got involved with NAAFA was the creation of the fashion show and this is how she got her foot back in the door which lead to her becoming a member of the board and now she is the director.
One of the main questions I had for her was what the appropriate vocabulary was when talking about bodies fro her perspective since she has worked with people from different body sizes, what she recommended is that one should really follow the person one is speaking too lead or asking them directly because people have very strong opinions about the word fat but another one which I thought was more neutral but clearly I was wrong are the words overweight and obesity. There are more neutral ones but each one comes with its own issues such as plus size, higher weight and larger bodied however plus size feels very gendered to a lot of people as being a female expression and it is also a stigma because there is normal and then there is plus size another one that could be used is straight size however it is not really known and mostly used in the fashion industry and no were else. For thin people she normally just says thin or people in a normative body because even if you feel negatively about your body you might have a body with is accepted by society, however there is also the pathologizing of fat bodies and giving them all the same medical designation when talking about over weight and obese and it is not just a description of the body. Fat activists are opposing to the idea of obesity being a disease because they feel they should not be called sick if they are not really sick and then used as ana example in order to sell and prescribe things as well as having lies being spread about them.
She spoke about the fact that it is a civil organization and even if being fat causes every single problem on the world there is no reliable way of changing somebodies body and even if I have a disease I still have rights and deserve to have a safe work environment, being paid fairly, accommodation and for space to be made for them. They also question if it is a true medical condition? However there are a lot of people who were traumatized with the word fat and feel as if obesity is the first time that they are told that being fat is not their fault and why is this even a question there should not be any fault when it comes to this. What they are arguing is that fat should be used in a neutral word and just be used as a word for description such as having brown hair. Fat activist will always use the word fat because they are a part of the fat liberation movement.
there was one example she spoke about where there was an organization that wanted to collaborate with them but these people in the meeting did not feel comfortable speaking or saying the word fat and it is hard for them to understand that it is not possible to distigmatize a word that you are not even able to say, this is also a problem when it comes to journalists in the way that when they call her a fat activist they put in quotations next to it that this is how she prepares to be referred to and this is important and also interesting because why should this be explained.
Another example she spoke about was the fact that when her nephew was little she did her best to have the word be neutral and there was a Santa apron and she asked her nephew who should wear it and he said that it should be Tigress because she is fat and so is Santa and she stayed calm and choose to accept that and then find a way to explain to him that other people might feel bad from him sayin that because there is trauma around the word and at times it is almost like a type of slur.
I also asked her about the relationship between fat phobia and eating disorders and she explained that there is a tremendous connection and we have to understand that eating disorders are very complicated and they should not be looked at as it only there being eating disorders because we live in a world that is anti fat, what is really interesting is the fact that when someone is overweight if they have behaviors that would be considered eating disorders in people who were thin and they are told that they can figure it out later when they have lost the weight.
She gave me the advice that I really need tomato sure that I analyze and think about the assumption I might have when speaking to people as well as assessing what their assumptions might be trying to look at some blind spots and look at areas of study from different perspectives.
In this tutorial, we presented to our tutor Diana on a Friday instead of a Monday due to a scheduling change. It was an interesting tutorial, and I learned a lot and started applying it further in my work. I was able to see how I need to really get better at creating more visual presentations to whoever we might be presenting to, because I had a lot of text in my presentation, and that is more difficult for people to engage with, and this is relevant not just in the course but in life as a whole. I also realized that even though I have been working on my question and trying to evolve it there is still a lot more work to do and I will continue doing that especially during this time in independent study, I also need to start being much more prepared and bring in new ideas to every tutorial as well as having something to show for the work that I have been doing and not just talking about it as I did in this past tutorial but actually start doing a better job at losing it because it makes it look more organized and as if there are more possibilities all throughout. I also have a lot of different ideas I had not even realized, but now see as potential for my project.
One of the first things Diana mentioned that stood out to her about one of my possible questions “How can the art of dressing and fashion help people suffereing through body image struggles feel safe expressing themselves in this form?” even though this cannot be my final question something that stood out was the word security and and the way it could be about the self not just self security but a sense of self, this is not a strong academic question however if I keep working on it I think it will develop into something interesting.
Also when it comes to the description of the question it must be done in a more concise way because I gave a lot of information that maybe was not necessary and I should not include the methodology or how I am going to make it happen and also looking at the fact that my description was still very broad but in the last week I have been working on refining it and look at it in a different way.
I really have to decide who I am doing this for and who I think needs the awareness, because I am still looking at it from a very broad perspective. I really need to decide, because this will completely change my research and the way I approach this project.
One thing that was really reinforced in the tutorial is the fact that I need to trust myself and go through the process it is okay to feel unsure and feel fear because I am not aware of what the outcome is going to be however I am learning how to allow myself to make mistakes and grow from this process because it is normal and even though I have a hard time assimilating it it is also a part of the reason why I am doing this course.
While I was walking through the library at CSM, I came across this magazine, and its very interesting cover intrigued me enough to look inside and see what it was about. When I was going through it I saw that there was an article about this specific idea and I thought it was very interesting visually just because of the fact that it shows different types of bodies as an armor one can wear and it is not just the traditional thin body or corset to alter the body and look in a different way but it is actually all different types of bodies and shapes and that really made me think about the way that body image and the body is being viewed now. This article features Marina Hoermanseder, a fashion designer based in Berlin, and shows how she works, mostly through maximalism and drawing on her own idea of collecting different trinkets. The work is done on torsos and vases, and it is made from garment structures, with many unconventional materials used; for example, some are covered in Legos and stuffed animals, while others are more conventional, such as Swarovski crystals. She is known for her fashion, which features buckles, and that is one of the things she is known for. For a fashion line to be known for a specific moment or situation, she says the buckle is what makes her feel safe when she is doing something outside the box. Her inspiration is mostly from the human brain, orthopedic corsets, and even something as simple as a children’s book, but everything includes a buckle. Branding is successful when you recognize a brand the moment you see a garment.
During our tutorial this week, we discussed each of our progress during the week and also realized Diana’s working style, in that we should always bring something to show our tutor group and make some progress, as well as making sure that when we are meeting people, we must leave them with an impression. We first went over Nicole’s project about London and the different directions it could take; however, one thing I took away from this conversation is how people on the outside can destroy the project, which is an important point to look at. Also, the question of why is this important? Because it made me think about my own reasoning behind it and how people on the outside might view the project. Dernise has already experienced different pivots throughout her process, which started one way but has been evolving, and when she shared this, it made me think even more about how this master’s is a process and that everything won’t happen all at once. Regarding the feedback I received on my project, I need to further examine what I am researching and investigating, and the description of my question; I should have this ready by next week. Another thing I took from this specific tutorial is the fact that I have to make sure that I am mentally safe, having suffered through eating disorders myself as well as making sure that I can stay objective in some form. Even though I have a very large support group, I need to make sure that I will not put myself or others at risk.
The idea of this article is to examine the ideal body of a woman and how this has changed over time, especially through history, art, and fashion, and to look at the different ideas surrounding body image, health, and culture nowadays. The article explores the social contract and its connection to the media and fashion, and examines how women in different eras felt extreme pressure to change their looks and fit into a standard.
Starting with prehistoric times in the 1800s, curvy was considered the ideal, as we see through art, for example, Venus and the way that she was seen as round and fertile; then the classic Baroque also had the same idea of the curvy ideal; however, there was an evolution with corsets and understructures, which was a sort of modification about how people looked. However, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the idea was the “Gibson girl,” who was very tall and slim at the waist but still had curves. There is still the idea of the corset; however, it is more about bra support. Then in the 1920s- 1950s there was more of an idea of thinness but there is a rebound and change after this, this was the era of flappers and they were thin and there is a link with disordered eating rising in this era however in the 1940s-1950s the fuller body came back with one of the people who showed it the most being Marylin Monroe and in 1953 there is the start of the play boy magazine. In the 1960s-1970s there is a waif ascendant even though everyone is talking about freedom and there is the example of Twiggy which shows us the supper thin ideal and there is a Feminist move, there is the change from the idea of the corset and there is a movement to controlling the body through diet and exercise and there start to be more people with anorexia looking for hospital treatment. In the 1980s-1990s there was the idea of supper thin women with the raise in supermodels such as Cindy Crawford and then wanting to look lean and athletic but at the same time the early 90s there was more of a trend to the Kate Moss aesthetics which lead to a lot of peopled dying from anorexia and there is at the same time a largproblem with obesity considered by the world health organization and there was media about thin vs obes. In the 2000s, there started to be a concern around bodies, and more children started to feel insecure in their own bodies and started to do more diets as well as exercising for weight loss. There was a large number of children under the age of 12 that underwent treatment. Lastly, in the 2010s, there was a new idea about diversity when there is a movement on social media that talks about body positivity, and one of the greatest changes we could see was how there started to be a use of plus size models and there being more size inclusion in the fashion industry and even in the toy industry with barbies forming in different shapes and not just colors. There was also the growth of the selfie culture, caused by the Kardashians, leading people to look differently.
this is soothing we can see in different ways especially in museums and galerries that talk about our cultures obsession with bodies and size, also looking at how fashion relies on body modification such as corsets and undergarments and this is something we still see today in different ways aswell as there being a change in both diet and exercise, there have been changes when it comes to people talking positively about extreme thinness and speaking negatively about obesity and vise versa, this makes youth very vulnerable because they start to internalize different ideas about body images and this leads to low selfesteen which then leads to disordered eating symptoms ptoms. What we can see as a whole is how body ideals are evolving just as everyones body does aswell and there are a lot of changes because of also looking at the fashion industry and the media we see everyday and this can lead to a lot of difficulties with mental health and there needs to be a change in how we see body culture since it is important to understand it is always evolving and it is impossible to stay the same.
Anne Hathway who was just a star in the movie The Devil Wears Prada 2 tried to take a stand by asking the producers of the movie to not show or film skeletal or alarmingly thin models during one of the scenes in the movie which took place In Milan fashion week, Meryl Streep her co star said Anne Hathway talked about her concern and wanted to be promised that there would not be a large showcase of extreme thinness during the film. this is something that is relevant because in the original movie which was filmed in 2006 there was the idea of thin and extreme diet culture and there were a lot of fat phobic comments during the movie as-well as a glorification of thinness which showed a large amount of disordered eating patterns such as when she was fat shamed because of her body during the film an called a size 6 and that she had let herself go, aswell as another character Emily starving herself and only eating a cheese cube when she felt as if she was going to faint which really showed the normalization of the pursuit of thinness and how no matter what it should beacomplohed and today we are seeing how this is a trend that is returning as people who were known for their curves such as the Kardashians have lost a large amount of weight and are now participating on this trend. The idea Hathaway was trying to convey is to avoid the normalization of this again and to encourage a change in how these diet trends are seen. She really wanted there to be all kinds of bodies on screen and is aware of the pushback against this, not just in the industry but also from the public. What we can see from this is that she does not want to go backwards and wants people to realize how problematic this diets and the way we talk about bodies is because even thought he cheese cube might have been a joke in the last movie I think back on it and if I was a teenager that was going through eating struggles such as I did I would have tried the cheese cube diet and that cannot be healthy and in this film we saw the different relationship to food being portrayed.
