ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how and why African American women engaged in anti-fat behavior and rhetoric in the first half of the twentieth century. Using Black newspapers, magazines, cookbooks, and other primary sources, it contends that some Black women tied fat avoidance to the struggle for African American citizenship, respect, and racial pride—stakes that did not apparently accommodate fat acceptance. In an attempt to distance themselves from the powerful mammy trope, Black women dieted, exercised, and encouraged other African American women to avoid gaining weight. Considering the racist and sexist milieu in which Black women lived and their limited options for bodily freedom, this chapter issues a provocation to the field of Fat Studies to resist quick denunciations of these women’s fat-shaming tactics and to consider how racism and sexism constrained Black women’s potential for fat liberation.
