Black Women’s Positive Embodiment in the Face of Race × Gender Oppression

Abstract

For many Black women, their relationship with their physique is complicated and nuanced by narratives of race, gender, and their intersection. Given this reality, positive embodiment is a hard-won battle for those Black women who achieve it, and their efforts are repeatedly challenged by mainstream cultural narratives that view their bodies as deviant and lacking value. The chapter examines Black women’s experience of embodiment through the lens of intersectionality theory. Given the nature of experiences such as racialized sexual harassment, examining intersecting identities such as Black women’s identities as simultaneously Black and female and their positive perception of this intersecting identity may specifically buffer against negative embodiment.