The mystery of 'Harriet Cole'

The mystery of 'Harriet Cole'
- March 18, 2021
- Sabrina Strings, sociology, Atlas Obscura, March 18, 2021
As University of California, Irvine, sociologist Sabrina Strings, author of Fearing
the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia, writes in a recent issue of Bust
magazine, fat tissue (and, by crass extension, gluttony and hypersexuality) had been
linked with blackness in the popular European and American imagination at least since
Saartjie “Sarah” Baartman, a Khoikhoi woman from Cape Town, South Africa, was exhibited
by showmen in France and London as the “Hottentot Venus” in the late 19th century.
For the full story, please visit https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/harriet-cole-human-nervous-system-philadelphia.
Share on: