2025~1. Fearing The Black Body

Sabrina Strings. 2019.

As a general rule, when reading a microhistory, I either really love it or really hate it, but in this case I came out of the book with mixed feelings.  Perhaps it was because a lot of this book is about art history and, not being very interested in that topic, I was often bored and found it difficult to even listen for the larger themes in those sections because they were so detailed about things I just don't care much about.  Yet, there were other parts that I did find really fascinating, including the history of BMI and the focus on weight as part of health having been started by the health insurance industry glomping onto bad data and then pushing this idea that to be thin was to be healthier than to be plump.  I also thought the shift in Christian thought towards austerity and self-denial went hand-in-hand with the idea that it was unChristian to be "fat" because it was associated with gluttony and indulgence was interesting.  Finally, while I had heard about the racist history of fat shaming, I was surprised that for quite a while, "doctors" and purported "scientists" had strong opinions that considered the Irish to be much closer "racially" to Black people than white people with respect to the heathenism they associated with larger bodies.  I was also not expecting the discussion about pastors pushing "diets" to lose weight and, in particular, how messaging from the Seventh Day Adventist church leaders played a roll in these cultural shifts.  I didn't know that the vegetarian, high water diet came from a religious judgment about weight rather than a place of health.  The book is full of side-facts and small details that I found interesting--like that Kellogg and Post cereals both came about as part of the movement that valued slim builds and saw vegetarian diets that included a lot of milk as the answer.  So, overall, lots of obscure and fascinating tidbits, but not enough to hold my attention for the whole book. I suspect people who are more versed in art history would like this a lot more than I did.

Not not recommended.

​Click here to purchase this book and support My 50 Bookish Friends blog project.

---