Body Image Basics
What is body image?
Family dynamics, cultural stereotypes, and ethnic identities can influence the way we see our body and how we justify the "perfect" body type.
How is body image affetced by culture?
The action or practice of humiliating someone judged to be fat or overweight by making mocking or critical comments about their size
What is fat shaming?
To acknowledge the differences in all body types and appreciate/love their differences.
What is body positivity?
“Body positivity right now is centered around women who are still conventionally desirable.”
What is the issue with the body positivity movement?
The mascot of the Aunt Jemima brand.
What is the stereotypical image of an oversized black woman?
Social norms and "ideal" appearances creating a disturbance in one's own body image as well as a disturbance in how we view others.
What is body negativity?
“Arguably, much like the feminist movement, body positivity has become non-intersectional and prioritizes/celebrates the thoughts, feelings, opinions and achievements of white women, with a small number of ‘token’ people of color to help fill up the ‘look at us being diverse!’ quota.”
"Skinny people are healthy and fat people are unhealthy."
What is a misconception of weight determining overall health?
Acknowledging that one's desire to accept their own body type does not mean they cannot work toward or change the way they look if they so please.
What is body neutrality?
“People are always asking why or how I’m so confident. But what they really mean to say is why are you so confident. They are not asking Rihanna. They are asking me, because they don’t think I should be.”
What is the overshadowing of body ideology through celebrity status?
An offensive term, (formerly in the southern US): a black nursemaid or nanny in charge of white children.
What is a "mammy"?
Creating distance between friends and loved ones and developing unhealthy coping mechanisms (over-exerting one's self and developing an unhealthy relationship with food).
What are some impacts of a negative body image?
Between 1904 and 1934, many writers and health experts coined terms to describe fat women in two of the most circulated Black newspapers of the time.
How does termonlogy and stereotypes spread and remain overtime?
"A happy, grinning, fat Black woman with a scarf around her head, portraying content and loyal servitude."
How is the "mammy" portrayed and fictionalized?