#49. The Emaciated Look

We have stated before that Black people do not like to pass on seconds. Well, the Atlantic monthly magazine has provided SBPDL with perhaps the most depressing article imaginable, and it is one that presents a future comprised entirely of bulbous Black women in the image of Precious star Gabourey Sidibe.

Imagine cloning the podgy Gabourey Sidibe not once, but having her image replace every Black woman in America. Upon performing this weighty thought experiment, you are now prepared to view the world 30 years into the future:

Those at the base of the socioeconomic pyramid have been most exposed to these changes and have the fewest resources to resist or counteract them. In fact, obesity has become a marker of sorts for lower socioeconomic status. The lower your educational attainment, the more likely you are to be obese. In the United States and other developed countries, where access to food isn’t usually a problem, poor people tend to be fatter than wealthy people, and Americans living in rural areas tend to be more obese than Americans living in inner cities. (In 2008, the five states with obesity rates of 30 percent or more were Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Tennessee.) Black children are more at peril of becoming obese than white children; black women are more than 50 percent more likely to be obese than white women. “At the current rate of increase,” epidemiologists noted in a recent article in Obesity, “it will take less than 30 years for all black women to become overweight or obese.” Obesity rates are above average among Mexican American boys, as they are among Hispanics generally. Obesity rates among young American Indians tend to be nearly twice the national average.

In one score and a decade – if trends continued unabated – every Black woman in America will be obese and the chances of landing a role as a female lead in a Hollywood film will be next to impossible.

Even Tyra Banks has been attacked for being fat:

On her hit show America's Next Top Model, Tyra Banks has always stressed the importance of body confidence – but it still hurt when tabloids ran an unflattering photo of her in a bathing suit under headlines that screamed, "America's Next Top Waddle" and "Tyra Porkchop."

Now, for the first time in an exclusive interview with PEOPLE, Banks, 33, is publicly discussing her much-buzzed-about weight gain. "I get so much mail from young girls who say, 'I look up to you, you're not as skinny as everyone else, I think you're beautiful,' " she says. "So when they say that my body is 'ugly' and 'disgusting,' what does that make those girls feel like?"

Indeed, Black women in America have helped ensure that the 365 Black campaign at McDonald’s continues and scornfully cast aside any suggestions by the CDC that they rein in on bad eating and dietary habits. Even Sidibe is being targeted by health nuts bent on getting Black people to shop at Whole Foods, swapping the fried chicken for organic vegetables:

“AcaiSupply.com is reaching out to the Oscar nominated star, noting that obesity is a "major epidemic" in the U.S. and they want to help her fight what they call "this terrible affliction."

The company is offering her a one year supply of the product in return for an endorsement -- provided she loses weight.

The CEO wrote a letter to Sidibe, urging her, "The only way you can reach your goal of someday winning that Oscar is by being active, fit, and most of all, healthy!"

A rep for Sidibe could not be reached for comment.”

We know that Black people don’t like small butts, but this is getting ridiculous when an entire sex of a racial group is destined to pig out on food, casting aside sinew bodies for the luxury of a flabby, bovine existence.

One particularly hilarious discussion about Black women and obesity was recorded on National Public Radio (NPR) in 2007 and it dealt with the fascination of Black men with thick sisters:

MICHEL MARTIN, host:

There's no denying that obesity is a serious health issue in the country, and it's a particularly big problem for African-American women, more than half of whom are considered overweight.

Now, one commentator suggests that one reason black women are overweight is that the brothers like it that way. That is to say that the culture rewards women for a little extra padding.

Author Debra Dickerson wrote an essay about it for Salon.com, the online magazine, and she joins us by phone from Albany, New York, for a behind-closed doors conversation. Thanks for being with us.

Ms. DEBRA DICKINSON (Columnist, Salon.com): Thanks for having me.

MARTIN: Now, you know, a lot of Americans are overweight. It's the first thing a lot of international visitors comment on. But you think the culture rewards black women for being big?

Ms. DICKERSON: Yes, I think it does. You're always going to have pockets, and I think there's probably some class issues there. But I've heard since I was a little kid, nobody wants a bone but a dog, you know, and that sort of thing. And it was like only entertainers who could really get away with being obese, like Aretha Franklin and people like that.

Yes, there is definitely some - a market preference for women who have junk in the trunk, or however you want to put it.

MARTIN: But junk in the trunk is different from being obese, and I guess I'm thinking about movies like that Eddie Murphy movie that came out early…

Ms. DICKERSON: Which - yes.

MARTIN: …this year, "Norbit," where black women are, you know, fat women or big women are held up as objects of ridicule. And I look at the magazines, I look at, you know, the universal cultural marker, music videos, right?

Ms. DICKERSON: Right.

MARTIN: And I don't see a lot of big women in them. At least not held up as beauty objects.

Ms. DICKERSON: I think we're talking - again, we're on dangerous territory here, but I think we're talking about sexual fetishes. I'm not so sure we're talking about beauty objects.

Interestingly, it is unknown if a correlation exists between the high rates of unwed Black women and the excessive rates of obesity they maintain.

The Office of Minority Health has warned Black women about the long-term health risks of lugging around excess baggage near the belly, but with the recent passage of universal health care those costs have been transferred to the gullible tax payer and the redistribution of wealth entailed in that legislation will prolong the bad eating habits of an entire gender, engendering unknown burdens on the tax payer and costs in the process:

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Wednesday that she is developing a national plan of action that would focus for the first time on reducing health care disparities between minority and white populations.

HHS has been writing reports for 25 years documenting the gap in health care services between white and minority communities, but there never has been an action plan to address the gap, she said in an address to the National Action Network convention.

"I'm here to say that's going to end this year," Sebelius said.

She said 1 in 3 U.S. Hispanics and 1 in 5 African-Americans do not have health insurance, adding that the National Institutes of Health also is looking into the issue.

The HHS also would be focusing on disseminating health care information through social networking and addressing childhood obesity, the secretary said.

Some of the changes the public can expect to see immediately under the new health care law is coverage for children up to age 26 and an end to insurance companies dropping patients in mid-treatment because they have reached their spending cap.

The convention began Wednesday and runs through Saturday.

Prominent leaders in civil rights, religion, politics and education are scheduled to discuss issues affecting communities of color. Besides health care, topics include the black achievement gap and the state of the black church.

Among other featured speaker were Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele and the presidents of the NAACP and National Urban League.

Perhaps the most prominent female in America is Oprah Winfrey, a media-mogul and reasonably talented interviewer (though Tom Cruise did upstage her), can be fingered as the culprit for the obesity epidemic in Black America. Is she to blame for removing the stigma associated with being obese, since society once shunned the overweight as tawdry reminders of ones inability to assume self-control?:

Winfrey's intimate confessions about her weight (which peaked at 108 kg (238 lb)) also paved the way for other plus sized women in media such as Roseanne Barr, Rosie O'Donnell and Star Jones. The November 1988 Ms. magazine observed that "in a society where fat is taboo, she made it in a medium that worships thin and celebrates a bland, white-bread prettiness of body and personality...But Winfrey made fat sexy, elegant — damned near gorgeous — with her drop-dead wardrobe, easy body language, and cheerful sensuality."

Tim McGraw, that ebullient country singer, has a song entitled My Next 30 Years. Black women– if trends continue – have only one thing to look forward to in the next 30 years: their cholesterol being up.

Stuff Black People Don’t Like includes the emaciated look, as Black women have collectively agreed to brush aside any pretense of dieting for a daily caloric intake that would sink Michael Phelps. The food pyramid and nutritional guidelines are a form of cultural imperialism imposed by white people (white women in general) who feel a need to universalize the accepted form of beauty. Fat, pleasantly plump, overweight, obese, turgid, chubby and portly appear to be the preferred descriptive term for Black women and their weight.

So no thanks, Black women say, to imperialistic norms of weight for females as decreed by white people. Fat Oprah is in to stay, and Gabourey Sidibe (and every Black woman, if trends continue) will be there to help her finish off those seconds, or thirds.

The titanic look is totally in like Flynn.