Controlling Beauty Ideals: Caribbean Women, Thick Bodies, and White Supremacist Discourse

This article explores the ways in which anti-black-woman body politics manifest themselves in the lives of Caribbean women living in the United States. Specifically, using the personal narratives of black Caribbean immigrant women, I examine these women's encounters with ideologies that marginalize them based on their bodies and preserve contemporary anti-black-woman ideologies in "post-racial" United States. This study addresses two areas that are typically understudied in body image research of black women: a critical understanding of how anti-black-woman sentiments manifest themselves in the everyday lives of black women and black women's own voices and reflections on their embodied social realities.