How the Use of BMI Fetishizes White Embodiment and Racializes Fat Phobia

Abstract

This article describes how size-based health and beauty ideals made their way into the medical field through the eugenics movement of the 19th to 20th centuries and were validated using so-called “standard weight” tables. They became even more mainstream with the 20th-century tool to replace standard weight tables: body mass index (BMI). BMI, then, is a continuation of white supremacist embodiment norms, racializing fat phobia under the guise of clinical authority. This article describes the key players in the legacy of size-based mandates, which fall under what I have labeled the “white bannerol of health and beauty.” This pseudoscientific bannerol has helped forge oppressive conceptions of fatness as an indicator of ill health and “low” racial quality.