This definitely leaned more towards the distant historical facts than I anticipated, and for that reason, it felt a bit dry to me. I do think this is a super important book adding a critical perspective to the body size conversation, so I am not going to rate this book.

-I argue that 2 critical historical developments contributed to a fetish for svelteness and a phobia about fatness: the rise of the transatlantic slave trade and the spread of Protestantism.
-...the medical disciplinary regime has not been objectively applied to all persons. Instead, it is treated as an imperative for dominant groups, to the exclusion of poor, racially Othered groups.
-For while men and women were encouraged to adhere to the new standards of behavior, when it came to judgments of beauty, English men were seen as the arbiters of taste, or those capable of creating the guidelines for judging beauty. English women were treated as its representatives.
-In the spirit of American exceptionalism, they embraced the country as a melting pot of morally upright, democratic, and forward-thinking peoples. Yet they were clear to specify which nations, races, and people contributed to this arcadian melting pot: those from northern and western Europe.
-...as religious feelings and affiliations wanted in 20th century America, medicine stepped in to fill the void, telling women, in effect, "how to live."
-...while a growing body of research indicated that the disparities in the health of white and nonwhite populations were due to social and environmental factors, "Healthy People 2000" had maintained its emphasis on individual behaviors and personal responsibility.
-...one reason black people tend to have higher BMIs than whites is that black people commonly have a greater bone mineral density, and/or muscle mass, than white people... while black women had higher BMIs than white women, they also had lower mortality rates at a given BMI. These and other findings have led some scholars to conclude that there is a racial bias in the BMI classification system.
-...systematic review of 97 studies completed between 1997 and 2012... overweight individuals had a 6% lower risk of death than those in the "normal" weight category...
-Rather than searching for the exact amount of "excess" fat associated with illness and death, they suggested, perhaps it was time to end the long-standing assumption that fat was "bad"
-The image of fat black women as "savage" and "barbarous" in art, philosophy, and science, and as "diseased" in medicine has been used to both degrade black women and discipline white women.
-...the fear of the black body was integral to the creation of the slender aesthetic among fashionable white Americans.