Black Women Want to Be F.A.T.–Fit and Taken
July 19, 2007 by Staff
Filed under Weekly Columns
(Akiit.com) August will be declared Star Jones Reynolds Month. That’s when her article will debut in Glamour Magazine about how she lost weight and the premiere of her new talk show.
When Star joined The View, it was one of the highly rated talk shows. What was more impressive was Jones belong to the curvy sisters club. She was a lawyer, successful and she didn’t need to look like a Barbie to be on the show. I believe the show was so appealing to a lot of African American women because she represented your typical every day “sista.”
But then something happen. She met the man of her dreams while she was in the process of losing weight. Reynolds was having the time of her life. She was finally beginning to enjoy the benefits of the skinny people club and she had someone to take her out on Friday and Saturday nights. Her happiness led to her demise on The View. Her highly publicized wedding to banker Al Reynolds and the fact that the show’s executives said she was losing her appeal because she lost too much weight led to her pending ouster. Rather than let the show fire her, she announced on the air that she was leaving. Star knew several months prior to her departure that she would have to take her “star” off the dressing room door. She couldn’t take smiling through another roundtable discussion with the other co-hosts knowing her time was about to run out.
Yes, Star became too much of a prima donna following finding love and living in a new slimmed down body. However, can you blame her?
What happened to Jones minus the departure from The View is what many black women want to happen to them. There is a large majority of black women who are fighting the battle of the bulge. How do I know this? I talk about this issue quite frequently with friends. Many of my friends are single and trying to lose weight.
While we feel like our professional lives are soaring, our personal lives are severely lacking. We’re strong and independent but we also would like to have meaningful conversation, dinner, dancing and a movie with the opposite sex every once in a while.
I don’t have enough fingers to count how many black, single women are in Polk County. The numbers is so large that we could start a chapter of Single Black Women Anonymous.
“Something New” starring Sanaa Lathan touched on this issue when the movie quoted 46 percent of black women nationally have never been married. The movie suggested black women should also consider dating outside of their race. Believe me, there are plenty of “sistas” keeping their options open and the phone still isn’t ringing off the hook.
Now those of us with a few extra pounds don’t look unhealthy. We know we look good–fabulous even divalicious. We just know we’re not thin enough to be approached for an evening on the town.
I’m not saying this is the case for all curvy sistas. There are some of us who have that cloud nine look on our faces because date night is just a few days a way. However, there isn’t enough of us. We don’t want to be overweight but we will settle for being F.A.T.–Fit and Taken.
By Merissa Green