The importance of the body in this equation cannot be overlooked. The body shows me decay (or growth) where I most fear it. Ultimately, my body is simply a map of where I’ve come from. Quite literally, it is the trail of my electrons coursing, racing, and whirling through space - what my eyes see is the trace of where they’ve been. I ran ten miles; I ate wheat; I skinned my knees, and experienced pleasure, pain, love, and birth. My body remembers all of these things, even when I am not reflecting on them.  The body remembers experiences once endured and actions once taken, things I am capable of because I have once done them.

This is why recognizing ourselves as beautiful is in some ways more powerful than recognizing that we can be “good”. To love my body is to reconcile with where I have been and thus what I am capable of. By appreciating myself, and what I capable of, and hence knowing the roads I don’t take in spite of that capability, only then does my current action became a choice. Only then may it be called good or bad. Without choice, judgement has no value. It is meaningless to call something “good” or “bad” that simply is. Only that which is chosen can be said to be chosen out of compassion or cruelty.

Thus,recognizing that our bodies are beautiful becomes a powerfully political act, a celebration of compassion directed toward the self. And this is what is behind the Black woman’s love of her body, which is so present in the ethos of contemporary Black culture. It is imperative that we love our own bodies *and* that we love other’s bodies in their diversity. Ultimately, loving people for who they are should never be about disregarding the body - but about embracing it.

Journey Toward Compassionate Choice: Intergrating Vegan and Sistah Experience.
By Tara Sophia Bahna-James in the Sistah Vegan anthology by Breeze Harper. 

Not All Black Girls Know How to Eat: A Story of Bulimia reviewed by Rekesha Spellman

When I was growing up, I thought of bulimia and anorexia as “White girl problems.” Through the media and interaction with peers, I had been given the impression that Black women did not experience body image issues or struggle with eating disorders. As I got older, I realized that these assumptions were wrong, but I still could not find stories of African American girls or women who had contended with anorexia, bulimia, or compulsive overeating.

In Not All Black Girls Know How to Eat, Armstrong tells her story of growing up poor and hungry in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn and Norfolk, Virginia. Armstrong’s childhood is transient … and characterized by a constant hunger for food, love, and acceptance.

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Armstrong experiences difficulty in finding help with her disorder; she writes of a particular incident in which she is treated like an oddity because of her race. To make matters worse, Armstrong feels the need to keep the secret of her bulimia from her family and friends because she wants to project an image of a strong Black woman to the world, even while going home at night to binge and purge.