We are allowed to be wanted. We are allowed to want. It shouldn’t feel radical to say that, but it does, because for a very long time, the cultural conversation around plus-size Black women and sexuality has been shaped by two equally damaging extremes: hypersexualization that reduces women to bodies without interiority, and desexualization that pretends plus-size women don’t have desire at all. Neither one is the truth. Both have done real damage. When plus-size Black women are...

By: Naomi K. Bonman They need us to compete. That's why they keep building the competition. It's not an accident that Black women are constantly placed in rooms with limited seats, told the resources are scarce, and left to figure out who deserves to stay. Scarcity isn't a condition — it's a strategy. And when women believe there's only room for one, they stop protecting each other and start protecting their position, but here's what keeps being proven, over and over again: Black women, given...

Nobody taught us to want ourselves. That's the quiet truth that sits underneath conversations about plus-size Black women and desirability. We were handed mirrors that didn't reflect us — and then told the problem was our reflection. Mainstream media has spent decades telling a very specific story about who is beautiful, who is desirable, and who gets to be loved on screen. Plus-size women — especially plus-size Black women — have largely been written as the funny best friend, the loud...