Sabrina Strings

La paura del grasso corporeo non ha nulla a che fare con la salute. È, invece, espressione del razzismo e del sessismo sistemico occidentale. Sabrina Strings, in questo saggio attualissimo e illuminante, indaga il disgusto per i corpi grassi nelle nostre società (soprattutto quella statunitense). Avvalendosi di una grande varietà di fonti e di una penna spesso carica di tagliente ironia, il libro ripercorre le tappe storiche, scientifiche e filosofiche che hanno portato a determinare l’ideale di bellezza attualmente perseguito in Occidente. Lo fa da una prospettiva inedita, prendendo in considerazione i soggetti solitamente marginalizzati o esclusi dai trattati di estetica, inglobando al suo interno eventi e personaggi apparentemente distanti, come i dipinti di Rubens e l’importazione di zucchero e caffè dalle colonie verso l’Europa. Tra pagine ricche di resoconti di viaggi esotici, diete azzardate da medici probi e timorati di Dio, dame appariscenti, inventori di un famoso marchio di cereali, paventate epidemie, gerarchie della razza e classifiche di bellezza messe a punto da pensatori considerati illustri, Strings avanza la tesi che le radici della grassofobia siano da ricercarsi nell’ascesa delle teorie della razza a partire dal Rinascimento.

In her first book, sociologist Strings (sociology, Univ. of California, Irvine) explores the historical development of prothin, antifat ideologies deployed in support of Western, patriarchal white supremacy. Beginning in the aesthetic ideals circulated by Renaissance thinkers and artists and bringing her narrative up into the 1990s, Strings charts how white Europeans and Anglo-Americans developed ideals of race and beauty that both explicitly and figuratively juxtaposed slim, desirable white women against corpulent, seemingly monstrous black women. The work is divided into three sections. The two chapters in the first part consider how Renaissance white women and women of color were depicted as plump and feminine, separated by class, yet belonging to the same gender. The second part of the work charts the rise of modern racial ideologies that yoked feminine beauty to Protestant, Anglo-Saxon whiteness. Later chapters and the epilogue consider how Americans normalized the "scientific management" of white women's bodies for the purpose of racial uplift, a project that continued to situate black women as the embodied Other. The author does not address fat from the angle of health or previous attitudes white Europeans held towards corpulence.

From Playboy to Jay-Z, the racial origins of toxic masculinity and its impact on women, especially Black and “insufficiently white” women More men than ever are refusing loving partnerships and commitment, and instead seeking out “situationships.” When these men deign to articulate what they are looking for in a steady partner, they’ll often rely on superficial norms of attractiveness rooted in whiteness and anti-Blackness. Connecting the past to the present, sociologist Sabrina Strings argues that following the Civil Rights movement and the integration of women during the Second Wave Feminist movement, men aimed to hold on to their power by withholding love and commitment, a basic tenet of white supremacy and male domination, that served to manipulate all women. From pornography to hip hop, women—especially Black and “insufficiently white” women—were presented as gold diggers, props for masturbation, and side-pieces. Using historical research, personal stories, and critical analysis, Strings argues that the result is fuccboism, the latest incarnation of toxic masculinity. This work shows that men are not innately “toxic.” Nor do they hate love, commitment, or sex. Instead, men across race have been working a new code to effectively deny loving partnerships to women who are not pliant, slim, and white as a new mode of male domination.