#150 - Racism Explains the Origins of Fat Phobia and Diet Culture, with Sabrina Strings PhD, Author of Fearing the Black Body
Explicit content warning
06/07/20 • 64 min
This episode was first aired June 2019.
Sabrina Strings, PhD is the author of the book Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia. In the first part of this interview, we discuss how she was able to connect racism with fat phobia, control of women’s bodies historically and through today’s diet culture, and how medicine’s use of the BMI metric is problematic and harmful. Dr. Strings shares why weight loss should not be part of the health equation and instead we should be seeking access to safe, nutritious food for all people at every size.
In the second part, we discuss why only white women’s bodies were subjects of control in historical fat phobia. Dr. Strings shares the history of the BMI development and its flaws. We share personal stories for how BMI and weight bias in medicine harms people today. Dr. Strings also shares how she was discouraged from even writing this book.
About Dr. StringsSabrina Strings is an 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.
She has been featured in The Feminist Wire, Yoga International, and LA Yoga. Her writings can be found in Scientific American, New York Times, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society and Feminist Media Studies. Sabrina was the recipient of the 2017 Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Article Award for the Race, Gender and Class section of the American Sociological Association. Fearing the Black Body is her first book which is available everywhere and also on audiobook.
Find more about Sabrina: Book | Twitter
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Nothing in this podcast is meant to provide medical diagnosis, treatment, cure, or prevent any disease or condition. Individuals should consult a qualified healthcare provider for medical advice and answers to personal health questions.
This episode was first aired June 2019.
Sabrina Strings, PhD is the author of the book Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia. In the first part of this interview, we discuss how she was able to connect racism with fat phobia, control of women’s bodies historically and through today’s diet culture, and how medicine’s use of the BMI metric is problematic and harmful. Dr. Strings shares why weight loss should not be part of the health equation and instead we should be seeking access to safe, nutritious food for all people at every size.
In the second part, we discuss why only white women’s bodies were subjects of control in historical fat phobia. Dr. Strings shares the history of the BMI development and its flaws. We share personal stories for how BMI and weight bias in medicine harms people today. Dr. Strings also shares how she was discouraged from even writing this book.
About Dr. StringsSabrina Strings is an 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.
She has been featured in The Feminist Wire, Yoga International, and LA Yoga. Her writings can be found in Scientific American, New York Times, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society and Feminist Media Studies. Sabrina was the recipient of the 2017 Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Article Award for the Race, Gender and Class section of the American Sociological Association. Fearing the Black Body is her first book which is available everywhere and also on audiobook.
Find more about Sabrina: Book | Twitter
---
Get the Body Kindness book It's available wherever books and audiobooks are sold. Read reviews on Amazon and pick up your copy today! Order signed copies and bulk discounts here!
---
Donate to support the show Thanks to our generous supporters! We're working toward our goal to fund the full season. Can you donate? Please visit our Go Fund Me page.
---
Get started with Body Kindness Sign up to get started for free and stay up to date on the latest offerings
---
Become a client Check out BodyKindnessBook.com/breakthrough for the latest groups and individual support sessions
---
Subscribe to the podcastWe're on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify and iHeartRadio. Enjoy the show? Please rate it on iTunes! Have a show idea or guest recommendation? E-mail [email protected] to get in touch.
---
Join the Facebook groupContinue the episode conversations with the hosts, guests, and fellow listeners on the Body Kindness Facebook group. See you there!
Nothing in this podcast is meant to provide medical diagnosis, treatment, cure, or prevent any disease or condition. Individuals should consult a qualified healthcare provider for medical advice and answers to personal health questions.
Previous Episode
[Repost] #65 - So You Want to Talk About Race with Ijeoma Oluo
Ijeoma Oluo's So You Want to Talk About Race is a great starting point for listening, learning and taking meaningful action.
I also recommend White Fragility by Beverly DiAngelo to any white person who wants to do better at creating change. So You Want to Talk About Race (Seal Press) she breaks down the barriers and explains, in simple terms and with lively examples, key concepts of privilege, intersectionality, microagressions, cultural appropriation, and more.In our podcast chat, Ijeoma helps us embrace the connections between body positivity, the anti-diet movement, and race and class issues that aren’t often discussed in these important spaces. Regarding intersectionality, she says “It’s the nature of privilege to prioritize the people at the top, whose needs are almost met. Intersectionality says that you pause and say ‘my needs are not the only needs’. Including the needs of less privileged people helps more people, not just a select few at the top.”
She says “we live in a country that upholds the ideal that we aren’t allowed to talk about race and not talking is THE problem.” Ijeoma wants us to do what we can to look at everyday opportunities to create change in our culture.
An editor-at-large at The Establishment, Ijeoma’s work has been featured in NY Magazine, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and more. She has talked about race on BBC, NPR and CBS Evening News, as well as in countless offices, universities, conferences, and internet forums.
---
Get the Body Kindness book It's available wherever books and audiobooks are sold. Read reviews on Amazon and pick up your copy today! Order signed copies and bulk discounts here!
---
Donate to support the show Thanks to our generous supporters! We're working toward our goal to fund the full season. Can you donate? Please visit our Go Fund Me page.
---
Get started with Body Kindness Sign up to get started for free and stay up to date on the latest offerings
---
Become a client Check out BodyKindnessBook.com/breakthrough for the latest groups and individual support sessions
---
Subscribe to the podcastWe're on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify and iHeartRadio. Enjoy the show? Please rate it on iTunes! Have a show idea or guest recommendation? E-mail [email protected] to get in touch.
---
Join the Facebook groupContinue the episode conversations with the hosts, guests, and fellow listeners on the Body Kindness Facebook group. See you there!
Nothing in this podcast is meant to provide medical diagnosis, treatment, cure, or prevent any disease or condition. Individuals should consult a qualified healthcare provider for medical advice and answers to personal health questions.
Next Episode
#151 - White Supremacy of Yoga with Sabrina Strings PhD, Author of Fearing the Black Body
Join me in conversation with Dr. Sabrina Strings, author of Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia. She also is a certified yoga teacher and advocate for inclusivity in yoga. We discuss our experiences with yoga and hope for systemic change.
- She shares a personal story on racism and body part fetishizing (Michelle Obama arms) she encountered in yoga classes when she was really seeking refuge for grad school stress. Strings was made to feel like she didn’t belong.
- She explains why yoga is much more than the commercialized Asana and why her recent yoga experience made her stop going to studios at all, including fat phobia and ableism.
- She shares her research on the lightening of the yoga journal covers to become more White, contorted, and back branded women’s bodies.
Dr. Strings’ Research Mentioned Strings, Sabrina & Headen, Irene & Spencer, Breauna. (2019). Yoga as a technology of femininity: Disciplining white women, disappearing people of color in Yoga Journal. Fat Studies. 8. 1-15. 10.1080/21604851.2019.1583527.
Abstract: Yoga has seen an explosion of popularity in the United States. Though the practice can be traced to the Indus Valley civilization, its mass media representation is dominated by young, thin, white women.
Little is known about how the practice came to be portrayed in this manner. However, scholars suggest that when media outlets target (white) women, they often encourage them to adopt “technologies of femininity” that may include instructions on how to tame, diminish, or banish fat.
In this article, we examined if and how yoga has been presented in this fashion in the mainstream media. We performed a mixed-method analysis of cover images and articles featured in Yoga Journal from 1975 to 2015.
Findings revealed that since 1998, men and people of color have seen a steep decline in representation on the covers. Full-body shots of white women have increased precipitously. We also found that the articles promote yoga as a part of a beauty regime. This regime relies on a dubious mix of self-love and fat aversion for white women, while people of color are almost entirely excluded from consideration.
We conclude that, since 1998, coinciding with the latest yoga boom, Yoga Journal has encouraged white women to adopt yoga as a technology of femininity that tames fat. It has concomitantly disappeared people of color.
About Dr. Strings Sabrina Strings is an 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.
She has been featured in The Feminist Wire, Yoga International, and LA Yoga. Her writings can be found in Scientific American, New York Times, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society and Feminist Media Studies. Sabrina was the recipient of the 2017 Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Article Award for the Race, Gender and Class section of the American Sociological Association. Fearing the Black Body is her first book which is available everywhere and also on audiobook.
---
Get the Body Kindness book It's available wherever books and audiobooks are sold. Read reviews on Amazon and pick up your copy today! Order signed copies and bulk discounts here!
---
Donate to support the show Thanks to our generous supporters! We're working toward our goal to fund the full season. Can you donate? Please visit our Go Fund Me page.
---
Get started with Body Kindness Sign up to get started for free and stay up to date on the latest offerings
---
Become a client Check out
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