Status Updates From Fearing the Black Body: The...

Title is wholly misleading. It should have been named “Origins of Fatphobia: the influences of race and religion on bodies and weight”.

Part 2 hardly comments at all about black peoples and their bodies. It’s in this part that I believe the author loses her theme a bit, focusing too much on extraneous details about race almost exclusively within the continent of Europe, and white races. It’s a lot of interesting information, but doesn’t tie into the theme the author is trying to make, which is that fatphobia stems from anti-blackness.

So far this book reads like a toned down, more accessible version of a dissertation. Very clinical in the presentation of evidence to support the thesis. I am only partway through part 2, but I feel like mostly I have just been reading opinions from white male scholars/philosophers/“scientists” of Europe. I would appreciate at least a caveat from the author that these cultural snapshots are only just that.