A friend called me the other day and challenged me to use my powers for good. I’m a writer; it’s what I do. He asked me to say something about the chatter in the blogoshpere and around the Web suggesting that Dr. Regina Benjamin, President Obama’s choice to become the next U.S. surgeon general, is too overweight for the job. In other words, her size or appearance might send the wrong message to the country.
Dr. Benjamin is a doctor — a very good one. She is a MacArthur Grant fellow and the president of the Medical Association of the state of Alabama, where she launched a clinic to serve poor residents affected by Hurricane Katrina. She was the first African American woman to sit on the board of trustees for the American Medical Association, and the U.S. recepient of the Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights.
Oh, and she’s a doctor — a very good one.
The criticisms being leveled against Dr. Benjamin should probably not come as a surprise in our current political climate, where every move President Obama makes is found suspect by some group of haters. At times, the opposition has been rooted in suspicions about Obama’s racial loyalties. So, when he nominates an eminently qualified judge like Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, questions arise about whether she’ll favor Latinos and other minorities over white males. And when he speaks out (yeah, perhaps too honestly) about the Henry Louis Gates incident, according to some, it proves that he’s a racist. Then there are those who worry that Dr. Francis Collins, Obama’s choice as director of the National Institutes of Health, is “too Christian” to head the nation’s premier medical research agency.
This latest drama seems to be subtly fueled by biases on various fronts. First, though it may be a fair question to ask whether Dr. Benjamin, as the nation’s principal champion of good health, should look the part, it’s also fair to ask whether our culture’s perception of what “healthy” looks like is a bit skewed. For instance, does the American standard of beauty look more like a size 2 runway model or the size 14 of the average American woman? Popular culture would have us believe that any woman who has a little meat on her bones is unattractive.
A better question would be, is Dr. Benjamin healthy? Yes, obesity is a problem in our nation. But unrealistic notions of the ideal female body may be an even bigger problem. If a woman is eating right and getting the proper daily exercise, that is the most important thing, not whether she looks stick thin.
A second bias in play regarding the criticism of Dr. Benjamin’s weight involves the racial and gender stereotypes that have long circulated about African American women — that they are large and loud. Whether intentional or not (and I’m betting some of the critics know exactly what they’re doing), questioning Dr. Benjamin’s qualifications based on her size conjures the old sexist fears of the “too-aggressive, unfeminine black woman.” That kind of prejudice must stop.
If we judged all potential leaders primarily by their physical appearance, rather than their character, talent, and credentials, many exceptional individuals would never be given a chance to lead. In fact, the denial of opportunity to qualified individuals because of race, gender, or physical difference has been one of the shameful tragedies of American history. By now, we should know better.
By all accounts, Regina Benjamin is an excellent doctor who will bring vision, wisdom, and compassion to the role of surgeon general. We should all be outraged that some people would want to deny a highly educated African American woman this opportunity not because she isn’t smart enough, but because she isn’t skinny enough.
I appreciate where you’re coming from, but I’d like to offer this perspective.
It would be very impressive and greatly increase Black folk’s credibility if we could be objective and honest about our own. Dr. Benjamin is overweight-period. Equating people’s comments/concerns about that with racism plays right into some people’s hands. The critique is not so much about an inequitable and skewed standard of beauty; no one’s attacking her looks (that I know of). It’s her weight. I personally am not as concerned about that as I am about the fact that her own state has some of the most atrocious health indices for Blacks among any state in this country. But the weight issue is valid, and the logic behind it understandable. Think about it-would we go to a dentist with jacked up teeth? And tell the truth, aren’t we a little suspect of a hair stylist whose hair looks a hot mess? And would we go to an accountant who’s being investigated for tax fraud? Those too are instances where we want a professional to be a good example of the specialty in which he/she claims expertise. Maybe there are medical reasons why Dr. Benjamin is the size she is, I don’t know. But I do think it’s valid to wonder about it given the position for which she is being considered. Maybe sometimes we could not read race into everything…it’s there often enough as it is.
Part of why there is a weight problem is how family, friends and society interact with us. If we chose to not allow her, because of weight, to be Surgeon General we have negatively reinforced behavior patterns that are part of the problem. Accepting her as Surgeon General, can shake a few free from needing to avoiding their struggles over weight by telling them they are loved in spite of obesity. I’m not negating the point that some may well accept her appointment as permission to keep eating. What I’m saying is that there is no single fashion of dealing with a problem that frees everyone. Let’s take this step knowing well that a few will find in it a motivation to take another step in dealing with obesity while others may use it to hide from dealing with the problem.
I’m not sure I understand how others’ interactions with us cause weight problems? And we’re not talking about personal relationships here, where love and other emotions become relevant. This is a high-visibility specialized job of influence and authority. Not that we’ll refuse to accept her as a person. But we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about her being the surgeon general. I’m sure she’ll get confirmed regardless, maybe in part because everyone will be afraid to say anything negative about her for fear of being labeled a racist, insensitive, a sexist, weight-phobic, or some other label. But I think it’s good to have the discussion, even if we disagree. 🙂
Sure, let’s have the discussion. Would you go to a dentist who has yellow and crooked teeth? Would you want your kids to have a teacher who doesn’t know how to speak proper English? Would you want to fly in a plane with a pilot who’s afraid of heights? You get the point. This is the same thing. Until she sheds a few pounds, why on earth would you want her to represent us as the country’s top physician?
I don’t know if the dentist comparison works, but I also don’t think that that we can say that see is the size of the average woman in America.
With the dentist, we are talking about something that is obviously unhealthy. Unless when you suggest crooked teeth you mean in the minor sense. Because practically all humans have different bites and “crooked” teeth. Perfectly “straight” teeth are an anomaly, and are often the result of surgery.
For Dr. Benjamin, I , as Aja did, ask, is she healthy? But even then, I wouldn’t disqualify her if she had diabetes or high blood pressure. Those things can just happen. It is no fault of hers. Her weight could just be there, not because she is unhealthy, but because that is the way she is built. Yes, it is not Michelle Obama’s figure, but that doesn’t make her unhealthy, it simply may make her body-type different (interestingly enough, it is more dangerous to be significantly underweight than significantly overweight). I do think she can break stereotypes of what healthiness is. We are so focused on weight in our culture that we miss that health is a much broader concept.
However, we can’t argue that she is the same size as the average woman. Number one that stat doesn’t account for height and a healthy range base on it (something like the BMI although that is deeply flawed as well). But perhaps more significant is that issue that many women (and men) in America are overweight. The average may be 14, but I wonder what the average would be if you took into account only healthy women? I am not saying Dr. Benjamin isn’t healthy, I am saying defending her weight based on average isn’t as good an argument as defending it on the basis of how she was created.