weight a minute v2...

Beyonce is fat? WTF?
I got into a small debate with someone a few months back about Beyoncé being fat or not.

Really, my conversations are not that shallow: At the time I was in the "data collection" phase in research on Black women & exercise (my general research area is obesity). Within this discussion, size came up, of course. In the midst of me trying to explain the difference between "thick" & "fat", I said an ideal example of what is considered "thick" is a shape like Beyonce's, but even then she may fall on the "skinny-with-curves" side depending on what movie role she's doing at the time. I was explaining this to four mid-40ish women, 3 which were White and hadn't really known what she looked like. Beyoncé’s shape seemed like an ideal example given her popularity, but clearly I was mistaken. The Black woman was very familiar with > Beyoncé and adamantly rejected my classification of Beyonce as thick. She actually proclaimed that she was...FAT! WTF! That was the first thing that popped into my mind. I had to consciously censor myself. I was in a professional environment so I went on to calmly disagree letting them know that she is a singer and dancer that stays on tour, was on the cover of Sports Illustrated, and probably wears clothes sizes ranging between a 2-6. Okay maybe an 8 pants, but that may be due to hips, which last time I checked was not a very bad thing. All this to say that, I don't think society has advanced to the level of featuring a "fat" woman in these avenues without branding her as "full-figured". In hindsight I should have mentioned that her latest videos featured her clad in a freaking leotard & high heels. Admittedly, that does not mean she couldn't be considered "fat", but all the parodies that have been done on the video have not come close to implying that she is in any way (shape or form) fat. And you know those folks can be pretty ruthless. Back to the story: the woman kept on saying that she was fat and was bigger than all those taking part in the conversation. I was puzzled because she included herself and this woman is definitely obese by BMI’s standards- very apparently larger than Beyoncé . I could not believe what my ears were hearing. After a short back and forth and my staunch refusals to believe her statements, she mentioned that she was not a Beyoncé fan…AHA, so the real opinion comes out. It was really never about her weight, she was being a hater. That was the end of that conversation, this was not a real debate.

I wouldn’t necessarily classify myself as a Beyoncé fan (though I like many of her songs and respect her hustle), but come on, give credit where it’s due. She has a good voice is a good dancer and has a nice shape. I visited a couple of websites (I refuse to name them), and saw that there are more people (mostly women) out there with this same sentiment of Beyoncé being fat. I had no idea how far the hateration for Beyoncé goes. This is the type of stuff that leads me to do the psychological work that I do. It fascinates me (and infuriates at times) how someone's perception of someone else's character can influence how they perceive their physical features. I could see the attractiveness judgment, but it's application to weight would seem like a more difficult task. This sentiment seems to be contrary to what a lot of research has espoused about Black women's acceptance of a larger frame.

For those that think she is fat, what does normal weight (for a Black woman specifically- if you think there is a difference between ideal White & Black figures) look like? I'm not trying to sway people to agree or sympathize with me, but I am curious to see if this is a sentiment that is widely shared. If anyone has more insight than my simple explanation of old fashioned hatin', please enlighten me.