Episode 33 Transcript

Hello, and welcome to the fierce fatty podcast. I am your host Victoria Welsby. And in this episode, we're talking about how fat phobia stemmed from racism. Let's do it.

You're listening to the fierce fatty Podcast. I'm Victoria Welsby TEDx speaker, Best Selling Author and fat activist, I have transformed my life from hating my body with desperately low self esteem, to being a courageous and confident first fatty who loves every inch of this jelly. society teaches us living in a fat body is bad. But what if we spent less time, money and energy on the pursuit of thinness and instead focused on the things that actually matter? Like if pineapple on pizza should be outlawed? Or if the mullet was the greatest haircut of the 20th century? So how do you stop a negative beliefs about your fat body controlling your life? It's the first fatty podcast Let's begin. Hello, fatty welcome to today's episode, I'm so pleased that you're choosing to hang out with me today with all of the other things that you could be doing, you've chosen to have some fat goodness in your life. So thank you. Now with all that's been going on with going on in the world, I wanted to make this episode. And also, I wanted to explicitly state my support for Black Lives Matter. And say that first fatty, me, we are anti racist, I'm anti racist. Black bodies have been seen as the enemy for hundreds of years. And that's because we live in a white supremacist society, a society that I as a white person benefits from every single day. And murder of black people isn't something surprising or new to the black community. And it's only just now that some white people are beginning to take it seriously and beginning to understand their impact on black people and black communities. And that includes myself. So some things I wanted to share with you some of the things that I'm doing to try and be a better ally. So some of the things I'm currently doing, I'm not sharing any content about my business on my my channel. So over over email or over social media, I'm not sharing stuff about my business. And instead, I'm sharing content that is created by black people, and about racism. I have donated to Black Lives Matter Vancouver, which is my local chapter of Black Lives Matter. I've been educating myself and listening and learning. I yesterday listened to a couple of episodes of a podcast called 1619. And I had discussion with a loved one about it is it's really good, a really good podcast, I'm gonna link to it. In the show notes. I have. I've also found a resource with writing prompts that's going to help me unpack my bias around race. And this was created by Lisa, Renee Hall. Everything I'm talking about, I'm going to link in in the show notes.

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So that you can do it too. So some of the questions in Lisa's writing prompts, things like what what are your first memories of seeing a black person? Did your parents talk to you about race and, and things like that and it really gets you think about your your biases, and we all have biases, if you're a white person and you live on planet Earth, you're living in a white supremacist society, and you would have picked up biases along the way that you have yet to discover. A lot of us, myself included, have felt like I'm not racist. And if I see racism, I call it out and that type of thing. But what am I doing to be actively anti racist, and to continually work on how I have yet to discover what I'm biased against, right? This the same stuff that we're doing with fat phobia, to recognize that we do have bias. And it's our job. Now that we know that to try and excavate it from our lives. So another thing is, it's a, it's been a policy in my business for a few years now to when I create something like, for example, a summit or any type of virtual event, that I have a minimum of 50% of the speakers be people of color. And also when I'm invited to speak somewhere, I want to make sure that there are people of color which are not just invited in a tokenistic way. And in many times, I've said, No, thank you to things because I look at the lineup, and it's just white, white, white, white people. And I say, Come back to me when you have people of color in this lineup, because I'm not taking the space of someone, a person of color, a person of color. So I don't need to be cranking congratulated for that, or given a cookie. That's like a basic thing that I could do. But I haven't extended this to my business in regards to the systems that I use, the tools that I use, for example, the software and stuff. So are the companies that I am using and giving money to, are they actively anti racist. And up until now, it's been kind of hard to tell. So some things I've done in the past is I would look at a company's like, website and see the pictures that they're using. Is it just white people? Is it just thin people and look at the people who work there, if they if I can find those images? And I have in the past called out companies and said, Hey, I've noticed that it's just loads of white men working here. Do you have any people of color do you have any women? Companies don't like that when I when I've done that. Anyway, so I, I've done that a little bit. But I got lazy in looking at all of the other different types of software that I use in the things that I use in my business. And so I'm going to do that I'm not going to give my money to companies who cannot come out, especially right now, where everyone is stating whether they are anti racist, or if they're like, all lives matter, or white lives matter or some other bullshit. And so if they can't, at this time, say, black lives matter, then they're not going to get my money. So some of the tools that you can help to educate yourself, yourself. And I'm going to be using to educate myself. I'm going to link below, but I've picked out a TEDx talk for you. That podcast that I mentioned before is called 1619. And it's about how slavery transformed America. And 6019 is when the first group of about 20 black people were traded into slavery in what was would become America. And it's very interesting. So check that out. Because I've also got a anti resource anti racist racism resource guide for white people. So you can click on that and pick one thing that you can do. I've also got 75 Things white people can do for racial justice.

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And because because it's there's so many different things that that that we can do. And there's a lot of information about read this, read this do this. I want to give you these a handful of resources that you can just like to begin with, watch one video, listen to one podcast, read one article. don't donate to one place. And so if you're financially able, we've got a list of vetted and updated bail funds and so hat tip to Reagan chest Dane who shared this and so that's another thing we have to be cognizant of is a lot of links to share to donate. And sometimes we're not sure if these are you know, vetted and and legitimate places or if it's white people saying give me my money, give me your money and and using it for nefarious things. Okay, so, like I am going to continue to work on my bias and work on How I haven't been doing enough. And I want to say, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, for not using my privilege, and I want to do better, and I will do better. And I will continue to educate myself and share the message, that it's not okay to be racist, obviously, and dig out my own biases that I absolutely 100% have. But yet, you know, haven't discovered. And this is a reminder, because I think most of my listeners, you're probably liberal, obviously, if you're listening to this podcast, but to recognize even if you're liberal, and you identify as someone who's not racist, what are you doing to be anti racist? So that is, there's my mistake of not working to be actively anti racist. Okay, so that is why today I wanted to this was, this is a topic that was on my mind, but I felt that I didn't know enough about it. And so I've done a lot of research about fat phobia and racism. Now. I've always known that fat phobia intersects with racism. And the fear of black bodies, has translated into fat phobia, but I really wanted to dig into the history of it. And I want to share that with you today. And so I'm going to be sharing a lot of Sabrina strings work. And Sabrina has a book called fearing the black body, the racial origins of fat phobia. And she's got other other writings that she's done as well. She recently did a blog on what is it called? It's not, quote unquote, obesity, it's slavery. We know why COVID-19 is killing so many black people. And so basically, it's not because they're fat, it's because bias and racism, so I'll link to that one as well. It's gonna be like 50,000 Links in today's show notes, but that's okay. I am sure that you're interested in this stuff as much as I am. Okay, so, the racist origins of fat phobia. I'm going to be quoting a lot from Sabrina. So that we're using the words of a black person who is an expert in this. So Sabrina says in my book fair in the black body, the racial origins of fat phobia, I describe how fat phobia in the West finds its roots in anti blackness. Since at least the 18th century, white philosophers and race scientists had been convinced that black people were excessively quote unquote sensual. black Africans, they claimed were addicted to gratifying their sexual and oral appetites. As a result, they asserted black people tended to be too fat. And so I'm going to give you a quote from a lock a lock is amazing. Go find a lock on Instagram, a lock in in response to reading Sabrina's book.

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This was a lock summary. Most often we think of race as skin color, but European theories, theorists initially began to define race by facial attractiveness and body size. In order to perpetuate the racist myth myth that white people were superior to Black people. These thinkers asserted that black people were inherently fatter than white people are raising the variation of sizes amongst white people and black people. Women's bodies were and continue to be the battleground for proving racial difference. Despite black women having long being idolized across Europe. They will assume that they will soon shifted from ascetic counterparts to counterpoints for white women. White women had to define their beauty against black women. Maintaining thinness was about the pursuit of Western rationalism, as experts maintain that fatness stifled one's ability to think clearly fatness, a state of being which at various times has been seen as a mark of beauty became associated with racial failure. White women in particular were tasked with managing their size as a way to preserve the integrity of the race. So basically, so some of the things that a lock has has said there about Um, how black women were idolized was because at the time, do you remember? Not what you remember when do you remember in the 18th century when you were like 300 years ago, but the, the, you know, the the bustles that that women would have at the back of their skirts, and they'd have a big, you know, they'd have something in there too, to make their bum look bigger. And so when they saw black bodies, and they saw some black bodies had bigger bums, they were like, Well, how did they get them naturally when we have flat bums, and so they, they were idolized, but that was a temporary thing. And also, we have this this myth that gets keeps getting perpetuated about how fat bodies used to be idolized throughout history. And that's not really true. Slightly, very slightly chubby bodies at some periods within our history have been, have been represented as an idea of beauty. So you know, the idea like a Rubenesque body? Well, if you look at artwork from hundreds of years ago, and these bodies that we claim to be fat bodies, they're not actually fat. They're pretty thin and pretty white. And they might have like, a little bit of cellulite. And, you know, they, they probably like, I don't know, a size eight or something or a size 10 in the UK. They're pretty small. They're definitely not fat. And so and we're like, oh, you know, we're remembering like it before When fat bodies were, were celebrated. That's never been the case. Actual fat bodies have there's not much evidence to support that. Historically, fat bodies were ever celebrated. And I'm talking about fat fat, not, you know, slightly curvy people. You know, like that, you know? Who's that white actress? Can't remember she did one way she's like, she she bent over. She did a stat that she copied a statue and being like, oh my god, I'm just like a statue and she's like a thin white woman with a tiny little bit of rolls. I feel like I named Amy. Amy. Oh, God. You were gonna be shouting at me wrong me. Her name is this. But she's American, thin white actress who has kind of her brand is like harm kind of fat and ugly, but she's neither. Okay, so this is from the BBC. So I want to tell you about

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a woman whose name was sarchi, also known as Sarah Baartman. So this is from the BBC. Two century goes two centuries ago, Sarah Baartman, died after years spent in European freak shows. Sarah Baartman died on the 29th of December 18 15. But her exhibition continued. Her brain skeleton and sexual organs remained on display in a Paris museum until 78 until 1974. Her remains weren't repatriated and buried until 2002. brought to Europe seemingly on false pretenses by a British doctor, stage name the hot and taut Venus, she was paraded around freak shows in London and Paris with crowds invited to look at her large buttocks. Today, she is seen as many as the epitome of colonial exploitation and racism, of the radical ridicule and commodification of black people. So we're going to learn more about Sarki Bartman and how basically she was brought over from South Africa under the like this BBC article says under false pretense prints pretenses basically what we think now is that she was enslaved and she was taken to the UK to to England and then to France to be put on display as you know, look at this black woman, look at her body. Isn't it strange, isn't it animalistic? You know, a freak show. She was she was in. And so Sabrina strings writes about this in a post for bust. This is a really great article, go check it out. I also learned about sarchi in a YouTube video and then there's BBC article. But Sabrina she looks at the intersection of racism and fatness. And so what Sabrina says is, quote, a slave from Cape Town Bartman was the human property of the British entrepreneur, Alexander Dunlop. It was Dunlops idea that she'd be brought to Europe and exhibited for lurid delight. Exhibit goers, both the curious and the lecherous, would encounter her in a small enclosure. On a typical night, Bartman would be adorned with jewels and garments that would, that had been poorly curated to represent the raiment of her tribe tribe. The coin, also referred to by Westerners as the hot and hot, she, she'd emerge from a dark corner wielding a spear. Then she'd slowly remove her coat, allowing it to dangle coquettishly from one shoulder to give the crowd a moment to take in her undulating curves. Her thick, five soft arms and rounded belly were all major drawers, but it was her general return to the return to duty and jetting backside that brought throngs of spectators. It was these qualities that made Bartman an archetype of black femininity in the popular imagination. They were also what many believed proved racial scientific claims of African Bob Barbati barbarity Batmans, international fame popularized an idea that had been percolating since the 1700s, that black women will constitutionally fix it. And that war, and that this was evidence of their savagery. So the 18th century, it was the height of the slave trade. And white people were exploring the idea of quote, unquote, race science is bullshit, basically racist, and pointing out racial differences. And so it was argued by these race scientists that black people were sensuous, and they were sexual. And they were a step between white people and animals, and their bodies were evidence for this.

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And these race scientists and philosophers said that black people indulged in animalistic things. So they said, quote, food and fornication. And so with these these studies, things started getting written down and put it into publications. And so going on with what Sabrina says, quote, according to Buffon, so Buffon was a philosopher of you know, this race science bullshit. According to Buffon, Sub Saharan Africans, especially were unable to were able to remain well fed with little effort, given the local climate and their lush green surroundings. The result was that they were tall and plump, but simple and stupid, and in and quiet. And so in 1771, John Baptiste paella Romain wrote in an encyclopedia, it's called encyclopedia, a systematic Dictionary of the sciences, arts and crafts. And this John Pat Baptists fellow wrote, Africans were and this is quoting from Sabrina Africans were described as having a potion for pleasure that makes them fairly unfit for hard labor. Since they were they are generally generally lazy, cowardly, and very fond of gluttony. So this evidence quote unquote, evidence is building and building to say that fat so that black people are fat, because they are gluttonous and because they are lazy and because they are animalistic racism. Hello. And this depiction of black bodies continues, and it was reported that quote, African men incited their women to grow to the size of cells in what was described as an art of fattening and so, and think about your own ideas about you know, like, remember when tests Holliday said she was on a photo shoot, shoot, and there was like this, this scandal around, a reporter heard her say, oh, black men love me. And that stereotype, and that's obviously racist. And that stereotype that all black men love fat women like that is like, where does that come from? Where does you know? Hello, like 1771 this is the shit that they're saying that black men, African men want their women to grow to the size of cells. And so this these types of biases come from hundreds of years ago, and they've just been perpetuated and seen as fact. So by the 19th century, it was taken as fact that black people were gluttonous and lazy. And their bodies were used as evidence of this, and particularly women's bodies. And they were said to grow to a quote, unwieldly size. So Sabrina writes, in his own natural history of mankind, but it was written in French. Natural history of mankind. Vieri wrote that hotton Top Women, and that's where sarchi came from she from the KhoiKhoi tribe. Western is called hotton Top hudon Top Women developed protruding buttocks and bellies that push out, intensifying the link between blackness and animate and an animal animal at some, like words are hard, which had been the aim of race scientists since at least Buffon very changed that hot and charged that hot and top women's buttocks resembled those are four legged creatures, and that they get so large, they'd need to be supported with a small cart, like a domesticated animal. It's just, yeah. So race scientists, really successfully linked fatness and to blackness, and thinness to whiteness. And so the beauty ideals were we don't want to we as white people don't want to look like the savage black people who have

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fat bodies because they gluttonous, the animalistic, they, they're just interested in fornication and food, and they're lazy. And so how know we don't want to be looking like them. And so we want to look like what white people look like, which is thin, which is not true, because of course, there were thin white, fat white people and thin black people. You know, there's diversity of bodies, there were a diversity of bodies then. So, quote, In God in God's lady's book, the most popular women's magazine of the 19th century, an 1830 article by a socialite named Lee hunt, describe the relationship between over eating femininity and race, reminding the gentle Anglo Saxon Saxon reader that women who want to preserve their looks, must never eat too much. According to hunt, no lady in America, my American high society could cope. Two could hope to maintain her esteem while corpulent only in Africa, could a fat woman find her stride? Since it was rumored that on the continent, no lady can be charming under 21 Stone, or nearly 300 pounds. And so it began becoming a rule that to be feminine and to be nice and lovely. You have to be thin, not like those black people. And some feminists at the time. Were not happy about this, and they recognize this as a distraction. And they saw the way that thin bodies were being represented in newspapers, and would write in and say, Why you depicting thin bodies as the way to be, and they were very, like, you know, trying to get thin is is not going to keep you robust to fight against patriarchy. And it's, it's just a distraction from the important work we're doing with feminism. But of course, feminists notoriously racist as well. So but some, some who were abolitionists. So soon enough, the origins of fat phobia were lost. And it was just taken as this inherent thing, but thin bodies were better than fat bodies, and then attributed to health. And so now it is racism is disguised. As you know, well, it's just you know, I just find thin bodies more attractive and it's just not healthy to be that way. And that is a wonderful way to describe to disguise racism to the point where a lot of people don't even know that how it stemmed from racism. So, quote, The thin ideal, like other physical ideals, oppresses people, often women by compelling them to confer form to an arbitrary body standard. But gender wasn't the only or even the primary organ organizing principle in the disciplinary force that is the slender aesthetic. The impetus for the ideal was to avoid the unseemly association with an adiposity that had been deemed black. The fear of the imagined fat black woman was created by racial ideologies that have been used for almost 300 years to both degrade black women and discipline white women. anti blackness is the Forgotten rationale, but underload underlies both thin privilege and fat stigma. So, so my quotes there were from Sabrina's Sabrina strings article, the racist origins of fat phobia, and I encourage you to go check that out. I'm gonna link to it in the show notes with 50,000 other links. So. So Sarah Sarki Bartman her story, you can learn more about her story, but basically, she,

Unknown Speaker 32:30

it's, it's Yeah, so basically, she was there exhibited, and people were like, Oh, my gosh, you know, look at this, this black body. And then in the evening, wealthy patrons had her around her house so that they could touch her. And she was probably sexually assaulted. And not everyone in the society at that time, thought that this was okay. So the, so Britain had stopped the slave trade. So they'd stopped trading slaves bringing slaves into the country. Sorry, enslaved people. They had stopped bringing enslaved people into the country, but there were still enslaved people in Britain. Like, they hadn't freed enslaved people. And so, so that was the climate. So some people were like, You can't do this. Basically, you have enslaved sarchi. And that's not okay. And you are parading her around as this freak show. And so the, the men who brought her in, were taken to court and charges were withdrawn. But then they brought in Sarki as a evidence to show she was there under her free will. And I, she didn't speak English, I'm pretty sure that they said that they had an agreement written written a written agreement with sarchi. But there's no evidence of this, obviously, because they probably just enslaved her and it was awful. And so eventually, she was, I don't know if she was sold to a French person or she was given to a French person. But so Aki eventually died of alcoholism. And, and then, like we like in the BBC article. The exhibition didn't stop there. So she died in 1815. But what The the person who? Who the French guy, he took her body. And so he had asked her, show me your genitals and and she said no. And she refused. And so when she died, the first thing he did was was to cut out her genitals to put them on display. He did a plaster cast of her whole body. He took out her brain and cut other things off her. And then he took her skeleton. And it was in display in this Parisien new museum until 1974. So people would come and see this plaster cast of sarchi. And we look at her skeleton as like, oh, wow, look at the black body. Isn't it strange? And isn't it? So? You know, look at her genitals isn't that you know, showing how sensual and how animalistic these black people are. So South Africa, they demanded for her return her remains to be returned, and this prison machine was like, Well, I don't think we should give them back to you. Because then you know, you're going to start demanding all of the stuff that we stole from you. And so all this is a problem. And it wasn't until 2002 that they got her remains back. And so she was buried in an area that, that people think that she might have been from related to the KhoiKhoi tribe. And so finally, she got some, you know, piece from being looked at, like this and, and whatnot. So, that is the story of how fatphobia stemmed from racism. And there's a lot more to it. But this is a very kind of, you know, Coles notes, is that what you say Coles notes, American, so people from the USA, you know, overview of that, so go and get Sabrina strings book fairing, the

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black body the racial origins of fat phobia. And also, Sabrina has been on many podcasts. And so clearly, you're a podcast listener to listen to. So go and check her out the podcasts to learn more. And as well on the on the subject of racism, if you're a white person, just want to point out that in this work that we are going to continue to do to be anti racist. You're going to make mistakes, and I'm going to make mistakes. Like even in this episode, I didn't use the word enslaved. And I caught myself. But that is not a reason to not try and feeling uncomfortable about this stuff. And not knowing everything is not a reason to try and do better. So So join me in trying to do better and trying to dismantle our own racist beliefs and our own biases that we have in our beautiful brains. I was watching this video by I can't remember who. Anyway, it was about how if someone says you're racist, you're like, No, I'm not. Because what you hear is, you're a bad person. And our identities is that we're, we're, we're kind people and we're empathetic. And we we try and do good in the world and all that type of stuff. And so when you hear that, you're racist, it doesn't align with your identity of trying to be a good, you know, liberal person. But that is not what being racist is. It's, you know, you don't have to be outwardly overtly racist to still hold racist beliefs. And so it's not really about us, it's not about us. It's about the system. The, the, the way that we've been brought up as, especially as white people is that to say, you know, we've been just been given a leg up on everything. And everything is just that little bit easier because we don't fear that we're going to be murdered, and we get better health care and, you know, black people, like with health care, the the health care outcomes are horrendous. like black women are way more likely to die in childbirth, and any made of anything in medical procedures, white people stand a better chance than than black people and people of color. And, you know, everything, obviously, like wages and, and housing and access to food and everything is affected by race and white people. You know, I have this privilege that, yeah, I'm gonna keep working on trying to erase. So, so thank you, thank you for being here. And I'm sorry, I haven't been better. And I will do better. And if you're a white person, please check out the resources where you can, you know, maybe just watch that TEDx video, maybe you just listened to that podcast 6019 It may be just donate to one source, you know, so that you don't feel overwhelmed with with all the things that you need to do. Because I know that I have felt like that. And, you know, we can just start with doing one thing a day and seeing where that gets us. Yeah. Okay, so thank you for tuning into day. I really appreciate it. I hope that you're feeling okay. And you're doing alright with the lockdown. I I've got to see my my nephew a few times. And it's really cool and cute. Like the other day.

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He came round. And I was working and he was like, oh, no, come play with me. And I was like, oh, I

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need to work. And he was like, no, no, he's like, Shut, shut, shut your pooter Shut up at pooter. He just turned three. And I said, I need to make money and that he was like, okay, and then he came back and he was like, Hey, go his money and he gave me like invisible money. And I was like, okay, so then I shut I shut my pooter and yeah, watched him play with Teddy's or whatever. So I go. Yeah, so. All right. Well, thanks for hanging out with me today on this episode, and I will see you next time fatty the boss