By CocoaDiva on Jul 30, 2008 with Comments
Black women are constantly told through images in the media about what is beautiful. We are constantly shown what images of beauty are through music videos, hip hop music, movies and television. Everyone wants to fit their butts in some Apple Bottom Jeans, be Bootylicious, and to make your butt cheeks clap for a man. I am so tired of black women justifying their size. Lets get real here folks. Fat is fat….fat is not any other fluffy word you want to call it. Have you ever seen a pound of fat in real life. There you go!!!
She doesn’t just sit around without any physical exertion. This girl runs for 40 minutes at a treadmill speed every day except Sunday, at intervals of about 6.0 mph to 7.5 mph and does about 20 minutes of strength training and this is all before practicing her dance routines. So, she works out about 6 days a week. How bout them apples!! She does this so she can eat what she wants but avoid heart disease and improve her health.
Her Mastercleanse diet is a quick fix for roles and scenes, which is fine since she has exercise and better eating habits incorporated in her life. This is so much different from just wanting to lose a quick 20 pounds and doing zero physical exertion. If you ain’t running and dancing like Beyonce – don’t compare your bootyliciousness to hers. Her body fat ratio won’t match up guaranteed!
We have all heard Monique holler about hating skinny women and being happy as a big girl. I do think what Monique is doing is positive but with a negative twist. Its always good to have a cheerleader. However, that cheerleader should inspire your best self. Monique’s message encourages overweight and obese women to be complacent. She doesn’t preach about healthy living but is like the pied piper of cakes and cookies. Come on thick sistahs, eat some more and die early while you feel great about your size. Monique’s song is a nice lullaby straight to disease and health issues because we ignore the real issue. Big women can lose weight and can be healthy.
However there are thick women who are improving their diets in order to get healthy.
Queen Latifiah is the spokes person for Jenny Craig and wants to lose 5-10% of her body weight to combat diabetes. We all remember Toccara who first appeared on America’s Next Top Model. After being on Celebrity Fit for two seasons, and having a BMI of 40%, she has slimmed down due to concerns about her health, blood pressure, diabetes, and body image in the media.
Erika Sheffield, a registered dietitian from Baltimore states “As African-American women, we have a different aesthetic in terms of body image. We don’t necessarily perceive a full figure as being a bad thing,” says . “But if you maintain a healthy diet, exercise on a regular basis and take care of yourself and are fuller-figured, you can still be healthy as long as you are aware of the risk factors.
Darryl James in his article provides us with a few stats. “Women with waists thirty-five inches or larger have a 79% increased risk of premature death from heart disease and/or cancer, when compared to women with twenty-eight inch waists or smaller. The increased risk is broken down to twice the risk of death from heart disease and a 63% increased risk of cancer-related death. These risks are carried by women with larger waists even if their weight is otherwise within normal ranges.” In short women with extra belly fat have numerous health risks.
“It also means that while women cheer for Monique’s efforts to give fat women a public relations makeover, the potential is for more women to die from fat-related diseases, while feeling better about their body image.”
We are lying to ourselves about the history of women of African descent as well, “women of African descent only found rampant obesity when they began to adopt European food preferences all over the world, and began adapting to hostile environments by making full use of food byproducts tossed out by slavemasters.”
Debra Dickerson, author of
Healthy, My Ass states that “compared with overweight white Americans, overweight black Americans are two to three times more likely to say their weight is average — even after they’ve been told they are overweight or obese by a doctor (emphasis added). It’s one thing not to “see” that you need to lose weight. It’s quite another to reject that knowledge from the medical professional you sought out.”
We need to get it together. Stop rationalizing your size. It ain’t historic, healthy is what is in. If you have a large donk and are working out. More power to you. If your Body Mass Index says overweight or obese, this isn’t fuzzy math. I say this in love because my own mother died of heart disease at age 53. Hit the gym and adjust your eating habits or run the risk of problems in your elderly years. Again STOP RATIONALIZING!!!! Your family will thank you!
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Filed Under: Beauty • Exercise • Fitness and Health • Media
Tags: Beyonce • Fat • Image • Media • Thick • Toccara
