I don’t know if this particular article is satire or not, but I know it’s an issue. I have black girlfriends and former coworkers who are overweight and say they can’t go swimming because the water would wreck their costly blowouts. The ones who are serious about sports either have their hair cut short or put into rows, but the rows aren’t perceived as being entirely suitable for a business environment. They say, “You’re white, you can just run a comb through your hair after a shower—we can’t. It’s a big production for us.”
OK, whatever. But I notice that more upmarket black women manage to exercise, keep their weight down, and have nice hair. Perhaps the discipline that lets successful black women find time and energy to work out is the same discipline that takes them up the financial ladder?
The lifestyle of lower-middle-class people, whether black or white, does not incline toward working out, running, biking, playing tennis, swimming, etc. Weight is class related. The further up the social scale you go, the more fit and slender the women are.
I was in line at a grocery store when an overly made up, obese, black woman was at the register. She had one of those $300-$500 hair styles and paid for part of her purchase with a EBT card. She then tried to pay for the rest with a debit card and had trouble with the touch screen because she had those expensively decorated 4 inch nails.
I wanted to scream at the irony of her waste of money while being on the public dole.