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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
..I'll personally pay for her food for a year.
I just looked at the pictures; I am a nutriontist, and weigh people daily, and this young woman is NOT 5'7" and 157" as she claims. She is at least 200 lb - at LEAST.
That is one big ass.
I'm gonna agree with those who say Buffie the Body isn't a perfect example of an obese woman. She doesn't appear to have much visceral fat, which is the kind of fat that kills you.
However, I also know what Debra's trying to say. I live in Memphis. The word is "thick". Thick can mean anything up to 350 pounds. Thick can mean ladies like the lady in that Eddie Murphy movie. Ladies whose ankles not only no longer touch, they're in two different zip codes. BIG ladies. "Mmm, she's thick," someone says as one of these super-plus-size ladies strolls by, setting off a chorus of appreciation.
On the one hand, there are black women like the friend who was my matron of honor. She's a professional woman, head of the teaching staff at a medical hospital, light-skinned, and she's always hated what she calls her "big black ass." She worked out and dieted obsessively, and although the rest of her became spindly, the ass remained. So she got lipo, only to discover that when you try to rearrange your body with lipo too much, the fat can come back in really strange patterns. So she got more lipo. It was a mess, and all this fuss over an ass that wasn't particularly big in the first place. On the other hand, there are the riding-cart women who can't make a short dash to catch a two-year-old who runs out into traffic, and the guys who like 'em thick. Neither of these seems like an ideal to emulate.
I applaud black men (and women) who reject the idea that the perfect body belongs to a skinny white girl with a butt like a 10-year-old boy's. But, as James Thurber said, You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward.
I agree with Mizmoon: Buffie is not fat, but her ass is akin to Pam Anderson's chest: wildly inflated. Well, to each her & his own -- what turns you on, so long as it's not dangerous to others (and preferably the one doing the inflating).
That said, I live and work in a predominantly black city, in a predominantly black workplace, and I am astonished at how very fat & obese so many of the black women are. This is not a good thing, and it has nothing to do with aesthetics. These women simply are not healthy and are at high risk for deadly disease. I see them struggle to walk down the halls, or even resorting to scooters which are spread around the building. I see them load up with unhealthy fried food in the cafeteria, and watch as they take the elevator up, or even down, a single flight of stairs. Their poor eating habits and poor exercise habits are killing them. If what Ms. Dickerson says about ol' Buffie's eating and exercising habits is true, then this young, fit woman (with the enormous butt) will be an obese woman before she knows it, and prone to die years before she ought to.
I don't see nearly as many obese black men as I do black women. It's a real and very sad problem, and one which can't be ignored or dismissed due to scorn for super-skinny fashion models.
When did ATL and "urban lad mags" become the embodiment of black culture? Christ on a crutch.
Its great to educate people about healthy lifestyles. Exercise, eat fresh foods, floss your damn teeth, drink more water, blah blah blah. Its fine to occassionaly point out that yo-yo diets and being either extremely over OR under weight can lean to serious health problems.
But I have absolutely had it with the fact that anytime a non-skeletal woman (not man!) is pictured in the media people start harping on how her obesity will lead to health problems which will simply drain our society of its resources. I hate that this argument often seems to amount to no more than the writer/activist's revulsion at the sight of a woman's body which is anything other than "perfect", that is very thin with large breasts (Playmates) or extremely underweight (super models).
Can a woman not be a healthy weight? The kid who won Amer. Idol and the model, Buffy, are simply NOT obese. Nor do they even look unhealthy in my opinion. My sister is the same size as the Amer Idol kid - she is a former Cheerleading National's champion and an avid jogger and mountain biker. I have a friend with a body (but not diet) similar to Buffy's. This girl participates in charity marathons. Both women eat well and are in amazing shape.
Both of these girls struggled for years to be comfortable with their bodies. Not until they were in their late 20's did they accept that no matter what diet/exercise program they tried, they would just be larger than the girls in magazines. They also realized that in the real world many men and women love their healthy, curvy bodies (esp. the girl with the ass!)
And WTF? Its better for women to go under the knife and anesthesia in order to get fake breasts than to accept their naturally large asses?!? This is the healthy alternative?
Shame on you and Salon
... and I still find myself looking askance at my fat-assed sisters smiling coyly and bending over on the covers King, Smooth and Black Men magazines. Shouldn't I be happy as a fat-assed, darked skinned woman that my kind of beauty is being celebrated somewhere? Uh no. Frankly, it makes me feel uncomfortable. And reading the Village Voice article doesn't help. Before you all pile on Ms. Dickerson, maybe you should too.
One lover of "fat asses and pretty faces," remarked:
"If a girl walks by, you really get a good idea from her back of what it would be like to have sex with them," he says. "Not from the front. If she has a fat ass, there's just a lot more to work with."
That's not exactly the kind of attention I want thankyouverymuch. Before I step foot on a scale, I can always tell that I'm a little heavier than normal because as my weight goes up, so do the number of catcalls, whistles and sexually-explicit comments from black and Latino men. But let's put aside the fetishism and exploitation of (mostly) black women.
It's true that with her proportionally thin waist, Buffie's body may not seem like the best to hang her argument on, but Ms. Dickerson is right that there is a huge problem in the black community with women eating unhealthily and not taking care of themselves. All of my fat-assed aunts have diabetes, high blood pressure and other health problems. My mom seeing what was in store for her, thankfully upped her intake of whole grains, cut out the sugar, started exercising and lost 30 pounds. They make fun of her for being so "skinny," even though she's 5'5 and 150 lbs.
It is a different standard of beauty than the Hollywood one of being skinny and white, but it's still a "standard." In other words, women are still being told to be a certain way in order to gain acceptance. I thought it was sad when Buffie said she had to start drinking GNC protein shakes to gain weight and that now her only way of supporting her family is her ass.
Wouldn't it be nice if dudes of all races could just back off and stop telling women of all races whether to eat too much or too little depending on what got them off that week? Yeah, that would be great.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
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Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
