Da'Shaun L. Harrison > Quotes

“Ugly is political.

It is the determiner for who does and does not work;

who does and does not Love;

who does and does not die;

who does and does not eat.”
― Da'Shaun L. Harrison, Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness

“What is the utility of "body positivity" if it only seeks to provide one with a false sense of confidence rather than to liberate all from that which cages the body?”
― Da'Shaun L. Harrison, Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness

“Body positivity individualizes something that is bigger than the individual.”
― Da'Shaun L. Harrison, Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness

“Health, in name and in action, has always existed to abuse, to dominate, and to subjugate. The medical industry, the health care industry, and the diet industry all exist to maintain a culture intended to “discipline” those whose bodies refuse to—and, for many, simply cannot—conform to the standards of health.”
― Da'Shaun L. Harrison, Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness

“Because, while it is true that the violences of this World are happening to the body, the violence is not created by the body”
― Da'Shaun L. Harrison, Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness

“We are taught, per contra, that we exercise so that we can be healthy, and that health must look opposite of fat. This means that health is punishment. So much so that there are entire camps dedicated to forcing children to exercise for the sake of weight loss. We”
― Da'Shaun L. Harrison, Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness

“What I am really naming here is the complicatedness of feeling both affirmed and harmed by your assault because your body is never really your own when you're fat and Black, and the trauma you arrive at upon realizing that there is no affirmation in touch indented to harm-or at least unintended to be sure of your consent.”
― Da'Shaun L. Harrison, Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness

“If the caged bird is the Beast, trapped and taunted by the idea of freedom, then like it, the Black fat sings with a fearful trill of things unknown but longed for still; we sit on graves of dreams not yet seen. In those dreams, which may never resurrect, there's a place--not the World--where we live and breathe as beings not bound by identifiers and qualifiers predicated on anti-Blackness. Where we are not Black or white, not thin or fat, not cis or trans, not queer or straight, not bound or unbound. In that place, the caged bird is not freed from its cage; in that place, the cage never existed for the bird to ever be bound by.”
― Da'Shaun L. Harrison, Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness

“What would it mean for us to lean into Insecurity as a political tool in which we free ourselves from insisting that we perform "perfection" and total confidence in order to advocate for our collective liberation?”
― Da'Shaun L. Harrison, Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness