“You Just Have to Keep Buying”: How Diet Culture Profits from Fatphobia

In 'Fearing the Black Body', Sabrina Strings presents a meticulously researched history of the transformation of Euro-American ideologies toward fat from the Renaissance to the present day. She argues that fatphobia is an extension of anti-Black racism, tracing its roots through various historical factors including the Atlantic slave trade, Renaissance art, scientific racism, and Protestantism. Strings demonstrates how the ideal of slenderness is racialized and racist, and how Western medicine has historically relied on the brutalization and dehumanization of Black people to validate these ideals. The book highlights how assessments of body size and shape have been used to justify systems of oppression and how contemporary fatphobia is deeply connected to the historical processes of racialization and objectification of Black bodies[1][3][4].