![\"fatology\"](\"http:\/\/theangryblackwoman.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/icons\/nisishawl.jpg\")
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A while back I saw this comic strip.\u00a0 Can’t remember the name.\u00a0 The setting was white suburbia, a family, which as my friend Sara points out “really narrows it down.”<\/p>\n
The female lead of the comic strip (let’s call her Wilma) has a black friend of,\u00a0shall we\u00a0say, “a certain size.”\u00a0 Wilma spends three panels\u00a0hinting around about\u00a0an exercise class to her black friend (let’s call her Joyce).\u00a0\u00a0 Telling Joyce the time, the location, the cost, how much fun Wilma’s having taking it.\u00a0 “How very nice for you,” Joyce responds, walking away with wobble lines emanating from her large rear-end.<\/p>\n
In case you missed it, that’s the punchline.\u00a0 The joke is, see, Joyce is fat, but she doesn’t realize that about herself.\u00a0 Poor Wilma is trying to help Joyce help herself, but Joyce is so deep in denial, so far up that river in Egypt, that she simply can’t be helped.<\/p>\n
And as I read this I’m thinking, okay, what’s wrong with wobble lines?\u00a0 This woman looks\u00a0good to me.\u00a0 Maybe she looks good to herself.\u00a0 Maybe she already has<\/em> an exercise program that she likes just fine.\u00a0 I do.<\/p>\n I look a lot like Joyce.\u00a0 Larger breasts, though.\u00a0 I weigh more than 200 pounds.\u00a0 I’m pretty sure.\u00a0 I haven’t weighed myself in three weeks, but that sounds about how I feel.\u00a0 I’m maybe 5 feet, 8 inches tall.\u00a0<\/p>\n At the Y in April, I was on the treadmill, doing my 40 minutes, all of it uphill.\u00a0 The man next to me asked how much I weighed, and seemed deeply shocked at my answer.\u00a0 “But you are fat!” he exclaimed.\u00a0 “And you are always here, working out so hard!”\u00a0 Well, yes.\u00a0 I am.\u00a0 I do.\u00a0 And I would say I’m\u00a0in shape.\u00a0 Round is a shape.<\/p>\n I’ve subscribed for a few years to an online dating service.\u00a0 I read the ads for entertainment, even when I’m not interested in meeting the men that posted them.\u00a0\u00a0 In the singular they’re funny; “Satisfaction guaranteed EVERY TIME,” says Marv’s headline.\u00a0 There’s\u00a0a man with the user name “Tumbleweed Heart,”\u00a0and another whose user name is “Asslicker.”\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0En masse, the profiles I read are pathetic and provoking.\u00a0 There are canned phrases one can use to describe both one’s physical type and the physical type one desires: “Slender, Average, Athletic, A Little Extra Padding, Rubenesque.”\u00a0 I have chosen to describe myself using the ALEP option.\u00a0 By far the most widely sought qualities, though, are “Slender” and “Athletic.”<\/p>\n Very few subscribers advertise for a specific ethnicity, but there are some of those, too.<\/p>\n Then there’s the men who are asking for skinny black women to email them.\u00a0 I raise my voice and wave my arms at the computer screen in exasperation.\u00a0 Skinny!\u00a0 Black!\u00a0\u00a0They exist, of course, but statistically speaking?\u00a0 So do\u00a0microscopically small black holes.<\/p>\n I think black women in the US\u00a0are far more likely to be fat than women of other races.\u00a0 Women are more likely to be fat than men; we’re built to store it up, cause we might need it to support a pregnancy.\u00a0 And in the US blacks are often the descendants of survivors of slavery, which tilts the genetic pinball machine in favor of holding on to that fat for dear life.\u00a0 Dear, dear, sweet, sweet life.<\/p>\n There are some\u00a0who want me, right now, the way I am, so round, so firm, so fully packed.\u00a0 \u00a0So brimming with dear life.<\/p>\nAnd now a word from our sponsor…<\/h4>\n
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