Thick: And Other Essays

Tressie McMillan Cottom’s Thick: And Other Essays (2019) is a collection of personal essays that explore race, gender, and class in the US. McMillan Cottom is a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an influential public intellectual whose writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Slate, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Thick situates McMillan Cottom’s personal experiences within sociological and structural analysis to link her experiences to the experiences of Black women more broadly.

Plot Summary

The first essay, “Thick,” explores how Black women and girls are understood, treated, and disadvantaged by a society that systematically undervalues Black females. The term “thick” references curvier or plus-size bodies, but it is also a method of sociological inquiry that centers lived experience and extensive description. “In the Name of Beauty” explores how beauty is linked to “Whiteness.” Beauty is a cultural concept that values White culture at the expense of Black culture. “Dying to Be Competent” turns to how the expertise of Black women is undermined. McMillan Cottom uses her own experience of losing a child as an entry point into a larger exploration of structural inequality and how perceptions of incompetence are used against Black women. In “Know Your Whites,” McMillan Cottom analyzes Whiteness. She explores how President Donald Trump was elected after President Barack Obama by studying how White people maintain their power. In “Black Is Over (Or, Special Black),” McMillan Cottom reflects on the term “Blackness.” She explores how Whiteness defines itself against Blackness. She studies the problematic tension between privileged and working-class Black people to challenge the hierarchy within Black communities. “The Price of Fabulousness” considers the stigma that Black people face along the lines of class by showing how Black people have to present in certain ways to be treated properly by White society. “Black Girlhood, Interrupted” looks at the structural inequality that Black girls face which makes them more vulnerable to sexual abuse or neglect. In “Girl 6,” McMillan Cottom analyzes how Black female voices are excluded from prestige media, arguing that the media needs more Black women’s voices. Thick: And Other Essays critically explores the interface between race, gender, and class to show how Black women are marginalized by society and their voices are ignored.