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“So Cosmo says you’re fat
Black women heavier and happier with their bodies than white women, poll finds
MULTIMEDIA | Interviews with six black women focus on self-esteem, success and family life, which were identified as major themes in a nationwide survey conducted by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Views of body and image
Explore the full poll data
Well I ain’t down with that …
Give me a sister
I can’t resist her
Red beans and rice didn’t miss her”
“Baby Got Back” Sir-Mix-a-Lot 1992
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Gibson, who grew up in Prince George’s County and works full time as a National Institutes of Health contractor, is a personal trainer and teaches 10 aerobics classes a week.
“I’m a full-figured woman who would run circles around the average person, and I know it,” she says. “I kind of think it’s my secret weapon.”
Gibson, who says she’s over 150 pounds but under 200, has been plus-sized most of her life. And it took time to come to terms with that.
“High school is where I started to realize I was different,” said Gibson, who was captain of the cheerleading squad at Suitland High School. “My quads were big, I had these boobs, and I had a butt. Not only that, I was dark with short hair. That’s when I had to look in the mirror and say, ‘Either I’m going to go with it, or I’m going to go against it.’ I always went with it.”
Doctors have long told her she needs to lose weight — 30 or 40 pounds, according to their charts. She’d be cool with 15. She tried weight loss programs such as Jenny Craig and Nutrisystem in years past, but “I came to realize that I have to have some freedom to eat.”
Instead of fixating on shedding weight, she focuses on being fit and healthy and finding her joy in that: “This is how I’m genetically designed, and I’ve accepted that.”
And though she’s never married, she contends she never lacks boyfriends, black and white. “Men have always said to me, ‘You’re not fat, you’re p-h-a-t fat.’ And when I’m not teaching, I’m all girl.”
She takes time with her makeup, sometimes adding lashes. She keeps her short hair groomed, and her jeans, boots and turtlenecks neat and form-fitting.
According to the Post-Kaiser poll, which offers the most extensive and nuanced look at the lives of black women in decades, 28 percent of black women say that being physically attractive is “very important,” compared with 11 percent of white women. White women were more likely than black women to say being attractive was “somewhat important.”
For African American women, that desire often gets defined in ways the mainstream culture doesn’t recognize.
Princeton professor Imani Perry teaches interdisciplinary classes in African American studies and notes black women have conceptions of beauty that are “not just tied to the accident of how you look as a consequence of your genes.” They include style, grooming, how you present and carry yourself, and “how you put yourself together, which I think generally speaks to the fact that we have a much broader and deeper conception of beauty.”
Gibson’s mission is to get women to embrace their size but to work toward being fit. She preaches acceptance but says white fitness professionals often seem almost resentful of her confidence.
“If I were this plump, meek person doing the same thing I do, I think they would embrace me.”
Her rule: “Do you,” Gibson says, “and be okay with me being me. I can never be mad at this thin person. I say, ‘You’re sexy, you’ve got it going on. But don’t think for one minute that I don’t feel the same about myself.’ ”
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