Echoing Harvard panel, student says ‘ultra-thin beauty standards’ under Trump are white supremacy

‘Skinny culture is nothing new, it’s part of a racist status quo’

A University of Washington student recently lamented the “return of ultra-thin beauty standards” during President Trump’s second term.

Writing in The Daily, political science and American ethnic studies major Sydney Stark claims this “ultra-thinness” is a “core mechanism of power” for the president … and has its roots in white supremacy.

She quotes UW Professor Ann Culligan, whose research deals with “behavioral neuroscience, motivation, learning, sex & gender,” who claims “white supremacy dictates that a white standard is the standard that all women should be nestling into.

“These nearly impossible standards serve as a tool of White supremacy… it’s a way to put down, limit, and oppress people.”

Culligan adds:

Those in power will turn over to violence and more outward means of oppression, but they don’t need to […] They can get women to put aside their energy for fighting for rights, seeking equal treatment and opportunity, just by setting up something that requires so much energy and attention.

Stark, who most recently pondered if “queer youth [were] disappearing under Trump,” contends that in the lead-up to the American Civil War, whites “redefined beauty standards to justify Black enslaved people’s subjugation.”

White people believed a person’s appearance was and “outward reflection of morality,” which gave them “a twisted form of status while specifically dehumanizing Black women,” she adds. “Skinny culture is nothing new, it’s part of a racist status quo.”

Stark concludes by saying “don’t pay mind” to such standards established by white supremacists: “Treating our bodies with love and respect is an act of political resistance, one that will set women free.”

Stark’s thesis echoes the discussion of a late-September Harvard Medical School panel.

Interestingly, however, that discussion — “Against the Pathology of Unruly Bodies” — featured no medical experts, (perhaps because it was co-sponsored by the English department) and was led by Roxane Gay, the medical school’s “artist-in-residence” and sister of Claudine Gay, Harvard’s former president, The Times reports.

MORE: Sociology professor: ‘Fat-phobia is rooted in anti-Blackness‘

(Why does an allegedly prestigious medical school have an artist-in residence? According to the overview of Harvard’s Master of Science in Media, Medicine, and Health, it is to offer “workshops, office hours with students, and public conversations that bridge the arts and medicine.”)

The Times notes Gay “is an outspoken left-wing campaigner on race, gender and other social issues but not a medical scientist or obesity researcher.” She has called for the release of Luigi Mangione, who murdered the CEO of UnitedHealthcare.

Those on the panel agreed being fat is “not to blame for poor health,” and that “weight-loss jabs” are “imperialist.”

Panelist Da’Shaun L Harrison, a “queer and trans anarcho-communist,” also was in attendance at the early-September Socialism 2026 conference at which “they” claimed the drugs Ozempic and Zepbound are “‘genocide’ against fat people.”

Harrison added the drug Mounjaro to “their” list during the Harvard event, and said all are “connected to ’empire and imperialism.'”

Harrison said: “This practice of forcing people into manipulating and changing or shifting how they look is oftentimes about making bodies militarisable. Building up a military to defend an imperialist state.

“A lot of doctors, medical professionals and folks who collaborate with them — be it through the government or media — are advocating for atrocities that are directly impacting our citizens, but also citizens around the globe. 

“It then becomes about creating this ideal body that you are always being pushed and pulled towards, as a way to represent this patriotism that is intended to indoctrinate one into the military, into the defence of the country.”

Also in attendance was “health and fitness” writer Ragen Chastain, who suggested obesity-related health problems could be due to “weight stigma” or “health inequality.”

Georgetown Law Professor Jonathan Turley opined: “The hiring of figures like Gay and the radical programs at these schools show that faculty have little intention to change the ideological echo chamber in higher education. It is truly a pathology of unruly bodies.”

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