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Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness
Exploring anti-fatness and anti-Blackness at the intersections of race, police violence, gender identity, fatness, and health.
To live in a body both fat and Black is to intersect at the margins of a society that normalizes anti-fatness as anti-Blackness: hyper-policed by state and society, passed over for housing and jobs, and derided and misdiagnosed by medical professionals, fat Black people in the United States are subject to culturally sanctioned discrimination, abuse, and trauma.
In Belly of the Beast, author Da’Shaun Harrison–a fat, Black, disabled, and non-binary writer AMAB (assigned male at birth)–offers an incisive, fresh, and precise exploration of anti-fatness as anti-Blackness. Foregrounding the state-sanctioned murder of Eric Garner in a historical analysis of the policing, disenfranchisement, and invisibilizing of fat Black men and trans and nonbinary AMAB people, Harrison discusses the pervasive, insidious ways that anti-fat anti-Blackness shows up in everyday life. Fat people can be legally fired in 49 states for being fat; they’re more likely to be houseless. Fat people die at higher rates from misdiagnosis or non-treatment; fat women are more likely to be sexually assaulted. And at the intersections of fatness, race, disability, and gender identity, these abuses are exacerbated.
Taking on desirability politics, f*ckability, healthism, hyper-sexualization, invisibility, and the connections between anti-fatness and police violence, Harrison viscerally and vividly illustrates the myriad harms of anti-fat anti-Blackness–and offers strategies for dismantling denial, unlearning the cultural programming that says “fat is bad,” and moving beyond the world we have now toward one that makes space for the fat and Black.
To live in a body both fat and Black is to intersect at the margins of a society that normalizes anti-fatness as anti-Blackness: hyper-policed by state and society, passed over for housing and jobs, and derided and misdiagnosed by medical professionals, fat Black people in the United States are subject to culturally sanctioned discrimination, abuse, and trauma.
In Belly of the Beast, author Da’Shaun Harrison–a fat, Black, disabled, and non-binary writer AMAB (assigned male at birth)–offers an incisive, fresh, and precise exploration of anti-fatness as anti-Blackness. Foregrounding the state-sanctioned murder of Eric Garner in a historical analysis of the policing, disenfranchisement, and invisibilizing of fat Black men and trans and nonbinary AMAB people, Harrison discusses the pervasive, insidious ways that anti-fat anti-Blackness shows up in everyday life. Fat people can be legally fired in 49 states for being fat; they’re more likely to be houseless. Fat people die at higher rates from misdiagnosis or non-treatment; fat women are more likely to be sexually assaulted. And at the intersections of fatness, race, disability, and gender identity, these abuses are exacerbated.
Taking on desirability politics, f*ckability, healthism, hyper-sexualization, invisibility, and the connections between anti-fatness and police violence, Harrison viscerally and vividly illustrates the myriad harms of anti-fat anti-Blackness–and offers strategies for dismantling denial, unlearning the cultural programming that says “fat is bad,” and moving beyond the world we have now toward one that makes space for the fat and Black.
256 pages, Paperback
First published August 10, 2021
About the author
Da’Shaun Harrison
1 book154 followersDa'Shaun Harrison is a Black trans writer, abolitionist, and community organizer in Atlanta, GA. Harrison currently serves as the Managing Editor of Wear Your Voice Magazine, and is the author of Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness. A public speaker who often leads workshops on Blackness, queerness, gender, fatness, disabilities—and their intersections—Harrison’s portfolio and other work can be found on their website: dashaunharrison.com.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 370 reviews
August 10, 2022
Loved this book’s radicalness and how Da’Shaun Harrison gets to the root of both anti-fatness and anti-Blackness. They make a lot of sharp, astute points about the politics of body image: how all desire is related to systems of oppression, the power of embracing ugliness, and the complexity of body-related trauma in their own intimate life. Their analysis embodies intersectionality fully in relation to Blackness and fatness, such as how they write about the murder of several Black men by the police and the importance of recognizing these victims’ fatness as part of the violence they experienced.
Harrison’s writing is also poignant and to the point which made this short book fly by even faster, in a positive way. They write with a confidence that is admirable and the surety of their voice makes their arguments about deconstructing anti-fatness and anti-Blackness even more convincing. I agree with other reviewers that perhaps they could have elaborated a bit more in several sections by providing additional historical context, research, personal reflection, etc. though this book still serves as an excellent primer about politicized body image.
A quick and helpful read especially for myself as someone who struggled with disordered eating several years ago and is now committed to dismantling white supremacy, anti-Blackness, fatphobia, and other forms of oppression. Would recommend alongside You Have the Right to Remain Fat by Virgie Tovar and Thick by McMillan Cottom.
Harrison’s writing is also poignant and to the point which made this short book fly by even faster, in a positive way. They write with a confidence that is admirable and the surety of their voice makes their arguments about deconstructing anti-fatness and anti-Blackness even more convincing. I agree with other reviewers that perhaps they could have elaborated a bit more in several sections by providing additional historical context, research, personal reflection, etc. though this book still serves as an excellent primer about politicized body image.
A quick and helpful read especially for myself as someone who struggled with disordered eating several years ago and is now committed to dismantling white supremacy, anti-Blackness, fatphobia, and other forms of oppression. Would recommend alongside You Have the Right to Remain Fat by Virgie Tovar and Thick by McMillan Cottom.
January 5, 2022
Chapter 3 was fucking life changing
November 28, 2021
i was skeptical at the length of this going in, and it DID leave me wanting a lot more, but i think that’s what a good book does sometimes. it didn’t leave me wanting more in a this-isn’t-complete way, but in a wow-this-is-good-and-provokes-so-many-more-discussions way. the best chapters imo were the one on policing, the one on the war on drugs and war on obesity, and the trans one. lots of things i didn’t have words for but now do. i do think this could’ve been three times the length and still have so much to work on, but it’s a really great overview, easily understandable, with so many wonderful connections and discussions.
August 11, 2021
“The black fat was always already removed from the possibility, of “good” health—meaning always situated inside/under the label of “bad” health—and was always and already to be the criminal.”
That’s only just one of the good quotes from this book.
Within this society, we, as fat folks are already not given a chance or considered.
As someone who is not trans masc and does not experience the lens of someone who is trans masc this book was informational and shed a lot of light on anti-blackness and fat phobia. I didn’t even know fat trans Masc folks had to pay extra for gender affirming surgeries. I strongly encourage people to read the whole book.
As someone who is black and fat, I have had to go through making myself petite and feeling like I am a burden. I’ve gone through the motions of dieting and shame. And through gender, I have always felt that I didn’t connect to it in a way that thin people have. Even though I never went to fat camp, as this book says, being fat is always being caged even though you yourself aren’t a cage. You are always in diet culture. You are always the rut. The scapegoat.
One of the most important themes of this book is that we can’t outdo trauma with “positivity” or “self-love” when the world we live in embodies systems that are literally pushed against us. We also can’t just get rid of things and not undo what cause them to pop up at the first place and provide solutions. There’s always a tendency to say what will happen everything everything is abolished and untwined and restorative justice takes place, but we need to know that we cannot keep living in a place that continues to harm those who are deemed at Insecure or Ugly.
My only wish is that I wish this book could have been longer, but its a huge stepping stone for those new to fat politics and how at its root it is anti-blackness
That’s only just one of the good quotes from this book.
Within this society, we, as fat folks are already not given a chance or considered.
As someone who is not trans masc and does not experience the lens of someone who is trans masc this book was informational and shed a lot of light on anti-blackness and fat phobia. I didn’t even know fat trans Masc folks had to pay extra for gender affirming surgeries. I strongly encourage people to read the whole book.
As someone who is black and fat, I have had to go through making myself petite and feeling like I am a burden. I’ve gone through the motions of dieting and shame. And through gender, I have always felt that I didn’t connect to it in a way that thin people have. Even though I never went to fat camp, as this book says, being fat is always being caged even though you yourself aren’t a cage. You are always in diet culture. You are always the rut. The scapegoat.
One of the most important themes of this book is that we can’t outdo trauma with “positivity” or “self-love” when the world we live in embodies systems that are literally pushed against us. We also can’t just get rid of things and not undo what cause them to pop up at the first place and provide solutions. There’s always a tendency to say what will happen everything everything is abolished and untwined and restorative justice takes place, but we need to know that we cannot keep living in a place that continues to harm those who are deemed at Insecure or Ugly.
My only wish is that I wish this book could have been longer, but its a huge stepping stone for those new to fat politics and how at its root it is anti-blackness
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 25, 2021
Love the topic of this book. I wanted more. It’s very short (109) pages and felt I could’ve used more connection to policy and historical context etc. I’m still very curious about the topic. The writing is good but the book lacked clarity on if it was memoir or true nonfiction. I found it hard to follow at times.
January 18, 2023
I support Harrison’s rhetorical goals here, and the ideas at the core of this book are good ones. But Harrison’s writing is antiseptic and repetitive, and they’re prone to tangents which they struggle to convincingly connect back to their central thesis. Still, I’d broadly recommend this book—its ideas are certainly worth engaging with.
January 12, 2023
One of the best nonfiction books I've read this year. Going to collect my thoughts and circle back.
August 13, 2021
Da'Shaun's debut book was long awaited and did not disappoint!! Every page, every word interrogates the World created and predicated on anti-Blackness. I'm finishing this book with a completely renewed and enlightened introspection on my own investments in the politics of Thinness and the ways in which fat people -- and the Black fat in particular -- navigate the world and engage with the medical industrial complex, gender, (un)Desire(ability), and the institution of policing, all centered on systems of white supremacy and cisheteropatriarchal violence. Their critique of "self-love" -- even radical self-love -- is a necessary intervention in a time when it's become popular for people online to tell fat people to "love their bodies." They also make reference to several books and essays that I look forward to reading and engaging with. I am so grateful and appreciative of Da'Shaun for their comradeliness, their critical thinking, and their tremendous contribution to my own political journey.
March 26, 2023
an amazingly well researched and well written look at anti-blackness and anti-fatness directed towards masc bodies. trans-nonbinary author da’shaun l. harrison presents some of the first literature on this topic and explores not only the way cis men are treated, but trans and gender conforming masc people as well. each section is very clear and packed with information. it definitely leaves you with a lot to think about, and a look into how these harmful beliefs do actual damage (in the realm of health care, top surgery, police brutality, murder, etc.) to fat black men.
July 30, 2022
Incredibly grateful to my friend Kafia for not only recommending this book, but creating a space that encouraged me to read this book. An absolute must-read.
CW: racism, police brutality (including death by), fatphobia, diet culture, sexual assault, transphobia, medical content/medical trauma (brief discussions), scientific racism
CW: racism, police brutality (including death by), fatphobia, diet culture, sexual assault, transphobia, medical content/medical trauma (brief discussions), scientific racism
August 30, 2021
Da’Shaun is not just a friend, but a talented, fat, black person who has created such a beautiful, educational book. Theory can be dry and difficult to understand, but the structure of this book gently guides the reader through concepts about anti-fatness and anti-blackness that they may or may not have known about. This is a must read, especially for white, skinny, cis people. Spend your money on this book and give Da’Shaun their flowers! I’ve never known someone more deserving. This book has the power to change the world — it has already changed mine ❤️
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July 9, 2023I’ve been following Da’Shaun Harrison online for years and seen snippets of this book floating around. So glad I finally got around to reading their work in full and, as I suspected, it was really impactful. Really precisely and thoughtfully written with no wasted words. Every word about desire and ugliness was fantastic, especially bc discussion of those terms often don’t go beyond attraction. Da’Shaun really laid out how this manifests in more material, harmful, fatal ways. One of the most striking sections was about how the intersection of anti-Blackness and fatphobia was on display in the discourse around victims of police killings like Mike Brown and even Tamir Rice…it just really clicked it all together for me. As someone who is not fat, this really challenged my shallow acceptance of “body positivity”. Da’Shaun firmly challenged me to move into a mindset of fat liberation, and I’m grateful for it.
Generally, I loved that this was in conversation with books I’ve learned from like Killing the Black Body, Heavy (loved that Kiese Laymon wrote the foreword!!), Black on Both Sides, Are Prisons Obsolete?, and even Bad Fat Black Girl. Though reading books isn’t a total replacement for combatting anti-Blackness, fatphobia, etc, I’m glad I’ve had books like this to move me further along the path.
Generally, I loved that this was in conversation with books I’ve learned from like Killing the Black Body, Heavy (loved that Kiese Laymon wrote the foreword!!), Black on Both Sides, Are Prisons Obsolete?, and even Bad Fat Black Girl. Though reading books isn’t a total replacement for combatting anti-Blackness, fatphobia, etc, I’m glad I’ve had books like this to move me further along the path.
September 25, 2022
I think the ideas in this book are so important, and "anti-fatness as anti-Blackness" is made readily apparent (to someone who has been becoming familiar with many of the cited texts in this book, and yet who still has a lot to read/learn/do). I'll be thinking a lot about Thinness as a politic, my own struggles with "disordered eating", and how these relate to anti-Blackness. That said, this book did not feel complete to me, and I've spent the past few days trying to figure out why.
Maybe it's the page numbers; or maybe some other quality made this book felt rushed. I did get the impression that some sentences and ideas were occasionally pasted haphazardly or repeatedly, without making significant contributions to the argument. I would have loved more detail and historical analysis: What was happening with fatness when race and gender were being co-created and modified? How do we separate fatness from adiposity, mass, size, space? It felt like a lot of doors were opened, only to quickly move down the hallway, or find those rooms sparsely furnished. Essentially, I wanted more nerding out, more digging deeper.
Beyond that, I found the final chapter confusing, as the author seemed to wildly mis-represent what abolition means. They write, "Systems are built by an idea and the power to actualize that idea, which means that if abolition is only about eradicating systems or providing resources to people within the World through which those systems are created, it cannot be and is not enough." That's a big "if", which the people they cite earlier in the chapter as abolitionists (Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Angela Davis, Mariame Kaba) have argued against. Time and again they have noted that abolition is not just about destruction of systems and providing resources for people within the World as it stands; it is about the creation of new worlds that don't uphold the logics of the World we live in now. Abolition is "[destroying] the World that produces the cage by which the Black fat is bound" and producing new liberated worlds and ways of being. I wonder what it is that I am missing from their argument that required them to make a statement about "moving beyond abolition".
Maybe it's the page numbers; or maybe some other quality made this book felt rushed. I did get the impression that some sentences and ideas were occasionally pasted haphazardly or repeatedly, without making significant contributions to the argument. I would have loved more detail and historical analysis: What was happening with fatness when race and gender were being co-created and modified? How do we separate fatness from adiposity, mass, size, space? It felt like a lot of doors were opened, only to quickly move down the hallway, or find those rooms sparsely furnished. Essentially, I wanted more nerding out, more digging deeper.
Beyond that, I found the final chapter confusing, as the author seemed to wildly mis-represent what abolition means. They write, "Systems are built by an idea and the power to actualize that idea, which means that if abolition is only about eradicating systems or providing resources to people within the World through which those systems are created, it cannot be and is not enough." That's a big "if", which the people they cite earlier in the chapter as abolitionists (Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Angela Davis, Mariame Kaba) have argued against. Time and again they have noted that abolition is not just about destruction of systems and providing resources for people within the World as it stands; it is about the creation of new worlds that don't uphold the logics of the World we live in now. Abolition is "[destroying] the World that produces the cage by which the Black fat is bound" and producing new liberated worlds and ways of being. I wonder what it is that I am missing from their argument that required them to make a statement about "moving beyond abolition".
August 30, 2021
Brilliant. An absolute must read.
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July 6, 2023quite short. focuses on what harrison calls "the black fat," and in particular explores the black fat masc body (i.e., men and those who may not be men but are read as such). divided into 7 chapters:
1. beyond self-love
2. pretty ugly: the politics of desire
3. health and the black fat
4. black, fat, and policed
5. the war on drugs and the war on obesity
6. meeting gender's end
7. beyond abolition
what I most appreciated was harrison's willingness and ability to acknowledge and give respect to those who have come before them while also urging a collective push forward, further, beyond. (for example, they note the points at which they agree with sonya renee taylor of the body is not an apology before then noting the ways in which they think taylor's work and central thesis do not go far enough, with which, for the record, I whole-heartedly agree.) this is starkest in their explicit discussion of the ways in which their call to move beyond abolition may be a new idea for many readers; they are right in their assertion that many of us have been used to treating prison & police abolition as the endgame, and I appreciated their compassionate but unbending reminder that we must be careful not to let whatever comes after abolition replicate similar patterns of harm (as, for example, happened following the abolition of slavery).
harrison's ideas are powerful, but I'm not sure the organization, which comes across as a little tangential, fully coheres. these concepts are all clearly closely interrelated, but I am, again, not sure harris makes the case for how and why they've chosen this particular framework to put them together. if I had to explain harrison's core thesis, I think I'd say it's that anti-blackness and anti-fatness do not intersect with one another because instead they are one another, part and parcel, the same thing—and I don't know that I'm leaving the text convinced of that. it is not that I disagree but rather that I'm not sure harrison has fully made their case as to why we should consider the venn diagram of these two to be one perfect circle over viewing them as closely related and often convergent but not inseparable. I may, though, be misunderstanding harris's thesis; even then, I would say that that is an issue that could have been resolved with a more tightly structured (and perhaps longer) text.
that's a big paragraph of "sure, but," but I do want to emphasize that I think this is a valuable text that delineates vitally important issues, and from it I learned some new things and reinforced other understandings. harrison, to whose shorter-form writing and speaking I have previously been exposed via social media, already has the expertise, and I will gladly read more of their work as they are provided the space and time to continue developing their academic writing and theorizing.
1. beyond self-love
2. pretty ugly: the politics of desire
3. health and the black fat
4. black, fat, and policed
5. the war on drugs and the war on obesity
6. meeting gender's end
7. beyond abolition
what I most appreciated was harrison's willingness and ability to acknowledge and give respect to those who have come before them while also urging a collective push forward, further, beyond. (for example, they note the points at which they agree with sonya renee taylor of the body is not an apology before then noting the ways in which they think taylor's work and central thesis do not go far enough, with which, for the record, I whole-heartedly agree.) this is starkest in their explicit discussion of the ways in which their call to move beyond abolition may be a new idea for many readers; they are right in their assertion that many of us have been used to treating prison & police abolition as the endgame, and I appreciated their compassionate but unbending reminder that we must be careful not to let whatever comes after abolition replicate similar patterns of harm (as, for example, happened following the abolition of slavery).
harrison's ideas are powerful, but I'm not sure the organization, which comes across as a little tangential, fully coheres. these concepts are all clearly closely interrelated, but I am, again, not sure harris makes the case for how and why they've chosen this particular framework to put them together. if I had to explain harrison's core thesis, I think I'd say it's that anti-blackness and anti-fatness do not intersect with one another because instead they are one another, part and parcel, the same thing—and I don't know that I'm leaving the text convinced of that. it is not that I disagree but rather that I'm not sure harrison has fully made their case as to why we should consider the venn diagram of these two to be one perfect circle over viewing them as closely related and often convergent but not inseparable. I may, though, be misunderstanding harris's thesis; even then, I would say that that is an issue that could have been resolved with a more tightly structured (and perhaps longer) text.
that's a big paragraph of "sure, but," but I do want to emphasize that I think this is a valuable text that delineates vitally important issues, and from it I learned some new things and reinforced other understandings. harrison, to whose shorter-form writing and speaking I have previously been exposed via social media, already has the expertise, and I will gladly read more of their work as they are provided the space and time to continue developing their academic writing and theorizing.
February 23, 2022
This was an excellent overview of Black, fat, trans politics, theory, and lived experience. While the writing style and even brevity of the book is an asset in some areas (it brings scholarly discourses around gender, abolition, desire, and Afropessimism [though I wish readers had been given more context about the latter] to the average, non-academic reader and can easily be read in one sitting) I emerged from the text feeling like I'd read an introduction rather than a complete book. Well-researched and well-written, and refreshingly aware of its audience, but I'll save the 5th star for when it's 2-3x longer!
January 16, 2022
World-destroying ideas in a 109 page book. Really extraordinary. Particularly learned a lot from “Black, Fat, and Policed” and “Meeting Gender’s End.”
If you enjoyed “Pretty Ugly: The Politics of Desire” chapter I’d recommend Tressie McMillan Cottom’s essay “In the Name of Beauty” in her (amazing) collection of essays “Thick.”
For more info on the CDC studies Harrison cites in “Health and the Black Fat” there’s a great podcast episode from Maintenance Phase titled “Is Being Fat Bad For You?” that chronicles in depth the two studies and how we arrived at an “obesity epidemic.”
If you enjoyed “Pretty Ugly: The Politics of Desire” chapter I’d recommend Tressie McMillan Cottom’s essay “In the Name of Beauty” in her (amazing) collection of essays “Thick.”
For more info on the CDC studies Harrison cites in “Health and the Black Fat” there’s a great podcast episode from Maintenance Phase titled “Is Being Fat Bad For You?” that chronicles in depth the two studies and how we arrived at an “obesity epidemic.”
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May 30, 2022Essential reading for feminists, fact activists, anti-racists, and queer allies.
Want to read
September 3, 2023apparently i didn't have this listed on my tbr which is unbelievable because i'm sooo excited to read it lol. literally picked it up physically the other day and had to wrestle with myself and put it down. why dont they make more hours in the day
December 18, 2024
tw: racism, anti-blackness, anti-fatness, sexual assault, drug use, descriptions of violence, police violence, transphobia, medical violence, eating disorders, colonialism
if you read one more book this year read this one!!!
a radical book on the intersections of anti-blackness, anti-fatness, and gender and an analysis of the most marginalized bodies.
i this book will stay with me for a looong time.
if you read one more book this year read this one!!!
a radical book on the intersections of anti-blackness, anti-fatness, and gender and an analysis of the most marginalized bodies.
i this book will stay with me for a looong time.
January 16, 2023
However, fatness--both as an identity and as the literal tissue--has value. Which means that the celebration of "lost" weight is much more of a celebration of thievery. It is the theft of a fat person's ability to see themselves as someone who matters, theft of a person's right to see their body as neutral rather than inherently bad, a breach of consent on how a person enters into a relationship with their fat body .
This quote exemplifies why Belly of the Beast is such an important text, because Harrison articulated the experience as a fat person so well. The loss of the ability to be body-neutral and have a relationship with food, movement, and appearance that isn't marred by anti-fatness (in conjunction with anti-Blackness, homophobia, sexism, etc) as a default state is frustrating for me, and is informed by my identities as a Black queer woman. For that reason, I really enjoyed the chapter where Harrison used qualitative interview data to describe the experiences of Black fat transmasculine folks. I appreciated Harrison's ability to offer their points while integrating other relevant scholars. Overall, in some ways the brevity of the book is one of its strongest assets.
In other ways, it limited me from being able to see all of the thought and theorizing Harrison had to do to come to some of the main conclusions. There were some times where things stated unequivocally could have benefitted from more explanation (and a times, citation) so interested readers to get a better sense of scholarly narrative. There were also areas where I realized my frustration came because the text was not introduced as a primer to these topics, but rather an exploration. That's why my 3.5 rating has been rounded down to 3.
However, I recognize that my expectations are simply that, and Harrison did not claim to have THE only takes regarding these topics. Without a doubt, this book is filled with thought-provoking ideas and important examples of the connections about anti-fatness, desirability, and anti-Blackness in the US. I just wanted more.
This quote exemplifies why Belly of the Beast is such an important text, because Harrison articulated the experience as a fat person so well. The loss of the ability to be body-neutral and have a relationship with food, movement, and appearance that isn't marred by anti-fatness (in conjunction with anti-Blackness, homophobia, sexism, etc) as a default state is frustrating for me, and is informed by my identities as a Black queer woman. For that reason, I really enjoyed the chapter where Harrison used qualitative interview data to describe the experiences of Black fat transmasculine folks. I appreciated Harrison's ability to offer their points while integrating other relevant scholars. Overall, in some ways the brevity of the book is one of its strongest assets.
In other ways, it limited me from being able to see all of the thought and theorizing Harrison had to do to come to some of the main conclusions. There were some times where things stated unequivocally could have benefitted from more explanation (and a times, citation) so interested readers to get a better sense of scholarly narrative. There were also areas where I realized my frustration came because the text was not introduced as a primer to these topics, but rather an exploration. That's why my 3.5 rating has been rounded down to 3.
However, I recognize that my expectations are simply that, and Harrison did not claim to have THE only takes regarding these topics. Without a doubt, this book is filled with thought-provoking ideas and important examples of the connections about anti-fatness, desirability, and anti-Blackness in the US. I just wanted more.
September 12, 2021
Really interesting and well curated book that explores the inextricable link between anti-fatness and anti-Blackness. Quite a quick read, and though it didn't feel quite as opaque and inaccessible as many other more academic-focused texts I've read, there were certainly elements here of the writing that prevented me from fully connecting, given my lack of background in Academia.
July 15, 2023
I wouldn't normally finish this sort of book. I've read a lot of critical theory, and I have a good nose for bullshit with un petit air français. However, a friend of mine recently recommended me a video that intrigued me. The premise, briefly, is that anti-fatness and anti-blackness are the same thing: "If you are anti-black you are also anti-fat, and if you are anti-fat you are also anti-black." This is a striking claim, and the video fails to support it. Wondering if perhaps going to the sources would be more enlightening, I decided to go to the source of the above quote - Da'Shaun Harrison - and read their text on the subject.
As an exercise in the art of highly-targeted rhetoric (this will only work on a particular strain of leftist and repel just about anyone else) it is impressive. As an argument from premises to conclusions, it is embarrassing. Rightists tend to accuse critical theorists of deliberate obfuscation but I don't think this is correct. I believe Harrison is arguing, more or less, in good faith, it's just that when your intellectual diet consists almost entirely of Derrideans and Foucauldians*, you run a high risk of allowing "if", "perhaps", "always already" and other genre phrases to do all the arguing for you without even noticing.
Take, for example, the absurd statement:
I actually don't agree that if we agree that "for the Black to exist so too must the fat" we must therefore agree that " what also makes the Black "criminal" is the fat(ness) assigned to the Black". And Harrison must not think this is entirely self-evident either, because they quickly give the example of "the Two-Ton Contest". The Two-Ton Contest was a courtroom "game" prosecutors in Cook County, Illnois played in the 1970s. (Harrison claims it was played as recently as the 2000s but I've seen no evidence to support this.*) They played the game by tallying up the weights of defendants when they pled guilty or were found guilty, and the first prosecutor to total two-tons (or 4000 pounds) won. This is, obviously, obscenely cruel and dehumanising, but Harrison mentions it to further cement the idea that fat Black people specifically are under further threat because of their fatness. The irony here is that the direct quote Harrison takes from Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve's Crook County: Racism and Injustice in America's Largest Criminal Court contradicts this:
I'd contend the most we can say based on this quote is that innocent fat Black people will have been incentivised to accept "generous" plea deals that were pushed on them only because of their weight and because of this disgusting "game", which is terrible, but what's left out of this account is that non-fat Black people weren't getting a free pass, and when it came to actual sentencing will have been treated far harsher. Here's a direct quote from Courtroom 302: A Year Behind the Scenes in an American Criminal Courthouse, Van Cleve's own source for discussion of the Two-Ton Contest:
Harrison's theoretical "style" operates through implication, through selective citation and through the inadvertent (I'm sure) use of silence on matters that contradict. Harrison doesn't even think to address this counterpoint either because they aren't aware of it (this wouldn't surprise me) or because they don't think anyone is likely to point this out.
I've spent a while dissecting a claim that takes up about a page in the book, by the way. There's a rhetorical technique called the Gish Gallop: it works by overwhelming your interlocutor with an excessive number of arguments regardless of how good those arguments are (or indeed how relevant they are to the discussion). In its original form the Gallop is essentially used to run down the timer on a formal debate and leave a number of arguments "unanswered" before the end. Obviously you have all the time you want to read a book, but bookish critical theory types are prone to doing this in their texts because it demonstrates their scholarly chops and because they can exploit the tendency most of us have to say "lots of examples therefore true". Checking any one claim can take literally hours, and they come thick and fast. For a few more declarations that are prima facie absurd or require justification that never comes, see also:
(A depressing thought!)
(Where Beauty with a capital B refers to the possession of "Desire Capital", which grants one "access, power, and resources." If you cannot think of a single Black/fat/disabled/trans person with "possession" of this sort of "capital" you have been living under a very secluded rock.)
(I'm less certain that the sun will rise tomorrow than Harrison is that NO BLACK PERSON CAN EVER BE HEALTHY.)
Sucker punches and curveballs like this fly off the page line after line. There's an acidic nihilism on display here that obviously stems from the traumatic experience of having grown up fat, Black, poor, etc. in the United States. This is an experience I can't relate to, and I'm weary of conducting this review in a stigmatising way (merely disagreeing with the premises of this book is sufficient to be anti-fat and anti-black by Harrison's standards but that's not the standard I'm trying to meet). There needs to be room for discussion of how the way we speak about fatness does harm to fat people, without ceding to claims such as "anyone who still has a vested interest in intentional weight loss... is making the active decision to invest in systemic anti-fatness, anti-Blackness, ableism, misogyny/-noir, and capitalism". I think it's worth being open-minded to the historical "origins" of the way we talk and think about fatness, and certainly if there is a racial inflection to this (within or outside of the US) that's worth investigating too.
But that's not being successfully argued here. This shit just sucks.
--
NOTES:
1) "consists almost entirely of Derrideans and Foucauldians": To be fair, #NotAllDerrideans #NotAllFoucauldians but for every Judith Butler (who is not themselves immune to bullshitting) there are thousands of dreadful imitators.
2) "The Two-Ton Contest was a courtroom "game" prosecutors in Cook County, Illnois played in the 1970s and 1980s." Harrison claims this happened in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It's not clear where they get this date from. The book they cite, Crook County: Racism and Injustice in America's Largest Criminal Court, gives the time period as "the 1980s and 1990s", and if you check the book cited in that book, Courtroom 302: A Year Behind the Scenes in an American Criminal Courthouse, the source who describes the game says it was no longer played when he joined the trial courts as an attorney in 1978, and that he heard about it from "veteran prosecutors". Even assuming he's lying, that still doesn't date the practice to the 1990s, let alone the 2000s.
As an exercise in the art of highly-targeted rhetoric (this will only work on a particular strain of leftist and repel just about anyone else) it is impressive. As an argument from premises to conclusions, it is embarrassing. Rightists tend to accuse critical theorists of deliberate obfuscation but I don't think this is correct. I believe Harrison is arguing, more or less, in good faith, it's just that when your intellectual diet consists almost entirely of Derrideans and Foucauldians*, you run a high risk of allowing "if", "perhaps", "always already" and other genre phrases to do all the arguing for you without even noticing.
Take, for example, the absurd statement:
"...for the Black to exist so too must the fat. If we agree that this is the case, then what also makes the Black "criminal" is the fat(ness) assigned to the Black."
I actually don't agree that if we agree that "for the Black to exist so too must the fat" we must therefore agree that " what also makes the Black "criminal" is the fat(ness) assigned to the Black". And Harrison must not think this is entirely self-evident either, because they quickly give the example of "the Two-Ton Contest". The Two-Ton Contest was a courtroom "game" prosecutors in Cook County, Illnois played in the 1970s. (Harrison claims it was played as recently as the 2000s but I've seen no evidence to support this.*) They played the game by tallying up the weights of defendants when they pled guilty or were found guilty, and the first prosecutor to total two-tons (or 4000 pounds) won. This is, obviously, obscenely cruel and dehumanising, but Harrison mentions it to further cement the idea that fat Black people specifically are under further threat because of their fatness. The irony here is that the direct quote Harrison takes from Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve's Crook County: Racism and Injustice in America's Largest Criminal Court contradicts this:
Defendants potentially “deserving” of longer sentences received short ones. Conversely, other defendants received harsher sentences not on the basis of their crime or the evidence against them, but according to their weight.
I'd contend the most we can say based on this quote is that innocent fat Black people will have been incentivised to accept "generous" plea deals that were pushed on them only because of their weight and because of this disgusting "game", which is terrible, but what's left out of this account is that non-fat Black people weren't getting a free pass, and when it came to actual sentencing will have been treated far harsher. Here's a direct quote from Courtroom 302: A Year Behind the Scenes in an American Criminal Courthouse, Van Cleve's own source for discussion of the Two-Ton Contest:
From what he’d heard, “a lot of fat guys [defendants] were getting great deals,” he says with a laugh. “Let’s say a prosecutor’s got a guy who’s 350 pounds. Where the guy normally would have gotten ten years, the prosecutor might offer him a year”—to get a quick and certain conviction. “Skinny guys wouldn’t get offered anything,” Locallo says.
Harrison's theoretical "style" operates through implication, through selective citation and through the inadvertent (I'm sure) use of silence on matters that contradict. Harrison doesn't even think to address this counterpoint either because they aren't aware of it (this wouldn't surprise me) or because they don't think anyone is likely to point this out.
I've spent a while dissecting a claim that takes up about a page in the book, by the way. There's a rhetorical technique called the Gish Gallop: it works by overwhelming your interlocutor with an excessive number of arguments regardless of how good those arguments are (or indeed how relevant they are to the discussion). In its original form the Gallop is essentially used to run down the timer on a formal debate and leave a number of arguments "unanswered" before the end. Obviously you have all the time you want to read a book, but bookish critical theory types are prone to doing this in their texts because it demonstrates their scholarly chops and because they can exploit the tendency most of us have to say "lots of examples therefore true". Checking any one claim can take literally hours, and they come thick and fast. For a few more declarations that are prima facie absurd or require justification that never comes, see also:
"What does it look like to talk about health not as something the Black fat body has been removed from but rather as something created precisely for fat Black people, or the Black fat, to never have access to?"
(A depressing thought!)
"As such, people who are Black, fat, disabled, and/or trans more generally do not have access to Beauty."
(Where Beauty with a capital B refers to the possession of "Desire Capital", which grants one "access, power, and resources." If you cannot think of a single Black/fat/disabled/trans person with "possession" of this sort of "capital" you have been living under a very secluded rock.)
"Health is a framework in which no Black person can ever fit."
(I'm less certain that the sun will rise tomorrow than Harrison is that NO BLACK PERSON CAN EVER BE HEALTHY.)
Sucker punches and curveballs like this fly off the page line after line. There's an acidic nihilism on display here that obviously stems from the traumatic experience of having grown up fat, Black, poor, etc. in the United States. This is an experience I can't relate to, and I'm weary of conducting this review in a stigmatising way (merely disagreeing with the premises of this book is sufficient to be anti-fat and anti-black by Harrison's standards but that's not the standard I'm trying to meet). There needs to be room for discussion of how the way we speak about fatness does harm to fat people, without ceding to claims such as "anyone who still has a vested interest in intentional weight loss... is making the active decision to invest in systemic anti-fatness, anti-Blackness, ableism, misogyny/-noir, and capitalism". I think it's worth being open-minded to the historical "origins" of the way we talk and think about fatness, and certainly if there is a racial inflection to this (within or outside of the US) that's worth investigating too.
But that's not being successfully argued here. This shit just sucks.
--
NOTES:
1) "consists almost entirely of Derrideans and Foucauldians": To be fair, #NotAllDerrideans #NotAllFoucauldians but for every Judith Butler (who is not themselves immune to bullshitting) there are thousands of dreadful imitators.
2) "The Two-Ton Contest was a courtroom "game" prosecutors in Cook County, Illnois played in the 1970s and 1980s." Harrison claims this happened in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It's not clear where they get this date from. The book they cite, Crook County: Racism and Injustice in America's Largest Criminal Court, gives the time period as "the 1980s and 1990s", and if you check the book cited in that book, Courtroom 302: A Year Behind the Scenes in an American Criminal Courthouse, the source who describes the game says it was no longer played when he joined the trial courts as an attorney in 1978, and that he heard about it from "veteran prosecutors". Even assuming he's lying, that still doesn't date the practice to the 1990s, let alone the 2000s.
January 14, 2023
Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness by Da’Shaun L. Harrison was a phenomenal, educational, & important read. Though hardly over 100 pages, Harrison expertly tackles many hard-hitting topics. Throughout the book, they identify how ideological frameworks and societal institutions work together to strategically disenfranchise Black fat people. In particular, Harrison focuses on the politics of desirability, the failures of the medical system, police brutality, the war on drugs & its connection to the war on obesity, & society’s gendered conceptions around weight that fail to consider fat trans and non-binary people.
This book was SO good. I audibly said “wow” every few pages while reading this book. Each chapter provided me with new knowledge and language that I will take with me. I loved the closing where Harrison urges readers of the necessity to go beyond abolition. I found their framing of abolition as the starting place for imagining a new world to be particularly powerful. Also, their writing is concise and fairly easy to understand for an academic text! I thought there was just enough (but not too much) historical context to help readers grasp Harrison’s points. I highly recommend everyone reads! 5/5 from me.
This book was SO good. I audibly said “wow” every few pages while reading this book. Each chapter provided me with new knowledge and language that I will take with me. I loved the closing where Harrison urges readers of the necessity to go beyond abolition. I found their framing of abolition as the starting place for imagining a new world to be particularly powerful. Also, their writing is concise and fairly easy to understand for an academic text! I thought there was just enough (but not too much) historical context to help readers grasp Harrison’s points. I highly recommend everyone reads! 5/5 from me.
August 12, 2021
“The issue with all of these comments is that, at their core, they suggest that self-love is enough to eradicate anti-fatness and that if you just accept yourself, or love who you are, that somehow the methodical violence of anti-fatness—housing, employment, etcetera—is no more.”
Harrison’s Belly of the Beast critically engages with “anti-fatness as anti-Blackness” through their examination of Desire Capital, health, policing, and gender. Each chapter highlights how these systems of power work to harm fat Black folks, and fat Black trans men, trans masculine folks, cisgender men, and non-binary folks. Harrison concludes with a call to move beyond abolition to imagine a world beyond anti-Blackness.
Overall, Belly of the Beast is a generous book that engages the reader on every page. I learned so much from reading this and am excited to read many of the works that Harrison cited. Highly recommend!
Harrison’s Belly of the Beast critically engages with “anti-fatness as anti-Blackness” through their examination of Desire Capital, health, policing, and gender. Each chapter highlights how these systems of power work to harm fat Black folks, and fat Black trans men, trans masculine folks, cisgender men, and non-binary folks. Harrison concludes with a call to move beyond abolition to imagine a world beyond anti-Blackness.
Overall, Belly of the Beast is a generous book that engages the reader on every page. I learned so much from reading this and am excited to read many of the works that Harrison cited. Highly recommend!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 14, 2024
I think as a work of political essay, this is a brief but hefty contribution to intersectional abolitionist thought. Like any collection of essays, it cannot get to everything or everyone but Da’Shaun made it clear what their focus was and stayed true to it so you cannot fault them for that!
I will have to come back and read this again because some of the writing was so dense, academic, and self-referential that I got a headache and just had to be like “yes chef” and move on. Thankfully this was read for a work bookclub bc it left me with a lot of thoughts and questions. This is a great conversation starter and an overdue line in the sand.
I will have to come back and read this again because some of the writing was so dense, academic, and self-referential that I got a headache and just had to be like “yes chef” and move on. Thankfully this was read for a work bookclub bc it left me with a lot of thoughts and questions. This is a great conversation starter and an overdue line in the sand.
January 17, 2023
Wow just wow. This book truly transformed the way I think: about anti-Blackness, anti-fatness, gender, health, and power. I highly recommend this book for anyone wanting to unlearn any internal biases and to take action on the existence of these horrible damaging institutions.
January 10, 2025
Read this please!! Harrison puts into words thoughts I've been having for years! An excellent demonstration on the importance of intersectionality and how everything tangles together.
August 15, 2021
Brilliant. Read this book in two days. I couldn’t put it down. Everyone who cares about fat liberation and white supremacy needs to read this book. Harrison’s prose is electric: it scintillates with energy, insight, brilliance—drawing connections between, say, the “war on obesity” and the “war on drugs” that I haven’t seen other thinkers make. I’m teaching this book in my Fat Studies class this semester, and it’s gonna blow students’ minds!
I can’t wait to read Harrison’s future books, too—I am sure they will become one of the foremost thinkers and writers in fat liberation activism and in Fat Studies.
I can’t wait to read Harrison’s future books, too—I am sure they will become one of the foremost thinkers and writers in fat liberation activism and in Fat Studies.
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