Why were there so many depictions of curvaceous women during the Renaissance, but only slender figures since the 19th century? Strangely enough, the answer is the Atlantic slave trade and the anti-Blackness that came with it.
As Europeans began to colonize and enslave African people, they also started coming up with anti-Black justifications of slavery. One of them was about body fat. They argued that Black people were fat due to biological inferiority. The ideology convinced white people that being as thin as possible proved their superiority to Black people.
By the height of the slave trade, that body fat rationale became another standard in determining who was enslaved and who was not. Before, it was just skin color, but after hundreds of years of intermixing, they needed an additional standard to keep as many people enslaved as possible.
To this day, the medical field still views a person’s weight through this anti-Black framework. Not only does this ignore all the healthy ways a body can exist, but it also contributes to a culture that treats fat people as less than.
Let’s commit to unlearning all the anti-Black messaging we have received about our bodies and beauty so that we can unlock clearer pathways to Black well-being.