Brown girls don’t get eating disorders. By Anonymous “You have such a beautiful face; if only you lost weight it would not be such a waste” said one ‘auntie’ to me when I was 6 years old.
Soon after, I heard two of my mother’s friends pull her aside and say “You have to watch her weight no one wants a fat girl”. That same year at school the teacher went around the classroom and asked everyone what they wanted to be when they grew up, ‘doctor’ said one person, ‘astronaut’ said another, and finally it came to my turn “thin and beautiful” was my answer. For this was the dream, to be thin and dare I say it, over 20 years later I still have many days where it is all I can think about.
I continue to herald a belief that my body is a work in progress and though I am not medically considered to be overweight my mind has been hijacked by certain body ideals promoted by Western media that have spread to other parts of the world. You will notice that I have not put my name to this piece. Related Like this: Like Loading... Related After Abuse. Witter / ? White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh. White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack "I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group" Peggy McIntosh Through work to bring materials from women's studies into the rest of the curriculum, I have often noticed men's unwillingness to grant that they are overprivileged, even though they may grant that women are disadvantaged.
They may say they will work to women's statues, in the society, the university, or the curriculum, but they can't or won't support the idea of lessening men's. Denials that amount to taboos surround the subject of advantages that men gain from women's disadvantages. Thinking through unacknowledged male privilege as a phenomenon, I realized that, since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there was most likely a phenomenon of while privilege that was similarly denied and protected.
Describing white privilege makes one newly accountable. Return to the top of the page 1. 2. 3. 4. A Simple Lesson on the Social Construction of Race. The images below are all screen shots from the fantastic American Anthropological Association website on race. The first five are designed to show how we take what is in reality a nuanced spectrum and turn it into racial categories. In this first image, they show how we could, conceivably, separate human beings into short, medium, and tall based on height: In this second image, they show how, by adding two additional figures, both taller than the tallest in the previous image, the way in which we designate people can easily change.
And this third image demonstrates how, when we actually consider all potential heights, where we draw the line between short and medium and medium and tall is arbitrary and, ultimately, not very useful. Skin color is like height.