- Image from News Real Blog
Somehow, of course, a conversation on a Black blog I visited once in a post about Black women in general and their beauty turned into a conversation about Black women’s body and what types the male commenters like the best, which is totally sexist. The conversation I joined in on was about Black women’s body types and why we allow men’s bigoted preferences to divide us as Black women/women of color and cause us to tear each other down. It was basically a conversation about, skinny/thin, average, curvy, thick, and fat women’s bodies. There were men participating in the conversation, most of them saying stupid, racist, and sexist things against the women of their own race, such as “a black woman should be light and breezy” (some bloke claiming to be Black from the UK). One commenter, Jasmine, self-identified as thin, female, and Black.
Jasmine made a comment to a male commenter saying, ‘Oh so because you’re fat, and like fat women, you put down thin women like me.’
I had to stop the train on that one because it was not okay for her to make bigoted comments in order to defend her thin privilege and insecurity. To boot, he hadn’t said anything to warrant such a remark.
All during the conversation, Jasmine kept suggesting and prodding and trying to get me to admit that I was a lesbian suffering from a bad case of “bitter big girl” syndrome, as if this would discredit anything I had to say to other Black women about how we oppress each other. Seeing that I was calling her out, Jasmine insisted that a heterosexual Black woman doesn’t care what another Black woman thinks about her, because her endgame is to get a Black man.
So, in essence her comment was this: A Black woman must be a lesbian to care about what other Black women say about her because a heterosexual Black woman is only concerned about what a man thinks of her.
It’s a very similar comment to The reason that a woman gets dressed in the morning is for a man.
If the only reason you get dressed to look nice in the morning is for a man to look at you, you’ve got bigger issues to worry about and you need some alone time rethink your priorities, Ms. Queenly says. If you’re a man who believes this is true, then get over yourself, the world does not revolve around you.
Jasmine went on to say that men may have flings with thick/fat/bigger women but at the end of day they want a thin woman. Jasmine obviously thought there was nothing wrong with validating her own thin privilege while simultaneously putting down “bigger” women as sex objects that Black men only use.
Obviously, Jasmine’s psychology studies validates her right to be a bigot—NOT.
1) First if all, I don’t care how many hours you spend at the gym or what kind of diet you’re on, no privilege is earned, not even the privileges associated with thinness.
2) My sexual orientation shouldn’t have even come into the conversation as an issue no matter how I identify.
3) What I do have a problem with is thin women who act out their bigotry, insecurity/jealousy, and hatred on others.
4) Women NEED to call out other women and everybody else who choose to liberate some folks while holding everybody else down.
This is how we have been kept divided for centuries by white supremacy in America—“light-skinned” from the “dark-skinned”, fat from thin, fine hair from course hair, female from male, poor from wealthy, young from old, the house slave from the field slave. As Black women, and our Black male allies too, we need to stop holding each other’s head under the water so a few of us as individuals can stay afloat for a few seconds longer. Because, in the end, we’re all going to drown if we don’t support each other and see the beauty and inherent worth in one another.
what’s real,
Ms. Queenly
