Shhh! That's supposed to be our own super, double-secret plan for world domination!
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“Virginia Sole-Smith Virginia is a frequent contributor to the New York Times. Her work also appears in the New York Times Magazine, Scientific American, and many other publications.” Of course.
A guest on NPR's show Fresh Air promoted the idea that the desire to be thin stems from white supremacy while discussing how parents should communicate weight with their children.
Journalist Virginia Sole-Smith appeared on the show on Tuesday to discuss her new book Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture which includes the theory that fat phobia can be traced back to the end of slavery in the US.
Her argument is that when slavery was abolished and African Americans started gaining rights, white supremacists sought to maintain old inequalities by demonizing black bodies and glamorizing thinness.
'The chronic experience of weight stigma... is similar to the research we see on chronic experiences of racism or other forms of bias,' Sole-Smith said.
Sole-Smith also cited the work of Sabrina Strings, and her recent book Fearing the Black Body. Strings argues that the modern aversion to being fat has nothing to do with health but is instead a way of using weight to perpetuate racism and classism.
'Her research talks about how, as slavery ended, Black people gained rights, obviously, white supremacy is trying to maintain the power structure,' said Sole-Smith.
'So celebrating a thin white body as the ideal body is a way to "other" and demonize Black and brown bodies, bigger bodies, anyone who doesn't fit into that norm,' she added.
Sole-Smith proposes that toxic American attitudes around weight can be combated by encouraging parents to normalize fatness.
Last year TIME magazine experienced backlash after it published an article exploring a similar theme - claiming that the act of exercising was a form of white supremacy.
The piece, titled 'The White Supremacist Origins of Exercise,' put forward the idea that exercise was a pastime started in the early 1900s by white Americans who sought to strengthen their race amid increasing immigration and the abolition of slavery.
Proving that stupid comes in all shapes and sizes
Bonus Material from the KKK Historical Archives:
an anorexic mae west accepts the adoration of her sex slaves
