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Read other letters about this article
Why am I not surprised that Debra Dickerson used to "harangue" her co-workers about their lunches? What a perfectly unpleasant thing to do. It matches Dickerson's writing style perfectly.
"Mainstream" fashion magazines are responsible for both large numbers of eating disorders and yo-yo dieting that leads to increased obesity, so singling out the "Urban" magazines for promoting big butts is idiotic. Magazine images damage women's self-esteem and health. This news brought to you by the coalition to repeat things everyone's known since 1970. Furthermore the reasons for increased obesity in minority groups can be more closely correlated with A) Poverty B) Education and C) Other cultural norms than with booty mags. Minority women tend to be poorer (meaning they can't afford as much fresh fruit and vegetables) and less educated (People with less education tend to be fatter, presumably due to a poorer understanding of nutrition science) than their white counterparts.
There's also the fact that 'soul food' is a nutritional nightmare, full of fried foods and fatty meats.
As for why fat minority women are more likely to see themselves as normal than their white counterparts, well you just said that more minority women are fat, so in the context of their friends and family THEY ARE MORE LIKELY TO BE NORMAL. There also may be a distrust of traditional authority at play here.
This article is a ridiculous attempt to offer scaremonger attacks against magazines that Dickerson doesn't like, precisely because she's the sort of person who would 'harangue' a coworker who brought in a cupcake instead of carrot sticks. She doesn't like fat people, she doesn't like people enjoying images of people she considers fat, and she likes playing holier than thou.
Address the serious social issues at the root of the epidemic of obesity among minority women and then we can talk about the booty mags. Until then you're missing the forest for a single leaf on one of the smaller trees at its edge.
