• Celebrity
    • Of The Essence
    • Celebrity News
    • If Not For My Girls
    • The State Of R&B
    • Time Of Essence
  • Fashion
    • 2023 Best In Black Fashion Awards
    • 2023 Fashion House
    • Red Carpet
    • Fashion News
    • Accessories
  • Beauty
    • Girls United: Beautiful Possibilities
    • 2023 Best In Black Beauty
    • Skin
    • Makeup
    • Nails
    • Hair
  • Lifestyle
    • Love
    • Parenting
    • Relationships
    • Bridal Bliss
    • Lifestyle News
    • Health & Wellness
    • ESSENCE Eats
    • Travel
    • Food & Drink
  • Entrepreneurship
    • Money & Career
  • News
    • Latest News
    • Paint The Polls Black
    • Culture
    • Politics
  • Shopping
  • Video
  • Events
    • 2023 Fashion House
    • 2023 ESSENCE Festival Of Culture
    • 2023 Wellness House
    • 2023 Black Women In Hollywood
    • 2023 ESSENCE Film Festival
    • 2023 HOLLYWOOD HOUSE
  • Studios
  • Girls United

WHERE BLACK CULTURE, COMMUNITY AND CONSCIOUSNESS MEET

Sign up for ESSENCE Newsletters the keep the Black women at the forefront of conversation.

Your email is required.
Your email is in invalid format.
Confirm email is required.
Email did not match.
Select the newsletters you'd like to receive:
Please select at least one option.
By clicking Subscribe Now, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Skip to content
SUBSCRIBE
  • MAGAZINE
  • NEWSLETTER
  • Celebrity
    • Of The Essence
    • Celebrity News
    • If Not For My Girls
    • The State Of R&B
    • Time Of Essence
  • Fashion
    • 2023 Best In Black Fashion Awards
    • 2023 Fashion House
    • Red Carpet
    • Fashion News
    • Accessories
  • Beauty
    • Girls United: Beautiful Possibilities
    • 2023 Best In Black Beauty
    • Skin
    • Makeup
    • Nails
    • Hair
      • Hair News
      • Natural
      • Relaxed
      • Transitioning
      • Weave
      • 4C
  • Lifestyle
    • Love
    • Parenting
    • Relationships
    • Bridal Bliss
    • Lifestyle News
    • Health & Wellness
    • ESSENCE Eats
    • Travel
    • Food & Drink
  • Entrepreneurship
    • Money & Career
  • News
    • Latest News
    • Paint The Polls Black
    • Culture
    • Politics
  • Shopping
  • Video
  • Events
    • 2023 Fashion House
    • 2023 ESSENCE Festival Of Culture
    • 2023 Wellness House
    • 2023 Black Women In Hollywood
    • 2023 ESSENCE Film Festival
    • 2023 HOLLYWOOD HOUSE
  • Studios
  • Girls United
Forget Losing Weight, My Goal Is To Emerge From COVID-19 Alive
By Amber Butts · Updated December 6, 2020
Home · Health and Wellness

Forget Losing Weight, My Goal Is To Emerge From COVID-19 Alive

By Amber Butts·Updated December 6, 2020
Last year when I was sick for more than two hundred days of the year, people constantly remarked on my appearance. But none of those folks inquired about how I was really doing.

My uncle says we come from good stock—that Black folks have been bred for a particular kind of physical labor. And while we are no longer enslaved, many of our bodies have adapted to the expectation of labor: thicker thighs, strong arms, large chests, quick feet. My uncle says it helps us in sports, but it also positions us towards various health crises and diagnoses, such as diabetes, hypertension, asthma and high cholesterol. He tells me to always keep an eye out for these things.

So I do. I learn to keep watch of my body, to mark the things it houses on a scoreboard of failures and successes. I learn to move the pieces and scales and narratives, careful of what might tip me over or backwards.

I learn to bury the unwell parts inside and smile, as I’ve seen so many family members do. Even if someone has been diagnosed with cancer or another serious, sometimes fatal health condition, comments on weight loss are always on the table, like bronze badges of honor. As if the poison from a disease were not eating them alive. 

**

I have struggled to maintain a consistent eating schedule all my life. In adulthood, my habits got worse. First I started treating breakfast as if it were optional; then I started eating lunch at 4 p.m. Eventually I forgot to eat altogether, sometimes being woken up by my belly growling in the middle of the night and refusing to quiet until I put something in it.

I vowed to get it in check, not because I trusted my body to inform me of its needs but because not having things under control was a reflection of my character. And I desperately wanted character, wanted “goodness.” Also, my friends had started to make jokes about my being hungry all the time, and I wanted to impress them.

I do not know when “goodness” shifted towards “thinness” for me. I do not know if it was ever that explicit. What I do know is, all the women in my family are big and good. And that this world is explicitly killing so many of them, while blaming them for their deaths. 

Article continues after video.

Last year, when I was sick for more than two hundred days of the year, people constantly remarked on my appearance. I got everything from “You don’t look that sick” to “At least you look good” to “You look tired.” But none of those folks inquired about how I was really doing.

Some people do not care if you’re well. They care about you not making them uncomfortable with your unwellness. They care about you fitting their idea of physical beauty, regardless of how much you are struggling and in pain. They care about you performing whatever version of that standard is in their heads, and it is important to them that you never deviate from it.

All the women in my family are big and good…. The world is explicitly killing so many of them, while blaming them for their deaths.

I am working toward loving my body. I am working to be in it and let that be enough. And I thought I had it in check. I threw away my scale. I committed to becoming stronger, not fitter. I started seeing a trainer who encouraged me to be fascinated instead of frustrated with my body. I recited mantras about how appearance does not determine my worth.

Then the coronavirus hit, and all the things I had been working on disappeared.

Fitness companies moved their services online in response to stock market plunges, and I became inundated with diet and workout propaganda, all under the guise of a need to “emerge from social distancing in the best shape” of my life. Suddenly, all the things I’d been working toward—consistency, support, honesty and confidence in eating things that feel good—became less possible, more abstract.

In response to the $94 billion dollar “fitness” industry’s moment of transition, companies are rushing to offer creative digital opportunities for folks who want to maintain or “improve” their weight during shelter-in-place. Fitness stock is now on the rise, due to gym closures, stress eating and limited physical activity.

My trainer encouraged me to be fascinated instead of frustrated with my body. Then the coronavirus hit….

Strangers have become digital weight-loss instructors and coaches who spout the importance of avoiding weight gain. Weight gain is then presented as one of the worst consequences to social and physical distancing, further supporting the stigmatizing and disposal of fat folks and/or folks who’ve gained weight.

I want to say that it doesn’t get to me, but the truth is, even the ways we self-regulate are impacted by fatphobia and this idea that our best selves are our thinnest, most “fit” selves. I’m told in various ways that I have to earn what I eat, whether it’s a pastry, a slice of cheese or a bowl of ice cream.

For those of us with overlapping mental health needs, the pressure to emerge from all of this in the best shape of our lives can be fatal. That’s not an exaggeration.

**

Multibillion-dollar corporations profit from avoidable escalations of illness when Black folks are not believed to be authorities on the experience of living in our own bodies. The rigid but perpetually inaccurate correlation between thinness and health continues that harm, often using that rhetoric to pathologize and demonize Black bodies, especially if they are also fat. These extensions of anti-Blackness find homes in the violent socialization that teaches us to crave thin bodies, even in the midst of potential fatality. And the constant vitriol, surveillance and attempts to control the eating habits of poor, fat and/or Black folks need not continue throughout this pandemic.

My Black body, my Black life, is worthy of love and safety just as it is. And in these moments, these many moments of fear and uncertainty that demand I conjure the grit and joy of the folks I come from, not dying is enough. It has to be. 

—

ESSENCE is committed to bringing our audience the latest facts about COVID-19 (coronavirus). Our content team is closely monitoring the developing details surrounding the virus via official sources and health care experts, including the World Health Organization (WHO), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Please continue to refresh ESSENCE’s informational hub for updates on COVID-19, as well as for tips on taking care of yourselves, your families and your communities.

COMPANY INFORMATION
  • Our Company
  • Customer Service
  • Essence Ventures
  • Change Your Address
  • Contact Us
  • Job Opportunities
  • Internships
  • Media Kit
  • tag
SUBSCRIBE
  • Newsletters
  • Give a Gift of ESSENCE
  • Magazine Tablet Edition
FOLLOW US
MORE ON ESSENCE
  • Home
  • Love
  • Celebrity
  • Beauty
  • Hair
  • Fashion
  • ESSENCE festival

ESSENCE.com is part of ESSENCE Communications, Inc.

Essence may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.

©2023 ESSENCE Communications Inc. All Rights Reserved. | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Essence.com Advertising Terms

Get The ESSENCE Newsletter and
Special Offers delivered to your inbox

By clicking Sign Up, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

Get The ESSENCE Magazine
by subscribing below
subscribe now