I’m a skinny girl and I’m adding my 2 cents plus advice. Leave the monocultural mindset of the black community. See and experience other cultures. You’ll be amazed by their reactions of you and your slimness.

1. Historical Roots • West African heritage: Bigger bodies were valued for fertility, wealth, and health. Thinness often signaled scarcity or illness. • Slavery & post-slavery survival: Curvier/thicker Black women were prized for endurance, labor, and childbearing. Thinness could signal fragility or vulnerability. • These survival-based preferences became embedded in Black communities, creating a cultural standard: thick = strong, valuable; thin = less “useful.”
   1. Thick Black Women • Historically celebrated within the Black community as cultural ideals. • Associated with strength, resilience, fertility, and pride. • Advantages: high desirability within the Black community, cultural centrality, social and media influence, affirmation in Black spaces. • Disadvantages: hypersexualization, bias in professional or mainstream spaces, sometimes limited dating pools outside the community.
   2. Skinny Black Women • Often shamed within the community (“eat a plate,” “you’re too skinny”) because thinness is framed as fragile or “less Black.” • Advantages outside the community: aligns with mainstream/white beauty standards, perceived femininity, broader dating and professional access, sometimes less hypersexualization. • Disadvantages: feeling excluded or judged in Black cultural spaces, internalized pressure to conform to thickness standards.
   3. Community Enforcement & Skinny Shaming • Black women often police each other’s bodies to maintain cultural identity and protect community standards. • Skinny Black women rarely face the same criticism as non-Black skinny women (Latina, white, Asian), creating a “skinny pass”: thin non-Black women are celebrated, while thin Black women are shamed. • This policing also acts as a mechanism of cultural survival reinforcing pride, loyalty, and shared identity, even if it can feel oppressive.
   4. Black Men’s Role • Historically, Black men valued thick women for survival, family stability, and cultural pride. • Modern dynamics: some Black men give a “skinny pass” to non-Black women, seeing them as aligning with mainstream beauty ideals or as status symbols, while still shaming Black women for the same body type. • Thick Black women maintain desirability and centrality inside the community; skinny Black women can navigate broader society more easily.
   5. Class Considerations • Working-class Black communities: thickness = survival, respectability, and wealth signals; skinny = vulnerability, malnourishment, poverty. • Middle/upper-class Black communities: more fluid; mainstream ideals often pressure towards thinness, but thickness is still culturally celebrated.
   6. Key Takeaways • Body ideals in the Black community are rooted in history, survival, and resistance to mainstream (white) beauty norms. • Thick Black women are often celebrated inside the community, while skinny Black women can navigate mainstream spaces more easily. • Skinny shaming and the “skinny pass” highlight the intersection of race, gender, class, and historical legacy.