'Slim Down, Sister'
Black Women and Obesity in Super-Sized Society

By Jennifer Smith

As Brynne Clarke prepares for her 40th birthday, she is haunted by what her future might hold.

"I don't mind getting older," said Clarke, a black broadcast engineer at WNET, a New York public television station. It's her weight that's the problem - she has gained 30 pounds since she started working the night shift nine months ago. Never slender, Clarke, who is 5 feet 10 inches tall, now weighs almost 200 pounds. "It keeps going at this rate, and I could be 300 pounds by next year," she said.

The problem is more than aesthetic. Extra pounds place extra strain on the body, contributing to a host of medical problems such as hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease, according to national health experts. A stately woman with long dark braids and a frank manner, Clarke worries that if she lets it go this time her health will be compromised, and for good.

Clarke's fears are well founded. Over the last decade Americans have become as super-sized as the fast food servings they eat, and black women are disproportionately affected by the national trend towards weight gain. A 1998 study published in the International Journal of Obesity found that almost two-thirds of adult black woman are overweight or obese, 15 percent more than the general female population

To grapple with the problem, some black women such as Clarke have turned to weight-loss plans and exercise programs, long-term solutions that require them to change aspects of their lives for good. Along the way, they are taking a hard look at how sources of cultural strength or comfort - such as traditional but high-fat foods or a greater acceptance of rounder bodies among blacks -
can also be lethal threats.

"Food is comfort," Clarke said. Her weight first became a problem in her 20s, when she was working too hard and earning too little to join a health club. Those roadblocks were compounded by the death of her father when she was 21. She became withdrawn and depressed, spending hours alone in his old apartment, which she inherited. Food helped her fill the void, she said. "It's your friend," she said. "It doesn't yell at you."

After that initial bout with weight gain and depression, Clarke shed the extra pounds and exercised regularly. But her fitness routine fell by the wayside with her new job schedule - 11:30 at night until 7:30 the next morning. Clarke isn't concerned with being model-skinny. As a tall, big-boned woman, she would be fine with weighing 150 pounds, like the fit players she admires on the U.S. women's soccer team. But the extra weight has her feeling less energetic. A divorced mother, she has trouble keeping up with her active 10-year-old son, Mark, who loves in-line skating and riding his bike. Like most women seeking to lose weight, Clarke needs to get back on track with an exercise schedule and change her eating habits. "There's a part of me that knows to be fat you have to set up your life in particular ways," Clarke said. "I'm trying to stem that tide."

She chose to start her journey for change with a Weight Watchers meeting on the Upper West Side. Clarke's first meeting was the sixth for Janice McLean, a neatly-dressed 45-year-old homemaker from Trinidad who makes the 13-mile trek from South Ozone Park, Queens, to attend the group. Billie Frierson, 71, a Julliard-trained vocal teacher who was raised in Harlem, is a lifetime member who has been coming on and off for the past 10 years. None of the women know each other. All three are middle-class and all three are parents (Frierson is a grandparent). And all share a common experience as black women in America that has played itself out in different ways both in the paths of their lives, and in how they relate to food.

Basic habits - how you cook, how and when and how much you eat, and how you make exercise a regular part of your life - are tough to change in mid-life, no matter what your background. "It's just as difficult for white people to lose weight," said Carla Wolper, a white dietician at the St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital Obesity Research Center. But there is a difference. In the mid-'90s Wolper supervised a study aimed at teaching healthy eating and exercise habits to obese black women from ages 40 to 65. She found that the difference between her white clients and the black women in the study (mostly professionals and teachers with high levels of education) was that many black women don't seek help for their heaviness until it becomes a serious health issue.

The disparity, some experts say, may be rooted in differing cultural notions of what makes a woman attractive. Excluded for years by the mainstream media, black women have been left, for the most part, to create their own standards of beauty. For many blacks, body size is less important as an arbiter of attractiveness than good grooming, dressing fashionably and having a good personality. A recent study by the University of Arizona found that black teen-age girls described the ideal girl as smart, funny, and someone who used personal style to make the most of her physical assets. In contrast, white counterparts described the ideal girl almost unanimously in strict physical terms: as being 5 feet 7 inches, between 100 and 110 pounds, and having long blond hair.

"I think in the black culture there is more tolerance for a plump body," said Billie Frierson, the voice teacher. Black rappers and musicians sing the praises of the curvy female figure, most notably in songs such as Sir Mix-A-Lot's "Baby Got Back," a 1992 rap tribute to black women's posteriors that featured the lyrics:

So Cosmo says you're fat
Well I ain't down with that
Cuz your waist is small and your curves are kickin'
And I'm thinkin' 'bout stickin'
To the beanpole dames in the magazines
You ain't it, Miss Thing
Give me a sista I can't resist her
Red beans and rice didn't miss her

Greater acceptance of round bodies among blacks may explain why 70 percent of the black teen-age girls surveyed in the University of Arizona study were happy with their weight, even though almost one-fourth of the respondents were significantly overweight by medical standards. That is good news, as far as self-esteem goes. But while black women may be less neurotic about their weight than some of their diet-obsessed white counterparts (only 10 percent of the white teen-agers surveyed said they were happy with their bodies), that view may put them at a higher risk for obesity-related health problems. "They don't have the same social pressures to start dealing with it sooner," Wolper said.

Many black women seek to control their weight after experiencing physical difficulties such as back problems or shortness of breath when climbing stairs, like Janice McLean, the Trinidadian homemaker. All three women in the Weight Watchers group count off friends and neighbors who, overweight and struggling with poor health, seem to serve as reminders of what they don't want to become. "Growing up in Harlem, a lot of the women were overweight," Clarke said. Her own family has a history of hypertension, and many people she knows have diabetes. Ninety-five percent of diabetics have type-two diabetes, in which obesity and poor nutrition play a key role in suppressing insulin production. Clarke says a close friend her age has type-two and now regrets not having done more to stave off the onset of the disease with exercise and an improved diet. "I don't want to do that," she said, of her own body.

For many black women, the initial preventative step is changing the kind of food they eat. It's a task easier said than done in residentially-segregated urban neighborhoods, which tend to lack amenities such as supermarkets that sell affordable, high-quality food. Fay Daley, 49, a black executive assistant at Abyssinian Baptist Church and Harlem resident, is a self-confessed health nut who bemoans that the fact that it's virtually impossible to find a decent salad - "without iceberg lettuce" - uptown. While at least 10 produce, health food, and gourmet grocery shops dot a 20-block stretch of the Upper West Side, fast-food joints far outnumber fresh produce stores on the streets of her and Clarke's neighborhood north of 125th Street. "You don't find too many health food restaurants," said Daley.

Communities like Harlem also tend to have fewer support services for women who are trying to lose weight. Due to low attendance, Weight Watchers no longer holds meetings in Harlem. A spokesperson for the diet support group says they are looking for a new space in the area, but until then, women in upper Manhattan who wish to attend meetings must travel to the Bronx or to the Upper West Side. Budget cuts have eliminated the New York City Health Department's Bureau of Nutrition, causing programs to be farmed out to other agencies.

While a handful of local health clinics have a one-day-a-week nutritionist, many city clinics now refer clients with weight problems to local hospitals that have weight-control programs-but the specialized services provided by nutritionists and dieticians are not covered by most health insurance plans. Women who cannot pay must rely instead on the guidance of doctors who may be more likely to hand them a glossy pamphlet on the four food groups than to provide step-by-step guidance to permanent weight loss. "Doctors aren't going to spend an hour with someone who's crying because they weigh 400 pounds," Wolper said.

In addition to the dearth of shopping options and support services, economic necessity can also dictate faulty eating habits. In previous years Clarke would stretch out her weekly paycheck by buying boxes of macaroni and cheese, three for a dollar. "It's cheaper to eat bad," she said, noting that leaner cuts of meat are more expensive. When money is tight, Clarke said, balanced meals are less important than answering one basic question: "How can I keep everybody full?" Convenience also plays into poor eating habits. It can take more money and time to buy the ingredients for a good salad than to pick up a quick meal at McDonald's, especially in poorer neighborhoods where the supermarket is a bus ride away.

Many of the sit-down restaurants nearby serve soul food staples such as fried chicken and collard greens prepared with salt pork, the kind of Southern-derived favorites that rely on fat to provide flavor. "These foods are home," said Dr. José Fernández, a research fellow in the obesity unit at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center. "They're comfort foods." Billie Frierson, whose parents were from Georgia, grew up in Harlem and the Bronx eating such food. She and her husband now live in a racially-mixed neighborhood on East 19th Street in Lower Manhattan, but some cultural ties are hard to break: Her husband, who has had some trouble with his blood pressure, still insists on eating soul food a couple of times a week. "He's not as willing to sacrifice some of the flavors he wants," she said.

Frierson herself switched over to health food back in the '70s, a choice that seems to have worked for this softly rounded woman, whose gray curls are the only indication of her septuagenarian status. She is far more likely to prepare a bowl of miso soup, a healthful Japanese broth made from soybean paste, than to eat the foods of her youth. With good reason-she says that after partaking of a sinfully delicious soul food spread her husband cooked recently, she gained one pound from that meal alone.

Balancing a new, low-fat diet with the demands of a family can be a struggle for some black women. "Most of my clients have a very hectic schedule," said David Davis, an Ivory Coast native who is a personal trainer and the director of health and wellness at the Harlem YMCA. A muscular man (he used to be a power lifter) with braids tucked up neatly in a blue cap, Davis said his clients, mostly middle-aged black women, tend to eat their biggest meal in the evening, with their families. Davis advises them to eat baked fish or chicken and to cut down on the complex carbohydrates and fat in dishes such as macaroni and cheese.

"They're used to sharing food," he said of his clients, "and now they have to fix separate meals" because some family members protest at having to go on mom's diet. Davis said that cultural ties to soul food can inhibit weight loss. "Food is a celebration of life for African Americans," he said. "It's hard for them to stay on a healthy program for a long time. They go down South to visit their parents and the diet suffers."

Janice McLean said the hardest thing to her about trying to lose weight was "passing up on the things that I love." To her, the experience of sharing long, chat-filled meals with her loved ones is as important as the food itself. An accomplished cook, she usually prepares big Sunday family dinners for her husband and two grown children with traditional Caribbean food, delectably spicy dishes with lots of starch and fatty coconut cream. McLean solved the problem by concocting low-fat versions for herself, substituting steamed vegetables or baked chicken which she then smothers in the same flavorful gravy that goes on her family's higher-fat helpings.

She has been less successful at getting on a regular exercise regimen, the other necessary component of healthy weight control. Physical activity seems to be the hardest change to incorporate into daily life for all three black women. "You have to have a time and a place to do that, as well as knowing what to do," said Wolper, a lean woman whose office is adorned with photos of her breaking the finish line at a number of mini-marathons. McLean said she intends to take regular walks in the park near her house, but just hasn't gotten around to it. Frierson stopped working out at home after she hurt her back and hasn't followed up on her desire to get back to yoga classes. Given her busy schedule, Clarke decided her first priority was to change her eating habits, with exercise to follow once her weight stabilized.

But the problem may be less one of access than of inclination. While heavily black areas tend to have fewer gyms and fitness clubs than white areas, a number of health clubs such as the Diamond Gym and a 125th Street branch of New York Sports Clubs have opened recently in the Harlem area. Ten personal training sessions at the Harlem YMCA cost $250, but it only takes $25 dollars a year to use the pools, tracks and exercise equipment at any of the city Parks and Recreation facilities in upper Manhattan such as Hansborough or Jackie Robinson.

Awareness within the black community of the problems caused by obesity has increased in recent years. Black women's publications such as Ebony have published a number of articles on the topic in the past five years, encouraging black women to take control of the bodies for health reasons. And a book entitled "Slim Down Sister: the African-American Woman's Guide to Healthy, Permanent Weight Loss," came out this year, featuring both inspirational stories and low-fact recipes for traditional foods such as peach cobbler and collard greens.

The key to getting the message across seems to be staying positive, emphasizing the medical reasons for staying fit instead of fostering negative body images. "I used to jump out of bed and weigh myself before even drinking a glass of water," said McLean, who had tried a number of fad diets in the past. Now, she said, "I am not thinking about which jeans are going to fit me. I am thinking about my health."