“Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia,” by [UCI Assistant Professor of Sociology] Sabrina Strings. During the Renaissance era, large, curvy, fat bodies were revered in major works of art and medical journals. But by the turn of the 18th century, Enlightenment scientists and thinkers deemed fatness as evidence that Black people and other people of color were racially inferior “savages.”  Sociologist Sabrina [Strings] traces centuries of this racist pseudoscience up to the 20th century, demonstrating that today’s ideal of thinness is inherently both sexist and racist.
 
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