Obese Black Women as "Social Dead Weight": Reinventing the "Diseased Black Woman".

A flurry of recent articles in the medical and popular press have decried black women's "alarmingly high" rates of obesity. The number of high-profile publications lamenting the "epidemic" among black women has grown, even as mounting evidence indicates that obesity (defined as a body mass index ≥ 30) does not necessarily lead to poor health outcomes. Indeed, given its functional limitations in explaining or predicting health status, a number of medical researchers are now issuing calls to revise the standard definition of obesity. In this article, I examine the curious nature of the discourse decrying the obesity epidemic among black women. I argue that rather than being a novel concern about black women's health or public health, the medical and popular discourse about obesity and black women is largely a reproduction of the trope of the diseased black woman that has been used throughout American history. This trope reifies the purported sensualism of black women. Moreover, the newest incarnation of this discursive device is distinct in that it renders black women as triply signified "social dead weight." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]