Monday, July 8, 2019: Whose Image Is Our Body Image? - Part 1

This week on Women's Magazine we explore the racial, cultural, economic and emotional roots of our obsession with thin bodies.

Available in hardcover, paperback and eBook

Sabrina Strings, professor of Sociology at University of California, Irvine (and UC Berkeley alum), in her book Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia, brings a new lens to an old problem. Tracing the history of western body ideals through art, literature, religious, popular cultural and medical teachings, Strings argues persuasively that the current crusade against obesity is not about health, but rather a means of using the body to validate race, class, and gender prejudice.

"The obesity science is a pseudo-science..." -Sabrina Strings

Click here to listen to the entire show. 59:58 min (There is a break in the recording at 44:46 that lasts about 45 seconds.)

Also on today's show:
Shani Raviv

Monday, December 7, 2015: Racism and the Global Beauty Industry

What is Colorism? What is Sexual Currency? What is Hip Hop Feminism? A New Look at Beauty

Meeta Rani Jha joins us to discuss her new book, The Global Beauty Industry: Colorism, Racism and the National Body. Kate Raphael talks with Meeta Rani Jha about internal racism as the offspring of or legacy of colonialism and white supremacy and more.

The Global Beauty Industry is an interdisciplinary text that uses beauty to explore topics of gender, race, class, colorism, nation, bodies, multiculturalism, transnationalism, and intersectionality. Integrating materials from a wide range of cultural and geo-political contexts, it coalesces with initiatives to produce more internationally relevant curricula in fields such as sociology, as well as cultural, women's/gender, media, and globalization studies.

This book is available at your local bookstore and online at Amazon.

Click here to listen to entire show. 59:50 min.


Also on today's show:
AIDS Activism as a Model for Social Change