Black Women and Fat
FOUR out of five black women are seriously overweight. One out of four middle-aged black women has diabetes. With $174 billion a year spent on diabetes-related illness in America and obesity quickly overtaking smoking as a cause of cancer deaths, it is past time to try something new.
What we need is a body-culture revolution in black America. Why? Because too many experts who are involved in the discussion of obesity don’t understand something crucial about black women and fat: many black women are fat because we want to be.
The black poet Lucille Clifton’s 1987 poem “Homage to My Hips” begins with the boast, “These hips are big hips.” She establishes big black hips as something a woman would want to have and a man would desire. She wasn’t the first or the only one to reflect this community knowledge. Twenty years before, in 1967, Joe Tex, a black Texan, dominated the radio airwaves across black America with a song he wrote and recorded, “Skinny Legs and All.” One of his lines haunts me to this day: “some man, somewhere who’ll take you baby, skinny legs and all.” For me, it still seems almost an impossibility.
Chemically, in its ability to promote disease, black fat may be the same as white fat. Culturally it is not.
How many white girls in the ’60s grew up praying for fat thighs? I know I did. I asked God to give me big thighs like my dancing teacher, Diane. There was no way I wanted to look like Twiggy, the white model whose boy-like build was the dream of white girls. Not with Joe Tex ringing in my ears.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/06/opinion/sunday/why-black-women-are-fat.html?src=me&ref=general
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but I'll just say the mere thought of them makes me drool on the keyboard
You ain't it, Ms. Thang
Give me a sista, can't resist her
Red beans and rice didn't miss her
Sir Mixalot was crass, vulgar and unquestionably sexist. But there is no question that alot of thicker women who've been told that butts, thighs, hips etc. were ugly probably considered this kind of their rallying cry.
that's the problem -
it's the health.
Insulin resistance, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol...
It's not just the women who have issues with their weight issues - my son fights it every day. People look at him and think he eats too much crap and doesn't exercise and nothing could be further from the truth! (Pisses me off!) He exercises more than most, he eats healthier than probably any kid in his school (though he does probably eat "larger portions" most of the time - then again - he is extremely muscular as well - AND going through puberty shooting up about 6 inches in the last year and a half, so he "needs' the fuel . . . - one of the biggest issues is determining what he really NEEDS to eat, versus "overeating"
.
He doesn't process that he's "full" - (doc says due to the insulin resistance) - so he THINKS he's still hungry, even though his body has had enough. We work on waiting for seconds. Taking moderate portions. He already avoids sweets, unhealthy snacks, sodas, ice cream, etc. . . poor kid doesn't get to eat the "junk" all of his friends do. But we can't take that chance.
He's already on Metformin (started at 11 - he's now 13.5) . . . we're fighting to keep on the "pre" side of diabetic.
While I agree that "size" is a huge issue - especially for women - the media presentation of big breasts, small waists, small but shapely derriere - that's the "idealized" version - and wtf really looks like that except for the very few? But here's the thing - men drool over my son's "size" - since he plays football. They want him the bigger the better in their book. His coaches actually got a little ticked that he'd dropped 3 pounds from the weigh-in the year before, even though he'd grown 3-4 inches at the time.
He is able to get back into his 36" waist jeans (though their waaayy too short! lol) but he's pretty happy about that. So we think that even though he's added a few more inches in height, he's weight probably hasn't increased - or not much. He's also getting some "speed" back in his running - and he's VERY happy about that. Before he put on weight, he was the fastest kid around. When he got heavy, he couldn't run for cr*p. I just tell him he has to grow into his body and get it more back in proportion. Pounds are just a number.
We get a blood draw next week, and back to the endocrinologist the week after that. Who knows what the numbers will show? We don't weigh at home. So we'll see. Huge thighs? Check. Major muscle mass? Check. Heavy dense bones? Check. So what's "weight" anyway? I don't give a damn about his weight or size except where it impacts his HEALTH! "THAT" I'm all over.
