Fat Girl Book Club

Fearing the Black Body by Sabrina Strings with Patrilie Hernandez

Episode Notes

My time on the Clubhouse app has been pretty non-existent the last few months. I just have a lot happening, but for the few months I did spend on it, I met some quality humans. This week, you are going to be hearing from one of them.

Patrilie Hernandez works on an institutional level to break diet culture and fat phobia. She has had 14 years of experience working in the health and nutrition sector where she combines her academic background in culinary arts, anthropology and nutrition/health, with her lived experience as a large-bodied, neuroatypical, queer multiracial femme of the Puerto Rican diaspora to disrupt the status quo of the local nutrition and wellness community and advocate for a weight-inclusive health paradigm in educational settings.

While our discussion about Fearing the Black Body by Sabrina Strings is academic, Patrilie is so thoughtful and passionate, you will start to put the pieces together around racism and fat phobia.

Our conversation was about:

Patrilie's body liberation journey and The Great Unraveling of 2018
What it means to embrace intersectionalities
How Sabrina Strings teeter toters through art, literature, food, media and medicine to show us how we got to our current situation in terms of body ideals and white supremacy
How slavery changed views about beauty
Who creates our beauty ideals? Who was given a voice? Who was supporting the men's ideas?
Sara Baartman
Patrilie's internal dialogue around her anthropology degree
American White Exceptionalism and the responsibility of white women
Mass Immigration Movement and how it conditions people to keep thinness and whiteness as important ideals
How racial science still exists today
How medical science regulates bodies
How weight became a health metric and how this ties into racism
How healthcare is upholding white supremacy

Keep reading everyone!

Links

I Wish I Were Me Website for the free resource

The Better Body Image Book Club FB group

Book Recommendations

They Were Her Property: White Women as Slaveholders in the American South by Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers

The Body of the Conquistador: Food, Race and the Colonial Experience in Spanish America 1492 - 1700 by Rebecca Earle