3 .Betsy McKay, “CDC Study Overstated Obesity as a Cause of Death,” Wall Street Journal, November 23, 2004, www.wsj.com/articles/SB110117970881981681.
4 .McKay, “CDC Study.”
5 .Gina Kolata, “Why Do Obese Patients Get Worse Care? Many Doctors Don’t See Past the Fat,” New York Times, September 26, 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/09/26/health/obese-patients-health-care.html.
6 .McKay, “CDC Study.”
7 .Rosie Mestel, “Disputed Obesity Study Slipped through CDC Filters,” Los Angeles Times, February 10, 2005, www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-feb-10-sci-obese10-story.html.
8 .The Center for Consumer Freedom Team, “New JAMA Study Challenges CDC’s 400,000 Obesity Deaths Figure,” Center for Consumer Freedom, April 19, 2005, www.consumerfreedom.com/press-releases/99-new-jama-study-challenges-cdcs-400000-obesity-deaths-figure/.
9 .Ed Vulliamy, “Nixon’s ‘War on Drugs’ Began 40 Years Ago, and the Battle Is Still Raging,” The Guardian, July 23, 2011, www.theguardian.com/society/2011/jul/24/war-on-drugs-40-years.
10 .Michael Kunzelman, Dylan Lovan, and Adrian Sainz, “Deadly Police Raid Fuels Call to End ‘No Knock’ Warrants,” Seattle Times, May 31, 2020, www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation/deadly-police-raid-fuels-call-to-end-no-knock-warrants/.
11 .Kenneth B. Nunn, “Race, Crime and the Pool of Surplus Criminality: Or Why the ‘War on Drugs’ Was a ‘War on Blacks,’” 2002, https://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/facultypub/107/.
12 .“A Brief History of the Drug War,” Drug Policy Alliance, www.drugpolicy.org/issues/brief-history-drug-war.
13 .Drug Policy Alliance, “A Brief History.”
14 .Drug Policy Alliance, “A Brief History.”
15 .Tim Naftali, “Ronald Reagan’s Long-Hidden Racist Conversation with Richard Nixon,” The Atlantic, July 31, 2019, www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/ronald-reagans-racist-conversation-richard-nixon/595102/.
16 .Erna Kubergovic, “Quetelet, Adolphe,” Eugenics Archive, 2013, http://eugenicsarchive.ca/discover/tree/5233cb0f5c2ec5000000009c.
17 .Aubrey Gordon, “The Bizarre and Racist History of the BMI,” Elemental, October 15, 2019, https://elemental.medium.com/the-bizarre-and-racist-history-of-the-bmi-7d8dc2aa33bb.
Chapter 6
1 .Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, “Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory,” NWSA Journal 14, no. 3 (2002): 1–32, https://doi.org/10.2979/nws.2002.14.3.1.
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Athanassoglou-Kallmyer, Nina. “Ugliness.” In On the Politics of Ugliness, 31–50. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990.
Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” Theatre Journal 40, no. 4 (1988): 519–31. https://doi.org/10.2307/3207893.
Davis, Angela Y. Are Prisons Obsolete? New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books, 1977.
Gay, Roxane. Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body. New York: HarperCollins, 2017.
Gilmore, Ruth Wilson. Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.
Goff, Phillip Atiba, et al. “The Essence of Innocence: Consequences of Dehumanizing Black Children.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 106, no. 4 (April 2014): 526–45. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035663.
Gonzalez Van Cleve, Nicole. Crook County: Racism and Injustice in America’s Largest Criminal Court. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017.
Hartman, Saidiya V. Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Jackson, Zakiyyah Iman. “Animality and Blackness.” Genealogy of the Posthuman. September 29, 2020. https://criticalposthumanism.net/animality-and-blackness/.
Jackson, Zakiyyah Iman. Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World. New York: New York University Press, 2020.
Laymon, Kiese. Heavy: An American Memoir. New York: Scribner, 2019.
Obourn, Milo W. Disabled Futures: A Framework for Radical Inclusion. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2020.
Oliver, J. Eric. Fat Politics: The Real Story behind America’s Obesity Epidemic. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Przybylo, Ela, and Sara Rodrigues, eds. On the Politics of Ugliness. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
Spillers, Hortense J. “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book.” In Black, White, and in Color: Essays on American Literature and Culture, 203–29. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003.
Strings, Sabrina. Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia. New York: New York University Press, 2019.
Talley, Heather Laine. Saving Face: Disfigurement and the Politics of Appearance. New York: New York University Press, 2014.
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Wilderson III, Frank. Red, White & Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010.
Index
Please note that index links to approximate location of each term.
A
abolition
harm prevention and, 106–7
idea of, 105–7
moving beyond, 105–9
of slavery, 107
Angelou, Maya, 109
anti-Blackness
anti-fatness and, 2–3, 8, 18, 35–36, 66
destroying, 108
as foundation of violent structures, 8, 108
anti-fatness
anti-Blackness and, 2–3, 8, 18, 35–36, 66
coerciveness of, 30–31
examples of, 21
history of, 35–36, 108
self-love and, 4–5
statistics on, 18
Athanassoglou-Kallmyer, Nina, 14
B
“bad fats” vs. “good fats,” 4–5
Bailey, Moya, 25
Baum, Dan, 77–78
Bearboi, story of, 90–91
Beauty
access to, 12, 13
vs. beauty, 12
destroying, 20
Biden, Joe, 79
Black fat
caging of, 109
criminalization of, 58, 60–61
health and, 36–37, 81–83
Insecurities and, 13–14
marginalization of, 18
suffering of, 108
War on Obesity and, 79, 82
Black Lives Matter, 67
Blackness. See also anti-Blackness; Black fat
fatness as, 18
health as antithesis of, 81
marginalization of, 12, 17
Blumenbach, J. F., 34
BMI (body mass index), 69, 79–81
body positivity, 3–5, 7–8
boot camps, 38–39
Brown, Mike, 47, 49, 51, 63, 64–65, 66
Bush, George H. W., 62
Butler, Judith, 86–87
C
capitalization of words, meaning of, 9, 12
Carter, Jimmy, 75
Cartwright, Samuel A., 34–35
Centers for Disease Control and Preve
ntion (CDC), 69–74
Central Park Five, 62
Chauvin, Derek, 54–55
cisheteronormativity, 86
Clinton, Bill, 61, 62, 78–79
Congressional Black Caucus, 79
crack, 76, 82
D
D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), 76
Davis, Angela Y., 62–63, 106
Desire
destroying, 20
institutionalization of, 108
Desire/ability
concept of, 12–13
fuckability as, 18–19
in trans spaces, 95–96, 99–100
Desire Capital
access to, 12
social expectations and, 99
diet culture, 37–44
disgendering, racialized, 27
down-low (DL) identity, 26
Drug Policy Alliance, 76
Drugs, War on, 67, 74–79, 82
DuBose, Samuel, 47, 51, 52–53, 63, 66, 67
E
Ehrlichman, John, 77–78
F
fat camps, 38–39
fatness. See also anti-fatness; Black fat; obesity
as Blackness, 18
fear of, 36
as signifier of sociopolitical and economic power, 35
subjugation of, by Thinness, 4
value of, 44
whiteness and, 35
Floyd, George, 47, 54–56, 63, 66, 67
fuckability, 18–19
G
Garner, Eric, 47–49, 51, 63, 64, 67
Gates, Daryl, 76
Gay, Roxane, 3, 108
gender
defining, 87, 103
destroying, 104
fatness and, 100–101
as illusion, 87
institutionalization of, 108
loss of, 25, 87
performance and, 86–87, 99
roles, 86
violence of, 87–88, 103
Gerberding, Julie, 69
Giacopassi, David, 58
Gilmore, Ruth Wilson, 106, 108
“good fats” vs. “bad fats,” 4–5
Gordon, Aubrey, 80–81
Graham, Sylvester, 42
H
Harris, Cheryl, 60
Hartman, Saidiya, 56
health
as antithesis of Blackness, 36, 81
defining, 33
institutionalization of, 108
Henry, story of, 94
hooks, bell, 25, 29, 42
I
Insecurities, 13–14, 15, 17, 19, 32
J
Jackson, Zakiyyah Iman, 56–58
Jim Crow era, 60
Jupiter, story of, 88–90
K
Kaba, Mariame, 106
King, Jackson, 94–98, 99
King, Pete, 48
Kleinman, Eli, 48
Kraska, Peter, 75
Kubergovic, Erna, 79–80
Ku Klux Klan (KKK), 59, 60
L
Lake, Howie, II, 53
Lane, Thomas, 54
Laymon, Kiese, 21–22, 30
Lee, Jenny, 42
Lewis, Sydney, 27–28, 29
libidinal economy, 13, 17
Loehmann, Timothy, 50
London, Stuart, 48
M
Mackey, James, 50
Mammy caricature, 28–29, 31
marijuana, 75, 78
Mars, story of, 92–94, 99
McGinty, Tim, 51
Meyer, Matthew, 51
Micah A, story of, 101–2
Mingus, Mia, 16–17
misogynoir, 25, 37, 39
Mock, Janet, 11
Muflahi, Abdullah, 53–54
N
National Institutes of Health, 80
Nixon, Richard, 74, 75, 77–78
Nunn, Kenneth B., 76
O
obesity
BMI and, 69, 79–81
CDC report on, 69–74
defining, 69, 80–81
war on, 67, 69–74, 79
Obourn, Milo W., 27
Oliver, J. Eric, 71–72
P
Pantaleo, Daniel, 47–48
Parkhurst, Jesse, 28
patriarchy
defining, 25, 42
destroying, 31
dominance within, 27
sexual violence and, 29–30
Pechacek, Terry, 71
Persechino, Floriana, 48
police
defunding, 106
institutionalization of, 58–60, 107, 108
murders of Black people by, 47–56, 65–67
slavery and, 58–59, 66
Prettiness
access to, 13
vs. prettiness, 12
prisons
abolishing, 106, 107
drug charges and, 75–76, 77
history of, 62–63
privilege, 11, 12
Przybylo, Ela, 14
Q
Quetelet, Adolphe, 79–80
R
race, creation of, 33–35
Reagan, Nancy, 76
Reagan, Ronald, 62, 74, 75, 76, 78
Rice, Tamir, 47, 50–51, 63, 64–65, 67
Rodrigues, Sara, 14
S
Salamoni, Blane, 53
Sanders, Bernie, 79
Score, Gina, 38–39
Scott, Walter, 47, 51–52, 63, 65, 66
self-love
anti-fatness and, 4–5
radical, 5–7
self-acceptance and, 5
Sexton, Jared, 17
sexual violence, 21–31
Shafer, Raymond, 75
Slager, Michael, 51–52
slavery
abolition of, 107
creation of race through, 33–35
humanity and, 56–57
policing and, 58–59, 66
Spillers, Hortense, 25, 87
Sterling, Alton, 47, 51, 53–54, 63, 66
StoneyBertz, 98–100
Strings, Sabrina, 17–18, 35–37, 108
T
Talley, Heather Laine, 15
Taylor, Breonna, 75
Taylor, Sonya Renee, 5–6
Tensing, Ray, 52–53
Thinness
destroying, 20
politic of, 19–20
subjugation of fatness by, 4
Thirteenth Amendment, 107
Thompson, Tommy, 70
Tovar, Virgie, 40–41
trans people, fat Black
Desire/ability and, 95–96, 99–100
medical bias and, 91, 96–98, 103–4
testimonials of, 88–102
underresearching of, 85–86
Trudy, 25
Turner, K. B., 58
“The Two-Ton Contest,” 61–62
U
Ugliness
as political, 14–15, 17
reclaiming and redefining, 16–17
as structural violence, 32
vs. ugliness, 12
ungendering, 25, 27, 87, 102
V
Van Cleve, Nicole Gonzalez, 61
Vandiver, Margaret, 58
violence
anti-Blackness and, 108
creation of, 5
sexual, 21–31
W
War on Drugs, 67, 74–79, 82
War on Obesity, 67, 69–74, 79
weight loss programs, 37–45
Weight Watchers (WW), 40, 44, 73
whiteness
BMI and, 81
destroying, 20
fatness and, 35
as property, 60
race and, 35
Wilderson, Frank B., III, 17
Wilson, Darren, 49
World Health Organization, 33, 74
About the Author
Da’Shaun L. Harrison is a Black, fat, disabled, queer, and trans writer. They are also an abolitionist and community organizer based in Atlanta, Georgia. Harrison has worn, and continues to wear, many hats: communications director, editor in chief, associate editor, managing editor, lead organizer, and now author.
Harrison travels throughout the United States and abroad to lecture at conferences and colleges, and to lead workshops focused on Blackness, queerness, gender, class, (dis)abilities, fatness, and the intersection at which they all meet. You can find Da’Shaun on Twitter and Instagram @DaShaunLH, or through their website, dashaunharrison.com.
About North Atlantic Books
North Atlantic Books (NAB) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit publisher committed to a bold exploration of the relationships between mind, body, spirit, culture, and nature. Founded in 1974, NAB aims to nurture a holistic view of the arts, sciences, humanities, and healing. To make a donation or to learn more about our books, authors, events, and newsletter, please visit www.northatlanticbooks.com.
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