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= Thick: And Other Essays = Thick: And Other Essays is a collection of feminist, autobiographical essays written by Tressie McMillan Cottom, an American professor, sociologist, and writer. Thick is her second book published by The New Press and has received widespread critical acclaim.

Summary
The collection includes eight essays and covers as variety of topics, including Blackness (particularly her experiences as a black woman) politics, beauty (and ugliness), and race relations, and many more personal but political topics. The eight essays are “Thick,” “In The Name of Beauty," Dying to be Competent," "Know Your Whites," "Black is Over (Or, Special Black)," "The Price of Fabulousness," "Black Girlhood, Interrupted," "Girl 6."

In the first essay, titled “Thick,” Cottom describes her life story, from being “bow-legged” to being a graduate student, which she equates to being “not a real person.” Cottom goes into detail about the task of “fixing her feet” both literally and figuratively as she progressed in life. As she progressed in walking normally, she also had to adjust to life as a Black academic. While she was very successful as a graduate student, she became uneasy about how best to make a name for herself as being known solely as “the graduate student” felt impersonal and isolating, and navigating life as young academic of color was tricky as she had to find a place for her work and a place in which her voice could thrive. She notes the rigor in which the black woman works, often time just to make ends meet, and notes that while she worked her as a grad student and young academic, she often worked “the wrong way” as she contributed to projects and publications that were eager to have a piece by a Black woman without actually hiring one. The purpose of the collection is to contribute to and encourage scholarly conversation and content for black women.

In “In The Name of Beauty,” Cottom traces the way beauty is shaped by white standards that are often described or referred to as “normal.” She claims that blackness falls outside the parameters of beauty because beauty standards have been made for and by whites. Still, she notes the value of beauty as it often coincides with gender performance and white privilege. She asserts that white women are the standard that black women must attain to in order for Black masculinity to benefit from both as it is acceptable for Black men to use white and/or non Black women as status symbols. Black women attempting to be included in the beauty standards are left working exponentially harder than white women because they have both satisfy the white standard and endure criticism in the Black community in which Black men, practicing colorism, proclaim lighter women as more beautiful.

Later in “Know Your Whites,” Cottom delineates the rise of 44th President of Barack Obama and the subsequent election of the 45th president of the United States of America. Specifically, Cottom expresses the belief that the same whites, who cherished that Obama’s faith in racial progress and race relations, voted for him because they saw their idyllic selves mirrored in him, and also, he afforded them the chance to romanticize this notion of progress without white having to actually work for it at all, which is why some of the same whites who voted for him, voted for President Donald Trump. When Obama identified more with Blackness than the whiteness, white voters went with someone who embodied whiteness more thoroughly. Barack Obama’s mixed heritage and habit of trying to speak for two different racial realities,Cottom argues, is why he failed to predict Trump’s rise as his faith in white America made him blind to the hateful nuances of whiteness when it feels it must respond against the presence and prominence of blackness. Cottom states that while Barack still might be hopeful for the progress of white America, it is black America that she finds reassuringly hopeful and steady.

Cottom ends the collection in “Girl 6” in which she touts the power of the Black womanhood and it’s collective perspective, noting that throughout time, Black women have been seen as reliable indicators of trends, and ends noting that there a very few liberal women of color writers at prominent publications.

Publication and Reception
Thick was received with widespread critical acclaim. Kirkus labeled her collection “provocative” and “concise” while noting that  her views on beauty and black woman hood were “controversial”: “In the Name of Beauty” makes the controversial case that a black woman cannot by definition be beautiful, because “beauty isn't actually what you look like; beauty is the preferences that reproduce the existing social order. What is beautiful is whatever will keep weekend lake parties safe from strange darker people.”

The Guardian listed the book as one of the “Best Books of 2019” and praised the collection for being “studied consideration born of intensive research, shored with the digestibility of personal experience”

Publisher’s Weekly praised the collection of essays as “incisive, witty, and provocative” and notes Cottom’s ability to tell personal stories while integrating research and evidence as well as her “wisdom” and “originality”.

Columbia Journal lauds Cottom’s collection as “unrelenting” and “incredibly entertaining” as it holds the reader captive while describing  racism against black women. The review also notes that Cottom emphasizes events that are often disregarded by whites with power and privileged positions. “This collection is brilliant because it examines things that many power-holding white individuals would prefer to write off as anomalies. In Thick, Dr. Cottom forces us to examine the structural racism that underlies these “anomalies,” rendering them not so anomalous, and that is a powerful act.”