The Gray Area with Sean Illing

The racist origins of fat phobia

Jun 16, 2022

54:34

Highlights

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Episode notes

Body Positivity or Fat Destroyer or Fat Liberation?

02:15

Body Positivity and Body Image in America

02:36

Is Aunti Fadness Fundamentally Anti Blackness?

01:40

Introduction

5min

What Is Anti Fatness?

2min

Is Aunti Fadness Fundamentally Anti Blackness?

2min

Health as a Concept, Is Not Something That Should Be Reclaimed

3min

Is There an Obesity Epidemic in America?

5min

Is Weight Loss the Answer to All Our Illnesses?

2min

Are You Attracted to Fat Folks?

3min

Shop if I - The Platform of Choice for Millions of Businesses

3min

Anti Fatness and Anti Blackness in the United States

2min

10.

Is Bigger Body Size Being Used as Justification for Our Murders?

2min

11.

Body Positivity and Body Image in America

3min

12.

Body Positivity or Fat Destroyer or Fat Liberation?

2min

13.

Is There a Difference Between Blackness and Blackness?

3min

14.

Fat Trans People and Black Trans People

5min

15.

How Do We Dismantle the World in Which We Live?

4min

16.

What Does This Kind of Distruction Look Like?

3min

17.

Anti Fatness and Anti Blackness - What Do You Respond to Pushback?

2min

18.

Young People Talk About Body Positivity

3min

Vox’s Anna North talks with Da'Shaun Harrison, the activist, author, and 2022 Lambda Literary Award recipient for their book Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness. Da'Shaun explains the ways in which society's anti-fatness is structural, and connected —historically and politically — to the structures of anti-Blackness that took root alongside slavery in America. Anna and Da'Shaun discuss common misunderstandings and myths about fatness, how these pathologies insidiously infiltrate the criminal justice system, and why Da'Shaun envisions a liberatory future in the idea of destruction.

Host: Anna North (@annanorthtweets), Senior Reporter, Vox

Guest: Da'Shaun Harrison (@DaShaunLH), author; editor-at-large, Scalawag

References:

Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness by Da'Shaun Harrison (North Atlantic; 2021)
"The past, present, and future of body image in America" by Anna North (Vox; Oct. 18, 2021)
"The paradox of online 'body positivity'" by Rebecca Jennings (Vox; Jan. 13, 2021)
Fearing the Black Body by Sabrina Strings (NYU; 2019)
"CDC Study Overstated Obesity as a Cause of Death" by Betsy McKay (Wall Street Journal; Nov. 23, 2004)
"Correction: Actual Causes of Death in the United States, 2000" (JAMA; Jan. 19, 2005)
Killer Fat: Media, Medicine, and Morals in the American "Obesity Epidemic" by Natalie Boero (Rutgers; 2012)
"The Bizarre and Racist History of the BMI" by Aubrey Gordon (Oct. 15, 2019)
"Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book" by Hortense J. Spillers (Diacritics, 17 (2); 1987)
Joy James: Captive Maternals

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This episode was made by:

Producer: Erikk Geannikis
Editor: Amy Drozdowska
Engineer: Patrick Boyd
Deputy Editorial Director, Vox Talk: Amber Hall

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The Gray Area with Sean Illing

The racist origins of fat phobia

Body Positivity or Fat Destroyer or Fat Liberation?

Body Positivity and Body Image in America

Is Aunti Fadness Fundamentally Anti Blackness?

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