This study explores the female body ideal and its implications for health and fitness practices in African-American culture. Employing Patricia Hill Collins's (1986) notion of the "outsider-within," we analyze a focus group discussion on women's body ideals, exercise, and fitness. Our group comprises 9 young, college-educated African-American women who reject the White-American ideal of thinness, yet recognize that the "thick" (full-figured) African-American ideal is problematic, especially when considered in the context of the dominant culture's biomedical model. Prompted by their examination of popular mass media images selected by the coauthors, the women discursively negotiate between two contrasting cultural standards: an unrealistically slender body ideal and a heavier body weight and shape that may lend itself to the kinds of diseases associated with obesity.