Precious Opportunities: Chapter Abstracts and Visual Aids

Chapter One
Too Fat For 15: Selling ‘Healthy Body’ in Broadcast Media

The childhood obesity epidemic is a prevalent and profitable narrative circulating in broadcast media via news segments, talk shows, and now an eight episode reality television series entitled Too Fat For 15.  The breakout star of the first season of TFF15 is Tanisha Mitchell, a black teenage girl from Suitland, MD.   This chapter combines a critical race feminist analytic framework with a "follow-the-owner" ethnographic approach to advance a new active audience approach to critical media research.  Using data provided through the "passionate" reality series format, I intend to broaden the narrative of the childhood obesity epidemic from individual weight-loss and "parental blame" to include corporate bodies and families.  A critical examination of ownership reveals that parent companies, such as Bain Capital private equity firm make good decisions regarding increasing market share.  But as a parent is it ethical to own/invest in Wellspring, weight-loss boarding schools and summer camps, as well as Burger King, Domino's Pizza, and Dunkin Doughnuts?

Chapter Two
Precious Opportunity: 

When Black Girls Speak, Things Fall Apart

Black girls have been statistically identified as the youth population with the highest prevalence of obesity, and typically this is the end of the story.  This chapter situates Precious, the protagonist from Sapphire’s novel Push, at the center of the popular narrative on the childhood obesity epidemic in an effort to complicate the basic generalizations that “smaller bodies equal healthier bodies” often promoted via this popular narrative.  I look to this character because her story illustrates an array of issues that are absent in mainstream media, particularly those illustrated through black girl’s stories.  While black girls bodies may be visible, their stories are too often invisible.  When the bodies and stories are brought into focus, typically through literature, another narrative is presented, a counternarrative.  My work, a Critical Race Feminist project, offers a corrective to Gutierrez-Jones argument by insisting that race and gender are symbiotic.  From this platform I advance an inquiry into the treatments of black female narratives and bodies.  As an American Studies scholar, my methodology will begin with a literary review of black female narratives followed by a critical reading of public health discourse regarding childhood obesity.  I put specific literatures from the humanities and health sciences in dialogue with the express interest in proposing a “critical race feminist body praxis” that centers black girls experiences in an effort to propose remedies to race and sex injuries for black girls in American culture.

 

Chapter Three
I Get So Hungry: 

A Critical Analysis of the (Under)Development 

of Urban Food Deserts 

Bain Capital Fast Foods (Domino's Pizza, Burger King, Dunkin Doughnuts) within five miles of Too Fat For 15's Tanisha Mitchell hometown Suitland, MD

Tanisha Mitchell, the star of Too Fat for 15, is from Suitland, Maryland.  She attends Wellspring Academy of the Carolinas weight loss boarding school.  Tanisha’s parents pay $26K per semester for her to attend this school.  Wellspring’s parent company is Bain Capital.  Bain Capital is/has also been a the parent company of Domino’s Pizza, Burger King, and Dunkin Doughnuts.  There are nine Domino’s Pizzas, six Burger Kings, and five Dunkin Doughnuts in a five-mile radius of Tanisha Mitchell's hometown.  Chapter three explores young black girls’ living environments to identify concrete limitations to “healthy living,” which is premised on a holistic “health at every size” model versus a weight loss model.  The purpose of this examination is to provide a historically contextualized perspective of “urban deserts” as well a culturally conscious analysis of black girls’ diets.  I focus on the Dixie Hills neighborhood in Northwest Atlanta.  Drawing from archival resources, photographic images, maps, census data, and zoning policies from 1990-2010 and 1960-1980, I aim to identify significant shifts in food accessibility and affordability, brand name corporate presences, and community service work regarding food security, particularly as it relates to youth consumption.

Chapter Four
The Carrot Seed Project: Critical Race Feminist Praxis and Resistance Pedagogies

Camp Carrot Seed 2010

  In this chapter I call for a resistance pedagogical model that community organizing as a response to widespread pedagogies of mass consumption promoted via commercial mass media industries.  Using auto-ethnography, I provide a critical reflection of the eight-week summer program I developed and implemented during the summer of 2010 called Camp Carrot Seed.  I conclude with a presentation of a Critical Race Organizing Project (CROP), entitled The Carrot Seed Project.  CROP is an engaged pedagogical model that is based upon a grounded cultural analysis appropriate methods for engaging youth in the process of determining their own needs and “saving their own lives.” The Carrot Seed Project specifically addresses youth food-decision making (regardless of weight or size), encourages the development of youth creativity and agency, explores culturally and geographically relevant food histories, and supports youth directed community organizing and activism.