Black. Fat. Femme E-Book

Jonathan P. Higgins

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 354

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

A celebration of (and how to find your own) queer intersectional identity through the lens of media

In Black. Fat. Femme: Revealing the Power of Visibly Queer Voices (in Media) and Learning to Love Yourself, educator and media critic Dr. Jonathan P. Higgins—aka Doctor Jon Paul—delivers an honest and extraordinary new take on how the author, and other Black Fat Femmes like them, have come to find and understand their identity.

You'll learn about how standing at the intersection of multiple identities, communities, and causes shapes people and how they see the world. You'll also discover how public figures like Andre Leon Talley and Latrice Royale have helped people learn who they are and what is possible in life.

Inside the book:

• An examination of the importance of real representation in the media for marginalized people
• Discussions of the pioneers who fought so hard to be authentically who they are, both onscreen and off
• Explorations of how and why Black Fat Femme people have been left out and erased from LGBTQ+ conversations

Perfect for anyone with an interest in unique voices and truly singular perspectives, Black. Fat. Femme. is a one-of-a-kind book that will help you see the world with entirely new eyes.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Foreword

Introduction: Black, Fat, and Different

Chapter 1: Always Too Much

Chapter 2: The Chiffon Chronicles

Chapter 3: The Making of a Queen

Note

Chapter 4: The Masc You Live In

Chapter 5: Five Gs, Please!

Chapter 6: To Be Loved

Chapter 7: Becoming That B*tch

Chapter 8: Redefining Authenticity

Chapter 9: Remaining Black, Fat, and Visibly Queer

Chapter 10: Yes, Black. Yes, Fat. Yes, Femme.

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Index

End User License Agreement

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Foreword

Introduction: Black, Fat, and Different

Begin Reading

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Index

End User License Agreement

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Jonathan P. Higgins Ed.D.

Black. Fat. Femme.

Revealing the Power of Visibly Queer Voices in Media and Learning to Love Yourself

FOREWORD BY Latrice Royale RuPaul's Drag Race and Host of HBO's We're Here

Copyright © 2025 by John Wiley & Sons. All rights reserved, including rights for text and data mining and training of artificial intelligence technologies or similar technologies.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data is available:

ISBN: 9781394296361 (cloth)

ISBN: 9781394296378 (ePub)

ISBN: 9781394296385 (ePDF)

Cover Design: Paul McCarthy

Cover Photo: Sequoia Emmanuelle Photography

For Loretta, Matt, and Carla.

Thank you for being my guardian angels. <3

Foreword

I can't begin to tell you all of the ways this title has resonated within me, but let me try.

Growing up as a little kid in Compton, California, presented its own set of problems. Being a “queer kid” was an entirely different situation. We don't have gay people in da hood! Imagine a time when gang violence was at an all‐time high, along with the “War on Drugs” movement in full effect. There was nothing like me around, and I surely didn't have any interest in participating in the options available to me.

It was either gangs or the military – that's it!

Being the youngest of five boys, it was clear to my mother at this point that she did not want the same life for me, as my older brothers. She wanted me to have access to different tools and different cultures. My mother knew I was different from her other children; that's why she called me her “special child.”

Once I started junior high school, my mother had figured out a way to get me out of Compton schools. I would be attending school in Long Beach, California, with a kaleidoscope of ethnicities and plenty of artistic tools to play with. What I was not ready for was the torment of being so different that I still felt like I didn't fit or belong. Here I am, this little chubby Black kid from Compton, using someone else's address so I can be in a new school, with no friends or people I even knew. This hardly seemed like a better way.

I've known from a very young age that I was “different” than the boys around me. I'd prefer to play Barbie with the girls and do hair, rather than play Tonka trucks and sports with the boys. I was more sensitive and a “mama's boy.” These are the things that stuck out to me.

Evolving and developing throughout the years has taught me a kind of self‐love that is impenetrable. It took a long time for me to understand the messages my mother was trying to instill in me as a youth. When I was being called names and made fun of because of my size, my mom simply said, “It's not what you're called; it's what you answer to, Son.” I didn't get it! I was not feeling supported. But as I got older, I began to get it, and this light bulb finally came on. See, she was teaching me all along to never give people power over me. To keep that power, you have to accept and love everything about you … flaws and all.

And if there was something you didn't like about yourself, then it was up to you to change it! I would carry this mantra with me for the rest of my days.

Flash forward to the year 2012, when I appeared on the now multi‐Emmy‐Award–winning show called RuPaul's Drag Race. I auditioned just like many others, however, I was on a special mission. Operation Rebuild My Life was in motion! I went on the show with the intention of being fully myself, authentic, and completely transparent. I had lived, made a ton of mistakes, and had a wealth of knowledge based on real‐life experiences. I shared freely and openly, and the world received me with open arms. Little did I know that I would strike such a chord with people! People from all over the world started sending messages of love, support, and gratitude for just sharing my story.

There was one particular person that I would always see tweets and DMs from. They would make sure nobody had anything bad to say about Miss Latrice! She was a beacon to them, a force, a light! I made sure I always acknowledged and responded to their messages and posts. We kept in touch from afar through the years, but when the opportunity came, they made sure to see me up close and in person!

It was the inaugural RuPaul's DragCon 2015, and fans flooded the Los Angeles Convention Center to meet their favorite queens from the franchise. After waiting for quite some time, the time had come for us to finally meet face‐to‐face. They introduce themselves as JonPaul from Twitter. And of course I remember you! We hugged like long‐lost cousins! For me, this is what real love is – this is family!

At this point I have no clue about this person's life, what they've been through, or how they've gotten to this place of peace with who they are. As for me, I try to be as authentic and transparent as I possibly can. It helps me to stay on course by living my truth! I never thought about how that would resonate with others. I had clearly touched on some things that JonPaul and I have in common.

Both of us grew up in environments where our biggest bullies were inside the house. We had to navigate through those difficult years where we felt all alone because we knew we were different. Yet, in “Black culture,” homosexuality is not a thing or option. When you couple that with religion, we have more layers of being ostracized and dismissed before we are even fully aware of our own sexuality. We are taught from an early age that God hates gays.

I started to struggle quite a bit with these teachings. As I grew older and was able to interpret things for myself, that's what ultimately led me to leave the church entirely. My findings could not make sense of the nonsense! I simply did not understand why there were so many different variations of the Bible.

Why did it say one thing and then the opposite in the next book or version? Not one person could help me understand, and no one could explain it to me, which made me raise more eyebrows and more questions. There was no doubt about it; I was just as confused as the people who were trying to preach to me about God's word. It would be several years until I would resolve my very personal relationship with my Higher Power.

I prayed to be released from the shame and guilt that I had carried with me for the entirety of my adult life up until that point. I wanted to learn to love myself. I wanted to find love. Once I learned step one, everything else would fall into place. It was as if I waved a magical wand … I didn't know how attractive confidence and happiness were! People have always gravitated toward me in general, so making friends has never been a problem. But romantically speaking, there wasn't really a market for the Black Fat Femme guy.

“Couldn't get any worse,” one would think. Ha! I decided that I loved being a drag queen! Is this some kind of self‐sabotage; is this my inner saboteur? So now I'm back to square one it seems. I have something that I love to do, but I am also ashamed. I couldn't let an inkling of drag be seen or heard of when trying to date, or to just hook up and get laid. It was not as popular in those times to date a queen.

Guys had a “type” … and I was not it! How do I relearn to love myself with this extension of my personality? It worked before, so let's start from step one. It would prove to be more difficult than expected. Gender identity issues enter the party. Ugh! What am I questioning all of a sudden? Why am I freaking out? The more I started to develop my drag character, the more people started to recognize me in and out of drag.

The issue was, I was not comfortable being referred to as “Latrice” out of drag. I definitely would be offended to be called Tim while in drag. Again, I still didn't want any potential suitors to know that I was a drag queen. I had a lot to unpack! Like I said, I went back to step one, and all else fell right into place. I became comfortable and secure in my gender identity. I knew I was a man, and I never had the feeling or thought of ever transitioning. I was out and proud again, loving all of me! It took time and work to get to this place, and I promised myself I would never let anyone make me feel lesser than.

This is why this book is so important! Not only does it give me great pride and honor to be introducing this book to the world, but it gives me immense pleasure to call the author Jonathan P. Higgins, Ed.D. A doctor! My heart is bursting with joy to see how far this individual has come. To the village that raised them and to the shady gays who helped mold and shape them, thank you!

Here's why pressure makes diamonds, baby, and I have the tremendous honor of writing this foreword for this gem of a human. This book will save lives, no doubt!

Enjoy!

—Latrice Royale

Reality television personality and drag performer

September 2024

Introduction: Black, Fat, and Different

“Life for me ain't no crystal stair.”

—Langston Hughes

I can remember vividly the first time someone questioned my mom about my presentation. We were sitting in a car. It was a hot summer SoCal day, and me, my little brother, and my cousins were all sitting in the back of my uncle's van. It was the early '90s, and Karyn White's “Superwoman” was blasting from the radio. I sang every last note like someone ready to go file for divorce.

“Why do you always sing girl songs?” one of my cousins turned to me and asked. I didn't respond – not because I didn't know what to say but because I knew what my cousin was inferring by asking.

Many of the questions people asked me as a child – looking back on them now – were subtle yet huge reminders I wasn't shaping up to be the man my family expected. It was also a reminder that my performance as a boy would forever be something people questioned and challenged because “boys aren't supposed to do that.”

But it wasn't just the ways I sang that were challenged. Family and friends of my mother constantly asked why it seemed I always wanted to be around other girls and older women. I was constantly asked why I never had any male friends or why I never played outside with my brother and boy cousins. The truth was I never felt safe around them. As a young Black boy who didn't perform masculinity, I honestly never felt safe.

Like most queer kids, feeling safe in any environment was a luxury, and I learned very early in my life that being Black, fat, and effeminate meant I would spend a large portion of my life fighting (and yes, I mean physically too). Mentally, I was always trying to find a place where I could celebrate being myself, but those spaces were few and far between.

As a child of a single mother, I realized early on in life she would be the one to take a large brunt of the backlash for how I performed. I can recall moments of my mother arguing with my birth father about how I was being raised because he didn't like the person I was becoming. I can also recall moments my mother told me I could stay home instead of going to my uncle's place. She knew why my uncle wanted me around him: he didn't like my performance as a young boy and was going to do whatever he could to “man me up” – whatever the hell that meant.

Yes, from a young age I always knew I wasn't living up to the expectations of masculinity, and for that, the world was always going to isolate me for wanting to opt out. This would lead to so many traumatic things happening in my life that would take me so much time to heal and resolve.

Truth is, I have always known I am everything the world hates: Black, fat, and queer.

In retrospect, this made me the perfect target to be bullied. Recalling the memories I had tucked far away in the back of my brain while outlining the chapters for this book, I realized I have always known that the world carried a certain disdain for me. In reality, there has never been a time in my life where I haven't been made to feel “othered” or have been made to feel like I truly had a place in the world. Whether it was being called a “nigger” by my Latinx next‐door neighbors or being called “fat” by a PE instructor because I never had the endurance to run and finish the 2‐mile challenge, there was always some form or epithet or microaggression looming around me, reminding me I would never be accepted without pause.

Strolling down memory lane, it's not hard for me to remember that the world didn't like me, the intersections of my identity, or the ways in which I did (or didn't) perform. My whole life has been one constant reminder that I wasn't “like other Black men” and that choosing not to conform would often make me the perfect target for hatred and oppression.

Like any other Black queer, my story begins with what I like to call “the eye.” You know that look an adult gives you when you don't perform to their liking?

Yeah, that eye.

I know I have always had that “eye” on me, but it's only now that I truly couldn't care less about what said eye means. Most days I felt like even as a young child I was expected to present and act as an adult, which later in my years I learned was connected to the adultification of Black children. Meaning, society forms a racial bias of children, specifically Black children, who are treated as adults before they actually are.

I remember hearing often that I needed to “act like a man” or that I needed to be the “man of the house” because my father never wanted anything to do with me. Any moment when I didn't perform as such, there was always someone close enough to make sure I didn't step out of line or get too comfortable in my skin. And there is a certain kind of guilt that comes with this notion that you aren't performing in the ways society wants you to, especially when you are a child who has been taught to please people and seek affirmation and validation.

Throughout my earlier years, so many people said I was “cold” or “mean” because of the way I interacted with the world. I once had a teacher ask me in middle school why it always seemed that I was on guard or “ready to fight.” Truth be told, it's because I was; I knew that if I didn't fight for me, no one else would. But also, it's because most of my life I spent my days doing exactly that. Whether it was me having to fight my way out of my fifth‐grade bathroom because another boy thought I was looking at him as we went to pee or having to fight with my father because he didn't like that I had a pink CD case, I spent the majority of my life feeling like a mouse trapped inside of a cage with someone constantly poking and prodding at me.

As a kid, I spent my early years being angry at the cards God gave me, begging either for him to make it easier or for him to bring me home. I was good with either option. I was lonely, sad, and pissed. I was handed cards I didn't want, but more, I was mad at the world for making fun of me for having said cards. More than anything, I spent most of my life and continue to spend it questioning why the world was lax about the hatred I received. The thing that really gets me is how adults were often so much more cruel and meaner to me than my peers.

While I have been super intentional about not bonding in my trauma (or reliving it) while writing this book, there are several stories and moments I feel I need to share for you to understand why I spent so much of my youth feeling isolated and alone. Memories like being called a “fag” by one of my teachers (seventh grade, fourth period; I will never forget that day) or being told everything I will do in life is going to fail because I chose my identity over a religion. Yes, honey, I got stories for days.

I'm sure many of you have stories like this too, and if you don't have these stories, you probably know someone who does.

“Why me?” was something that played over and over in my head and only grew louder when I got to college. Not just because college is a lonely and scary time for most people, but because that is where I truly began to understand how truly messed up the world is to Black Fat Femmes.

The Internet taught me quickly that just like my childhood, there would be a lot of people judging me for how I looked and for how I performed masculinity. This came in the form of “No Black, No Fat, No Femmes” (short for feminine) on someone's dating profile. It was 2003, I was in college, and the now defunct website Gay.com was a popular place for queer men to chat.

But it wasn't just in their profiles. Chatting back and forth with men in my local area, I would send what I thought was my most masculine presenting photo, and immediately I would be blocked. Time and time again this happened, and as I was developing my own sense of self, I kept asking myself, “What is so wrong with me that men keep blocking me after I share my photo?”

On blogs and MySpace I would constantly write about it. As a feminist theory minor, I would constantly write about it in class assignments. I got deemed “divisive” in my program because I wouldn't shut up about it. I knew there was a problem, and I was 100% sure that it wasn't me.

Over time I would come to understand that there were long‐standing issues of racism, fatphobia, and femmephobia that lived in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (LGBTQ+) community.

What made this so hard to process was all the phobias that lived around being Black, fat, and feminine. These were the things I learned about in my feminism course. These were all things Audre Lorde wrote about and things that Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera had marched about. The world had nothing for Black Fat Femmes, and this is where the residual self‐hatred that began to harvest in my heart and mind began to spiral out of control.

The thing was, I knew nothing about the idea of intersectionality and didn't fully understand the magnitude of the oppression I was facing, or the oppression that I had been facing. Moreover, social media was watering the self‐hatred that was growing in me because I kept getting messages (literal and not) about how I needed to “act like a man” to be loved and accepted in this world. This led me to doing anything and everything I could to be masculine, because I not only wanted the approval from my family but now the approval of my suitors. It almost became a game of how long I could be myself until someone I met told me that I was too fat or too feminine.

At one point, I even stopped wearing my colored contacts because I thought they were too feminine. Regardless, no matter what I did, it seemed like there was nothing that I could do to have someone find interest in me. I was always too Black, too fat, or too femme.

While coming to terms with the fact that those in my own community weren't a fan of my intersectional identities, I found myself reverting back to the sad, lonely, and angry little boy I thought I had left behind when I got to college. After those experiences, tied with the experiences I was having in college with the men I met both online and at local queer bars, I began to internalize the hatred that society had for me while also negotiating the hatred my own community had for me.

Over the years, I would have so much work to do regarding how to unlearn that self‐hate that I had taken on. I knew first hand that the world wasn't kind to Black people and fat people, and I also knew the world hated queer people. I was all three. Years later, after spending countless hours in therapy and after speaking about wanting to write a book, a light went off about what I wanted to write and why.

▪ ▪ ▪

The thought of this book began after having what I believe was one of the most intense sessions I had ever had with my therapist. (I am sure I still owe my therapist two boxes of Puffs tissue.) After spending almost a year unpacking all the hurt and trauma I had experienced in my life and fully understanding why I hated myself, I was finally starting to connect the dots around the work I needed to do to fully like and love who I am.

My therapist asked me to write down all of the things I liked about myself and all the things I wanted to love about myself. She then proceeded to ask me to name who influenced those aspects of myself, and the names of other Black Fat Femmes kept coming up: André Leon Talley, Latrice Royale, Mayhem Miller, Dexter Mayfield, and so many more. I had dedicated my dissertation to James Baldwin and Bayard Rustin, but I had never been challenged to think about other folks who looked or lived like me and how they inspired me. The list of names began to pour out, and as I began to reflect on them, I realized that many of names were Black Fat Femme media figures who used their platforms to tell other Black Fat Femmes to love themselves unapologetically.

Moreover, these were people who showed me how to play the cards that life had dealt me.

At that moment – writing down their names, both past and present – I was beginning to outline something special. I was beginning to create a document that pointed to those in the media who were blazing a trail of self‐love. I was beginning to write about why I wanted to be like many of those names I had listed on that paper, specifically because rarely does anyone talk about how important their visibility is.

Now, being someone who has begun forking a road for themselves in the media, I felt it was time to highlight how those individuals helped shape my love of self, because it is more than just simply saying “I like/love me.” Being someone who is often tapped to talk about the experiences of Black Fat Femmes, I felt it was important for folks to understand how we aren't given the liberty to speak our truth when it comes to our experience. Black Fat Femmes are made to feel like we are a problem for speaking truth about the ways we are marginalized in a marginalized group.

I wanted to make sure that they, like you, could read about their impact and why the topic of visibility is so important.

If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me “How have you come to love who you are in entirety as a Black, fat, queer, feminine, nonbinary man?” I'd honestly be richer than Beyoncé and Jay‐Z combined. While I am never shocked by the question, I do find it a bit tricky to respond to because there is no single answer that explains how much time, energy, and effort (and cash) goes into loving yourself as a Black Fat Femme.

Like anyone in the LGBTQ+ community, the hardest part of being happy with who you are is letting go of the internalized fear that follows you day in and day out. It's about letting go of all the expectations from your peers, friends, and family and creating a world around you that allows you to love everything about who you are. It's also about getting over the racism, fatphobia, and femmephobia you experience both in and out of the community.

Without a shadow of a doubt, when I talk about my journey to self‐discovery and self‐love, I can't talk about it without discussing the roles that television and film has played in my life, because I found so much of myself through the media. Additionally, my love for media is so much more complex than “just liking to watch TV.”

I was looking for folks who looked like me on television because I didn't have access to them in my real life. I didn't know anyone who looked like me or celebrated being like me.

Much of this book is truly a reflection of how I found myself through the media. As a latchkey kid who spent most of their time being raised by television, there were moments where I would see little bits of myself in the smile, laugh, walk, and talk of a character or a guest judge on “America's Next Top Model.”

I would get really close to the television with my Hot Pocket and my Shasta soda and think to myself, “I want to be as confident as them when I get older.” Looking at them, they offered the lesson plan I would need to become who I am now. In so many words, the existence of Black Fat Femmes in the media reminded me that I am everything the world hates and that if I was going to make it in this world, I had to find some kind of way to love each of my identities boldly.

I would have to continue moving throughout the world both relentlessly and fearlessly and knowing that I had people, both alive and not, championing my existence because they too knew what it was like to be treated as the other.

In reflecting on why I am centering so many of these names in my book and in the story of my journey, I realize that for my first book, this is a great way for me to thank them. That this book is not just about me or my experiences as a Black Fat Femme but about the ways the media plays an intricate role in helping marginalized people find community.

Over time, speaking with other Black Fat Femmes, I noted that many of them felt the same way. As I began crafting this book, I had heard so many stories of pain like my own that I began to wonder what a story of relentlessness and joy would look like and who are the ones who inspired it.

On social media, while I often talk about how interesting it is to be a Black Fat Femme as it is both complicated and beautiful, I want to spend more time talking about how we get to and stay in that beautiful place. I want others to read this and draw from those, famous or not, who inspire them to be the best version of themselves.

I think this is why I am so vocal about representation and exposure in much of my work. While I did not grow up in a small, rural part of America, there are thousands of Black Fat Femmes who have that experience so much more than I will ever be able to comprehend. Knowing this, this isn't a book to tell other Black Fat Femmes (or anyone for that matter) that “life will get better” because sometimes it doesn't. But you learn how to cope by taking the lemons life gave you and using them to make pie.

I want this book to serve as a reminder to us that we are what makes the world better and that there is so much to garner from seeing and watching us thrive.

If there was anything I truly learned from watching folks like André Leon Talley, Miss J, Latrice Royale, and so many more who will be named throughout this book, it's that their tenacity and audacity to love themselves is what gives me the audacity to love myself in a world that tells me daily that I shouldn't.

I should say, I found it extremely important for me to mention the word audacity at the top because that is truly what this whole book is about: how I found the audacity to love every part of me in a world that tried to tell me differently. Hell, I had to have the audacity to even pitch the idea of this book because so many people told me that it would never go anywhere.

In all honesty, one of my favorite words is audacity because it encompasses what it means to be a Black Fat Femme so well. By definition the word is defined as being someone who takes bold risks, specifically being brave and courageous. It's understanding that when you speak up about oppression, you will face backlash. It's understanding that to be Black in this world means being brave enough to speak up about injustice. It's understanding that to be fat means being brave enough to take up space in a world that often doesn't create spaces for you. It's understanding how the world will do its best to force you to embrace the binary but making the cognitive choice to step outside of the norm. It's about having the fearlessness to say “I'm a bad B*tch and I know it.”

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This book comes from a place of longing and how I found myself in a time where self‐discovery wasn't something that was openly talked about.

However, at the core of this book I will get into a deeper conversation about the struggles that Black Fat Femmes deal with (or have dealt with) when trying to overcome the obstacles of both life and career and what we can learn from it. The hope is that by the end of the book, I can provide a sense of understanding as to not only who I am but how I became who I am and why that means so much to me.

While I know that much of this book will be rooted in me giving flowers to the folks who helped me see me in the media, this book will also offer up ways for us to begin actively undoing the racism, fatphobia, and femmephobia that lives in the LGBTQ+ community. It will also center the importance of us remaining visibly queer both in media and in life while offering up a true understanding of why we need to keep taking up space in a world that was never meant for us to be seen.

This book is more than just commentary on Black Fat Femmes in the media and the impact they have had on the world. Rarely does anyone in the media talk about what Black Fat Femmes have had to endure in order to get to a place where they can openly and honestly celebrate who they are.

Let the media tell it, and you just wake up one day, put on some heels and makeup, and VH1 and World of Wonder come knocking on your door. But if you sit down and really talk to a Black Fat Femme, you will quickly learn the importance of visibility and how – more often than not – Black Fat Femmes find love for themselves through seeing other Black Fat Femmes thriving.

That in itself is the sole focus of this book: how I found love for myself by watching and examining the lives of other famous Black Fat Femmes at a time in my life when it felt like nothing about me mattered. It's about how so many of the people in this book gave me a purpose to not just live, but to thrive.

But it's not just that – this book centers why we need more stories about Black Fat Femme people, both famous and not in the media. Our stories deserve to be told. We deserve to exist beyond the stereotypes and archetypes that are created around us.

The hardest part about preparing to write this book was that there is very little media that celebrates Black Fat Femmes. Yes, while we are currently on a wave where we are seeing more Black Fat Femme creators on social media apps and on competition shows, there still isn't a plethora of media that celebrates us or our stories.

Rarely are we given the platform to say “I am more than my struggle.” Rarely are we given the space to discuss how being a Black Fat Femme – regardless of how complicated it might be – is what in fact makes us amazing. If anything, this book is a love letter to all the Black Fat Femmes who have come before me, those who walk beside me, and those who look up to me for the relentless work I continue to do to make media more inclusive.

The content of this book was finalized after years of me going back and forth about what my first book was going to be about. I knew I wanted to write something that not only had meaning but could serve as a thank‐you to all of those who continue to show up, bona fide, even in moments where they might be afraid or might be the only one taking up space in a room.

I also wanted to center the work of Kimberlé Crenshaw and her coining the term intersectionality, the framework I used in my dissertation to explain the ways that marginalized groups' political identities result in unique combinations of discrimination and privilege. Or – lack there‐of.

My hope is that by the end of the book, you can learn something from all the work I have done to unlearn the things I was taught to hate about myself. My other wish is that when you finish this book, you will be able to not only celebrate those who laid the foundation but be able to pour into others who so often feel like they are alone in their journey.

While it would be easy for me to spend this entire book harping on how awful it is to be me and to skip over all the mess to save myself from being triggered, I want people to read this book and know that our ancestors, both alive and not, have left us with the instructions on how to stunt in this world.

In full disclosure, while I am writing this book for other Black Fat Femmes who have struggled to see the beauty in who they are, I am also writing this as a guide for my younger self. No one openly discusses how hard it is to love yourself as a Black Fat Femme.

No one talks openly about how hard it is to love yourself as a Black, fat person in a world that doesn't think that you have the right to exist or even be seen. Often so much of our insecurities come from others' lack of understanding of who we are and what we have been through. The hatred we have for ourselves isn't our cross to bear.

You know, it's that ugly thing called projection.

No one has yet to outline what it takes to love yourself in a world that doesn't see the humanity in your existence. No one told me how hard I would have to fight to love myself as a Black Fat Femme. No one talks about the audacity it takes to live boldly as a Black Fat Femme. Until now.

I have made it my life's work to prove that there can be so much joy in relearning to love the identities the world has tried to get me to hate and hope this book can inspire you to do the same.