Queen Latifahdistinctly remembers the day she was toldshe would be considered obese.
TheEqualizerstar, 52, had recently started working with a new trainer who is “scientific and mathematic,” Latifah explains in an exclusive clip from this week’s episodeofRed Table Talk.
The trainer had started showing Latifah body-focused charts, including one on BMI, or Body Mass Index.
“She’s showing me different body types, and she’s telling me, this is what your BMI is, this is what your weight is, and you fall into this category of obesity,” Latifah tells hostsJada Pinkett Smith, Willow Smith and Adrienne Banfield-Norris.
“I was mad at that,” she says. “It pissed me off. I was like, ‘What? Me?’ I mean, I’m just thick. She said you are 30% over where you should be. And I’m like, ‘Obesity?’ "
But as Latifah and Pinkett Smith go on to discuss, much about obesity andBMI is based on problematic racial and societal biases. BMI is calculated based on a person’s height and weight, and the number is used to sort people into four categories: underweight, healthy, overweight or obese. The “ideal” measurements, though, arebased on the body of a white European man in the mid-19th centuryand do not consider a person’s ethnicity, gender or body makeup.
Queen Latifah.Dia Dipasupil/Getty
Research has shown that the BMI that is considered “obese” — 30 or over — is not true of everyone.A large 2003 studyfound that higher BMIs are not unhealthy for Black people, and Black women in particular do not see an increased mortality risk until they reach a BMI of 37. Yet, based on BMI, doctors often diagnose them with obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes, and stigmatize them for being “overweight.”
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Latifah has spent the last few years working to end the stigma around obesity and help people understand the difference between health and body size, and why they’re not always connected.
“We need to change the conversation. We need to change the culture, we need to change the stigma that’s involved in it,“she told PEOPLE in May. “Let’s just get real with it. And then let’s back it up with some information that can empower you to do something about it, or change your mentality about it.”
“I practice my no’s,” she said. “I go in the mirror and I say, no, no, no, no, like 20 times. And that’s it. I need to be okay with me. If I’m okay then I feel like I can do anything. But if I’m not okay, I have to say something. Like, it’s time to take a break, stop, cut.”
A new episode of the Emmy-winningRed Table Talkon alopecia will stream Wednesday, June 8 at 9am PT/12pm ET on Facebook Watch.
source: people.com
