The superlative in the subtitle for today’s post is necessary: never have I read a book that writes on the intersection between feminism, class and race with such precision.
This book avoids the more wishy-washy sides of feminism to focus on concrete, relevant issues, thus creating a book on feminism perfectly suited to now.
I learnt a lot and I want to share some of the points Kendall bought up, but I highly advise you to read the rest of it because there is so much to this book.
Food
What I learnt the most from this book, was how food is a manifestation of social issues, particularly of how issues interlink in people’s lives. These issues manifest in the core human necessities, such as shelter, or housing, of which Kendall also has a chapter on.
The idea of healthy is limited. In one word and its accompanying ideas we fail to encompass a whole world of different people, each facing different issues and each of different backgrounds, shapes and colours. The readily accepted ideal of healthy is skinny. We associate vegetables and fruits and free range with healthy, rather than fizzy drinks, pre-made meals, take-out and crisps. But when the ‘unhealthy’ stuff is all people can afford and safer than the ‘healthy’ stuff then we’ve come to a problem.
Let’s take water, for example. We see it as healthier than fizzy drinks. But when water has lead in it like the city of Flint, Michigan the only other alternatives are expensive bottled water, fruit juice that until recently had fungicides in in some places and cheap, accessible fizzy drinks, you’re going to go with the latter.
Kendall points out the US government’s lazy way of tackling obesity with the Soda Tax. Here, those whose only option is now ruled out and they are stuck.
“In a food desert, too often the ‘healthy’ options are also the most expensive.”
Eating disorders, as Kendall stresses, regularly point to another issue entirely, with the eating habits only being the “visible symptom of the problem,” but not the source of the issue.
The author goes on to link eating disorders to how “not only do we reward thinness in general, we specifically reward any beauty aesthetic that prioritises assimilation.”
Here, we can see how food becomes a source of friction between different manifestations of social issues of race and class.
Stereotypes
“Black women and Latinas are promiscuous, American Indian and Asian women are submissive, and all women of colour are inferior” -these stereotypes legitimize abuse against them, specifically that of a sexual nature.
Stereotypes like this can be seen in film, art and other media and when you become aware of this, they seem to be everywhere. Like something else Kendall said, about how black women are always portrayed as sexual in stories, even as children, as in they are seen as never having been ‘pure’. When she said this, I began to see it everywhere, even in Wiesberger’s ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ where the narrator’s friend is compared, when she was young, to Lolita from Nabokov’s book. But it’s never addressed, just passed over with an ironic humour as all the other issues that are referred to in the book. (Also Weiserberger always points out the races of the side characters, but only if they’re of colour, and never with any reason.)
Conversation around the stereotypes of women commonly focuses on the Madonna/whore dichotomy: either the damsel-in-distress or the femme fatale. But never much on how race plays into this.
By acknowledging these stereotypes then learning more about them and then recognising them in the media we are surrounded by, we can bring awareness to them.
Not only do they limit the experiences of people of colour so those watching cannot relate, but they “influence the perception that women who are not white do not experience a full range of emotions.” In other words, they are presented as less than human.
A Conclusion
If you take anything away from today’s post it should be this: please read the book!
I leave you with these quotes from Kendall herself:
“Mainstream feminism has to step up, has to get itself to a place where it spends more time offering resources and less time demanding validation.”
and,
“Accomplices do not just talk about bigotry; they do something about it.”
Questions to consider:
Have you watched any films/TV shows or read any books that perpetuate the racist stereotypes held against women? And how could they have been avoided in this particular example?
In what other ways does the intersection between race, class and gender manifest?
Have you read the book? If so, what are your thoughts on it?
Further reading:
Buy 'White Tears, Brown Scars' by Ruby Hamad second hand here
Buy 'We should all be Feminists' by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie second hand here
Buy 'Women, Race and Class' by Angela Davis second hand here
(Note: I only recommend buying books second hand because of environmental reasons, not because I don’t want to support the authors. Buying books second hand still supports the author as their ideas are being shared and that is likely the reason they wrote the book in the first place.)
Currently reading: ‘Lolita’ by Vladimir Nabokov
Random Recommendation: ‘Attitude’ by Fromis 9