How F$^*#d Up Is Fatphobia? with Professor Sabrina Strings

Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness

Sony Music

Science, Self-improvement, Comedy, Education, Society & Culture

4.9 • 21.5K Ratings

🗓️ 18 May 2022

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What do Enlightenment-era paintings, 19th-century American fashion magazines, and Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back” have in common? They’re all strong examples of what fatphobia has to do with race, class, and gender discrimination. This week, learn all about the origins of anti-fat bias, and how it persists today, with Professor Sabrina Strings. Sabrina Strings, Ph.D. is a Chancellor's Fellow and Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine. Sabrina has been featured in dozens of venues, including BBC News, NPR, Huffington Post, Vox, Los Angeles Times, Essence, Vogue, and goop. Her writing has appeared in diverse venues including, The New York Times, Scientific American, Ethnic and Racial Studies, and Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. Her book, Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia (2019), was awarded the 2020 Best Publication Prize by the Body & Embodiment Section of the American Sociological Association. You can follow Dr. Strings on Twitter @SaStrings and check out her website sabrinastrings.com. Want to learn more? Here are some books and resources she recommends: Da’Shaun Harrison's The Belly of the Beast Sonya Renee Taylor’s The Body Is Not An Apology Dr. Joy Cox’s Fat Girls In Black Bodies Roxane Gay’s Hunger Tressie McMillan Cottom’s THICK Dr. Jill Andrew’s work NAAFA Join the conversation, and find out what former guests are up to, by following us on Instagram and Twitter @CuriousWithJVN. Jonathan is on Instagram and Twitter @JVN and @Jonathan.Vanness on Facebook. Transcripts for each episode are available at JonathanVanNess.com. Love listening to Getting Curious? Now, you can also watch Getting Curious—on Netflix! Head to netflix.com/gettingcurious to dive in. Our executive producer is Erica Getto. Our associate producer is Zahra Crim. Our editor is Andrew Carson. Our socials are run and curated by Middle Seat Digital. Our theme music is “Freak” by QUIÑ; for more, head to TheQuinCat.com. Getting Curious merch is available on PodSwag.com.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Getting Curious. I'm Jonathan Van Ness and every week I sit down for a gorgeous conversation
0:06.0	with a brilliant expert to learn all about something that makes me curious and hopefully makes you curious too.
0:12.1	On today's episode, I'm joined by Professor Sabrina Strings where I ask her how fucked up is the history of fat phobia.
0:22.1	Welcome to Getting Curious. This is Jonathan Van Ness. We have such an incredible guest today. Welcome to the show.
0:27.8	Dr. Sabrina Strings, who is an associate professor of sociology at the University of California Irvine.
0:35.4	Her book, Fearing the Black Body, The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia, was published by NYU Press. Yes, NYU Press in 2019.
0:45.3	Welcome to Getting Curious. Should I say Professor Strings or do you want me to call you Sabrina?
0:49.6	Please call me Sabrina and thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.
0:53.9	Thank you so much. Let me just give you a little teeny bit of context.
0:58.5	One, I'm getting curious on Netflix, which was a TV version of this podcast.
1:04.7	We did an episode on snacks. I wanted to remove shame from the conversation of disordered eating, binge eating,
1:12.9	both of things that I suffer from and have for a long time. I wanted to be able to remove shame and talk about it more freely.
1:21.9	But there was a lot of feedback around fat phobia and around diet culture.
1:28.5	So what I want to start off with is we're diving in is true or false. Fat phobia is about health.
1:36.7	Subquestion, why do you think so many people get this answer wrong?
1:41.6	Fat phobia is absolutely not about health. Because what people like to say frequently is that there's some type of association
1:50.7	between weight and health outcomes. And so let's just take a corollary for a second.
1:55.5	There's also an association between race and health outcomes. But we wouldn't say, oh, you know what?
2:00.7	We feel good being nevorophobic because black people have poor health outcomes.
2:03.9	Right? So already we can understand that phobia about a group of people that we believe are unhealthy is already problematic.
2:13.3	But then there's the question of whether or not being so called overweight or obese, which I always use in quotes,
2:18.5	because these apply to a particular orientation to science that I find to be non-scientific.
	...

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