Fat Shaming as Race Shaming

Saartjie Baartman died in 1815. But by then, her brain, bodily and sexual organs had been on display in Europe as a freak show, and would remain so until the mid-1970s. It was not until her body was repatriated and buried in 2002 that Baartman no longer had to appear as an unruly black body. Baartman, one of at least two Khoikhoi women, was made a public spectacle, in part because of her large buttocks and in part because of her race. Paraded under the name Hottentot Venus, Baartman is today considered a ripe example of colonial exploitation and racism, a corporeal example of the derision and commodification still experienced by many black people, black women in particular, on a global scale. In antebellum America and long after the end of enslavement, black women were subjected to descriptions of themselves as mammy—generally portrayed as heavy-set, dark-skinned, and jolly, adorned with some kind of headscarf and a large white apron. Like Baartman, these women were often made out to be freaks—desexualized or overexoticized—often within food and domestic imagery. Against this backdrop, this paper argues for a historical recognition that women’s black bodies have a long history of being devalued and in need of controlling. Fueling perceptions that wholeness and health are not of little interest, these misguided beliefs lead to a constant reading of African American communities as always lacking, lazy, undisciplined, and morally bankrupt. This standpoint also all too often forms the bedrock of encouraging African American people to change what they eat in order to be more productive and responsible citizens. The presentation will weigh this mandate against less bankrupt alternatives like understanding and appreciating culinary cultural sustainability and the role of this concept in pushing back against such misrepresentation.