Given the season we are in, with our second woman as a viable presidential candidate, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it’s like for women—not just on the national stage but in our day-to-day lives. I like to imagine that Vice President Kamala Harris and I would be friends in an alternative universe. We both enjoy cooking, are devoted aunties, love food and are members of the same sorority, with one marked difference: It’s highly unlikely that I will ever run for national office, not just because I cannot imagine anything less interesting (shout out to those public servants who do the daily slog of legislation), but also because I’m not thin and likely never will be again.
At some point during the pandemic, I started watching TikToks and found a couple of very helpful dietitians who talked about how food made by BIPOC folks was vilified as being bad for you. For example, white rice and beans, which are pretty nutritious meals that a large portion of the world consumes each day, suddenly became bad for you in the last twenty years because white rice was deemed the enemy. In reality, white rice and brown rice have similar nutritional value.
That sent me down a rabbit hole exploring the white supremacy embedded in the concept of “good” food versus “bad” food and how we’ve attacked food created by Black and Brown folks to perpetuate the narrative that not much good comes out of those communities—or that what does come out needs to be “fixed”—which often means gentrification of Black and Brown brilliance.
I grew up in a home with two naturally thin people—my mom and my brother—who are two of the most wonderful people in the world and who, like me, love food. My dad and stepdad, both lifelong athletes, have also never had weight problems, playing basketball and tennis until very recently. I found my love of working out in the 90’s with the advent of step aerobics, and it’s mostly a habit I’ve kept up. To say it wasn’t ideal for a fluffy woman to
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