Issues of Beauty and Style

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(The following is an excerpt from Chapter 3 of Divided Sisters.)

Body Size

Difference in body size is another beauty issue that can divide White women from Black women. In a 1994 survey of over six hundred college students, African American women were found to weigh ten pounds more than White women of the same height. The same study also found that significantly more Black women than White women are satisfied with their body image. And in 1995, anthropologists Mimi Nichter and Sheila Parker interviewed teenagers in focus groups to find that 90 percent of White girls are dissatisfied with their bodies, while 70 percent of Black teenage girls are proud of the way they look. Black teenage girls also overwhelmingly agreed that it was better to be little overweight than underweight, but the White girls believed the exact opposite. There is also evidence that White women get many more liposuctions and undergo more potentially dangerous cosmetic operations, like breast augmentation or reduction, to alter their natural shape. An African American psychologist, Roy Allen Roberts,
analyzing the ads and articles in White and Black women's magazines, found that publications aimed for the Black market (for example, Essence) contained significantly fewer articles and advertisements dealing with weight loss than similar publications aimed at White women (such as Vogue and Cosmopolitan). And Carolyn West, another African American psychologist, reported that Black women's magazines are more likely to include ads for "butt pads" and actual weight-gain products to help "get rid of those skinny legs"-, such type ads were quite rare in primarily White magazines. In presenting her findings at the 1993 American Women in Psychology conference, West noted, "White people are hard on their large women."

Why is there greater acceptance of large women in the African American community? Certainly one explanation is that in traditional African societies, full-figured bodies were valued as symbols of health, wealth, desire, prosperity, and fertility. This cultural ideal was brought to America by the slaves, and may continue to influence standards of attractiveness among Black women in America today. The slave plantation system, too, encouraged Black women to be large, to help better in the field, and perhaps in the home to present less of a temptation for the male plantation owner.

On the other hand, according to prevailing White Victorian standards of attractiveness, the ideal woman was delicate, with an abnormally small waist tightly corseted to keep its shape. Her thinness and frailty were considered essential to her femininity, potent reminders of a woman's constant need of masculine protection. The value of thinness is reflected in a saying commonly heard in the White community, "You can never be too rich or too thin."

Despite the dominant society's ideal of thinness, many Blacks retain negative attitudes toward women who are too skinny. This is reflected in a saying popular in the Black community, "Don't nobody want a bone but a dog." Madeleine Nelson, an African American woman from Virginia, has experienced the cultural disparity in her modeling work and participation in beauty pageants. "When I competed in black pageants in D.C., I never won a swimsuit competition . . . I was told by Black-owned companies that I was too skinny. But in competitions with white women, I did very well. I either won or got first runner-up." Nelson further observed, "Black women don't strive to be very thin. And black men don't want their women too thin. Even with black men who date white women, you'll notice that the white women tend to be more voluptuous." A White woman named Yvonne Neil-Powell noted, "If you are white and weigh 105 or 110, you've got the perfect shape. If you are black and weigh that much, you're too skinny."
Cultural differences in body size can make it difficult for White women and Black women to feel comfortable in each other's presence. A White woman of normal weight, used to complaining to her White women friends about how fat she is,. may suddenly feel self-conscious in front of African American women, who possess the very body type she disparages. Of greater concern, some African American women, previously content with their substantial size, may, following exposure to White women's ideals of thinness, start to question their attractiveness. The reflections of one thirty-four-year old Black woman are quite telling:

At work, where there are only a few of us Black women, I feel pretty fat. At home, with my friends, I don't think about it hardly at all. I guess it's because I'm closer to the middle [of my Black friends' weight range]. Black girls and women who live in predominantly White middle-class neighborhoods, or attend predominantly Whites schools, may similarly have their self-image changed. An African American woman named Jesse Putnam recalls how, as a teenager growing up amidst friends who were White and extremely thin, she used to sit on the floor because someone once told her that doing so would help make her butt flat. Said Putnam, now at peace with her 36-15-38 shape, "It wasn't until my mom held me and told me that I was blessed with the body that I have, that I began to feel good about myself"

Like the emphasis on straight hair and light skin, the preference for a slender body has class connotations. Jocelyn, a Black woman, recalls that when she was younger, signs of her working-class family's doing well included serving big meals, having chubby children, and keeping plenty of food in the house. As they started to "move on up," however, these values changed. According to Jocelyn, "When my father's business began to bloom and my father was interacting more with white businessmen and seeing how they did business, suddenly thin became important. If you were a truly well-to-do family, then your family was slim and elegant."

Kim Chernin, author of The Obsession: Reflections on the Tyranny of Slenderness, draws an important distinction between fears about being fat and fears about being perceived as lower class. Chernin, who is White, grew up in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Los Angeles during the 1950s, a time when women's bodies tended to be larger on the whole than they are today. She was comfortable with her breasts and hips, curves and softness, until she left that community at the age of seventeen. In White society, Chernin began to think of herself as overweight and, in a desperate attempt to make herself thinner, ended up anorexic. After recovering and becoming a counselor for others suffering from eating disorders, Chernin realized the extent to which negative images of fat women underlie racial hatred and negative stereotyping. In an article in Essence magazine, she commented:

A lot of the imagery of disgust has to do with body disgust. They- whoever "they" are-smell, they're dirty, they're lazy and self-indulgent. This culture feels the same way about large women. Poor people are seen that way by those on an aristocratic level. What is interesting is that standards of thinness have become stricter since the 1950s. By today's standards, even Marilyn Monroe looks a bit on the fleshy side. A study of the body measurements of Miss America contestants and Playboy centerfold models confirms that the ideal size for women has literally narrowed since the 1960’s. Even the Barbie doll is more slender today than she was in 1959, when she was introduced. Now, the new ultrathin ideal lives on in the fashion pages of our magazines, as seen in an extreme form in Kate Moss. Through her blank gaze and childlike demeanor, Moss is the ultimate backlash mascot. She informs women that, to be sexually desirable, they must be vulnerable and passive, nonthreatening, and stripped of all experience. Suzanne Henrick, a registered dietician and counselor at the Wilkins Center for Eating Disorders in Greenwich, reports that a lot of White female anorexics bring Moss's picture to the center as their ideal body type. Even some Black women succumb to the fantasy. In the premier issue of Tell, a new magazine for African Americans, Robinne Lee describes her gnawing preoccupation with Moss: There it is again. That bus! Seven images of Kate Moss in all her waifish glory flash by as I innocently try to cross the street. I didn't eat today. Instead, I did two hours of high impact aerobics . . . 900 situps. So that I can have a body like Kate's . . . In my dreams, I am Kate Moss. She stares at me from all corners of my apartment. I have tacked her image to my refrigerator door, my mirror, my bathroom wall. My waif. My hero. It doesn't matter that she's white and I'm black. It's the essence of Kate. I have fallen for her. How can I get her out of my mind if I can't get her out of my face? My parents have always taught me that beauty is only skin deep. But my parents did not grow up in the age of MTV. They don't understand why I would want to be 5'9' and a size four; they think I'm perfect at 5'4' and a size six. And I am, according to statistical height/weight charts. But obviously the people who design those charts have never met Kate Moss. Concurrent with the growth of the Black middle class in this country has been a steady rise in the number of young African American women suffering from bulimia and anorexia, eating disorders that were previously associated almost exclusively with achievement-oriented middle-class White teenage women. A 1993 Essence survey of its
readers found that 54 percent were at "high risk" for an eating disorder, 71.5 percent admitted to being preoccupied with the desire to be thinner, and the same percentage were terrified of being overweight. Of course, Essence readers are hardly a representative sample of women in the African American community at large. They tend to be fairly upscale and success-oriented, exactly the type that is most vulnerable to eating disorders. Despite this recent rise in eating disorders among young Black women, far more White women than Black women develop anorexia and bulimia. According to the National Association of Anorexia and Associated Disorders, an estimated eight million women in this country most of them White, suffer from these dangerous diseases.

At the other end of the spectrum, obesity affects twice as many Black women as it does White women. An estimated 35 percent of Black women between the ages of twenty-two and forty, and nearly 6o percent of those over forty, are obese. The pattern is most common among poor, working, single Black mothers. For many, the stress of trying to live and cope in neighborhoods that are often crime-ridden is enough to trigger compulsive eating behaviors. Food becomes the drug of choice; it is cheap and does not cause a hangover.

In addition to the obvious medical risks associated with being overweight, such as diabetes and hypertension, obese women suffer from a reduction in their earning potential. A recent study in the New England journal of Medicine documents the social and economic consequences of obesity. For the years between 1981 and 1988, a team of researchers tracked a representative sample Of 10,039 young adults, including 145 White women (of whom 44 percent were overweight), and 42 Black women (of whom 67 percent were overweight). They found that weight alone has the power to adversely affect the quality of a woman's life. Compared with women who were of normal weight, those most overweight completed four months less of school,
had household incomes averaging $6710 less, were 20percent less likely to be married, and had rates of poverty 10 percent higher. These differences held even when the social and economic backgrounds of the overweight and normal weight cohorts were the same Contrary to prevailing assumptions that socioeconomic status influences rates of obesity-these findings indicate that being overweight by itself can lower the socioeconomic status. This is of special concern to Black women, given their already high rate of obesity and low earning potential.

Instead of judging themselves, and especially each other, on matters of weight, White and Black women would do better to spend their energy fighting fat prejudice in society. Women of both races should challenge the use of unnaturally tall and slender women as fashion models, and the insulting advertising campaigns for weight-control products and programs that equate being obese with being unloved.

Body Hair

Another potentially alienating difference between Black and White women has to do with body hair. Psychologist Susan Basow found that among White women, close to 8o percent regularly shave their legs, but only half of Black women do. White women's reactions to Black women's hairier legs can range from indifference and puzzlement to curiosity and even disgust. The comments of a thirty-four-year-old White businesswoman named Linda are typical:

At my office, there is a Black woman who always dresses to the nines, expensive-looking suits, nice dresses with matching accessories and shoes-you name it, she puts a lot of time and money into her appearance. But one thing I always notice is that she doesn't shave her legs. Here she is all dressed up, and this leg hair is smashed flat under her stockings. To me, that is gross, and completely ruins the effect of being dressed up. Now mind you, I hate shaving, and in winter, especially, you're just as likely to find beneath my nice pair of pants some very hairy legs. However, the one time that I will drag a razor across them is when I have to wear stockings and heels. There is definitely something going on here that I don't understand regarding Black women and their leg hair. Part of the difference in women's body hair may stem from the fact that Black men are more likely than White men to appreciate body hair on their women. This strikes White women, particularly those who are feminists, as the height of irony. During the sixties, refusing to shave one's legs and underarms was something of a feminist litmus test-a measure of how far a (White) woman was willing to go not to please her man. But that era passed, and now most women shave their body hair less because of personal preference than because of the dictates of their immediate culture. This increases the chances of women of the two races feeling uncomfortable and even disrespectful of each other's decisions.