Beauty and Whiteness
Writers, PhDs, and social commentators Roxane Gay and Tressie McMillan Cottom make (white) readers uncomfortable because they are fat black women speaking the truth about whiteness in America. They don’t sugarcoat or hem and haw, they put truth to power.
In the first chapter of her collection of essays, Thick, Cottom discusses a claim she made on the internet - that she is not beautiful. She received backlash from white women and black women for denigrating herself. But her point in calling herself ugly was to place front and center the dichotomy and power of whiteness against blackness. That to be beautiful is to be white. There is no other way. On an individual level we can call black women beautiful and engage in claims that beauty is for everyone, in fact, that is what our neoliberal capitalist world would have us do. To buy products and beliefs about ourselves in order to have us continually jumping through hoops to seek societal approval.
Cottom’s assertion that she is not beautiful is an assertion that makes a connection between individual beliefs and societal power structures. Those who are white hold the power and the ability to define beauty. In Dr. Sabrina Strings’ book, Fearing the Black Body, her impressive historical review of beauty shows us just this -- black women are only deemed beautiful in their approximations of feminine whiteness. They cannot be beautiful on their own. For the beauty of whiteness to exist, there must be a blackness to set it against -- and an ugly blackness at that. Cottom’s decision to call herself ugly is a result of her training as a sociologist who connects intimate daily experiences to grander social structures. This is what sociology reveals about the world - how a simple claim of beauty for a black woman is not an individual matter of self-esteem but is really about race and power. Furthermore, Cottom writes that by calling all women beautiful, even fat black ones, we are actually bowing to the structures that keep us subordinated. This is because we are refusing to see how power operates and we are refusing to call out white supremacy.
Beauty is determined by white supremacy. It is not really about what we subjectively believe to be beautiful. Because beauty is constructed through a system, a political, economic, and social institution based upon the belief that white is better and thus, more beautiful.
Blackness stands as a primary status category, meaning that despite all other status categories - educated, middle class, being black comes first. Cottom tells of her experience at the hospital as a pregnant black woman. It did not matter that she had health insurance, owned a home or earned a PhD, her blackness was all that was needed to deem her incompetent in the eyes of the medical institution. She was not taken seriously. Her medical symptoms were ignored, batted down as insignificant. She eventually loses her child as a consequence of being declared incompetent.
It is very bad to be fat. Dr. Strings also details the history of fatness as it is linked to blackness in her book. I am reminded of Roxane Gay. I follow her on instagram. Every day she posts in her stories, a picture of herself after she has worked out. In her book, Hunger, she complicates notions about fat acceptance and body positivity by telling her readers that she is uncomfortable with her fat body. If you are fat and a woman and black and a radical scholar, you are supposed to accept your fat body. It is more than a faux pax to wish your fat away. Like Cottom calling herself ugly, Gay admitting that she dislikes her fat body makes readers uncomfortable. Cottom’s and Gay’s responses are unexpected, off of the social script they are meant to disseminate.
I am tempted to tell a story about when I thought I was ugly. I have wanted to tell stories about my struggle with self harm, body dysmorphia, and eating disorders. And I don’t want what I have written here to ultimately send the message that if you are white, be grateful because in the eyes of society, you are beautiful. Rather, I want you to examine this idea deeper, contemplating the fact that beauty is not about individuals but steeped in the structure of racism and white supremacy.
I do think this is still important to tell my story but I think it’s maybe more important to call out the system that operates around us, day to day, that determines that no matter what I think about myself, or what society has convinced me to think about myself in the name of capitalist consumerism.
The last chapter of Thick discusses “Trusting Black Women”. The directive to Trust Black women is not a fad, not a phrase to put on a black t-shirt and sell to white self-proclaimed ally consumers. Trusting Black women means taking their symptoms seriously when they got to the emergency room. It means believing in their words enough to make them a staff writer at The New York Times and pay them just as much as any white man with a column. It also means trusting a Black woman when she says she is ugly. Because beauty is not doled out equally in a racist society.
For a more thorough and well written article on Trusting Black Women, defer to TMC’s article on her blog. Linked here.
