Fat Black Women

Weight has clearly played a profound role in the conceptualization of the black race, not only from without it, but also from within it. With race and fatness so tightly intertwined within black representations and stereotypes, fatness has been of particular significance within scholarly research and study. Most studies claim to have found a correlation between race and acceptance of excessive weight. Studies claim that, despite their exclusion from hegemonic beauty standards and femininity black women, and fat black women, in particular, are perceived to be more satisfied with their bodies than white women and less likely to let weight influence their perception of attractiveness. Beyond black female perception, some studies claim that black

In her study of eating disorders and the black female appetite, Doris Witt questions the lack of research on eating disorders in black female women in America, which she attributes to a longstanding fascination and fear of what black women consume. Like pervasive images of the black female body, their consumption is viewed as extreme, overt, and excessive. This is most evident in the Welfare Queen stereotype, which depicts a fat black female, who is excessively overweight, usually with a gaggle of children around her. Not only that, but she is usually adorned with fine jewelry and furs (see figures 3, 4, and 5) and is most often depicted either shopping or lazing around the house, and almost never actually caring for their children. Here, the fat black female body’s deviance from beauty norms, helps reinforce itself as socially, economically, and even morally deviant. Not only is the Welfare Queen fat and black, but these physical characteristics become symbols of her deviance from traditional American morals. Her fatness represents her tendency for excess, reinforced by her fine jewelry and clothing, which in combination with her lazy demeanor, makes her an economic burden, specifically on the welfare system. Her blackness and the stereotypes that it encompasses also reinforces her laziness and moral corruption, which supposedly leads her to commit fraud and become the Welfare Queen. Her lack of beauty is not a coincidence, it is a tactic that employs a combination of racial and fat stereotypes in order to create a symbol in which racial animus is so rampant that it actually had the ability to change U.S. social welfare policy in the late twentieth