“Damn, she’s thick!”
Contrary to America’s obsession with being rail thin, black men still want Ms. Bonita Applebum and her perfect hourglass frame. And black women are embracing their curves, rejecting the quest for the rail-thin figures women of other cultures crave.
This was just confirmed on an episode of Omarosa’s “Ultimate Merger” reality show, where she said, “I’ve worked so hard on my butt … I want it to sit up like a shelf!”
Thin has long been considered the ideal standard of beauty in white America and as such any research concerned with body type ideals has revolved around weight loss and thinness, with little attention to the black community’s body concerns.
However, Rashanta Bledman, a doctoral student in the department of educational, school and counseling psychology in the University of Missouri’s College of Education, launched a study to research the cultural ideals surrounding black women’s body type that centered instead around shape. Bledman surveyed 79 black women about concerns involving their shape, weight and satisfaction.
What Bledman found is that most black women are generally happy with their bodies, despite some desire to improve their midsection and lower torso. She also found that shape is more important than weight to black women and that the ideal body shape for them was slightly overweight as compared to Body Mass Index (BMI) standards.
But is that standard even right, considering that research results revealed earlier this year showed that being “thick” in the backside is healthier and prevents certain illnesses?
While black women may not be as concerned with being thin as women of other races, they still aren’t shielded from unhealthy desires when it comes to obtaining the ideal body type.
“Many women of color that I talked to wanted to look a certain way that is difficult to obtain. Within their communities, having a curvy body type is preferable to being really thin or really heavy,” explains Bledman.
White America may be idolizing the Angelina Jolies and the Megan Foxes but black America is idolizing the Serena Williamses and Beyoncés. And while validation of curvier frames is socially acceptable, it still presents a narrow image of what black women should look like and can lead to unhealthy repercussions such as eating disorders and weight-related illnesses if taken too far.
Curvy may be the black woman’s ideal body type, but a healthy body should be every black woman’s standard. –nicholas robinson
