Stop Allowing Black Women's Representation to be Destroyed

 

The Beauty of Black Female Representation in the 90's

Last month, Black women on Twitter had their monthly useless discourse about the overrepresentation of South Sudanese models in the high fashion industry. The obsession with this specific topic is comical to me, because it shows, clear as day, the level of delusion many Black women seem to have about their image. Do Black women actually believe the average nonBlack person is thinking of a high fashion Sudanese model when asked to describe the everyday Black woman? Seriously? Really? The main images of Black women currently being exported to white, Asian, and Latino communities are hypersexual twerking female rappers who resemble drag queens in terms of personal styling and makeup choices, far-left Black female politicians who pass laws that allow violent criminals to freely roam the streets, unruly Black women who insist on not learning how to control their emotions and get into physical fights in public, and obnoxious unattractive Black women who are too busy fighting for social justice to take pride in their own appearance. Sudanese models are not present in the minds of most nonBlack people. Decades of propaganda have portrayed Black women as anything but modelesque ethereal beauties, and a couple of Sudanese models are not changing this perception anytime soon. 

The reason why discussions about the lack of diversity among Black models within the high fashion industry makes me laugh is because this seems to be the only time Black women remember that how you are represented in the media can affect how people view or treat you in real life. The real reason why many Black women are begging for a more diverse set of Black models to be represented in high fashion is because the hypervisibility of South Sudanese models has benefited all Sudanese women when it comes to their image. A demographic’s image is the first thing that comes to mind when people are asked to describe your specific demographic. That is how I personally define the term image. In terms of South Sudanese women, their current image is having an otherworldly type of beauty, perfectly toned bodies, and soft neotenous features. Even though many South Sudanese women may not have these exact characteristics, they still benefit from the hypervisibility of South Sudanese models because that is how media representation works. It can trick entire populations into believing both negative and positive stereotypes about demographics they have never interacted with before. Black women want to be seen as beautiful, soft, and adorable. If that was not the case, then I would not be seeing Black women begging to be represented in the high fashion industry. It is okay to admit that you want others to find you attractive. Black women are humans who desire love and acceptance just like any other human being on this planet. Every race of woman wants to be portrayed as beautiful. The difference between other races of women and Black women is that nonBlack women understand and accept the importance of having good media representation. NonBlack women are very intentional about only allowing their most feminine and alluring to portray their demographics on screen. They understand the connection between having positive media representation and how that translates into the real world via gaining better access to wealth or opportunities. I want to remind Black women that it was not too long ago when people were making horrible memes mocking South Sudanese women for their complexion. Now high fashion brands like Gucci and Louis Vuitton are scrambling to have one of these women model their clothes in magazines. The effect of having good representation and how that can change your life cannot be understated.

Let me explain something to Black women. The reason why white women can afford to have a little bit of diversity in how they are represented, now, in 2024, is because for decades, white males have only allowed exceptionally beautiful white women to be on screen in films. Sarah from Minnesota or Becky from Texas was not who you typically saw on screen or in commercials before the 2000’s. Before the 2000’s, white Americans exported a specific, curated image of white womanhood. This image was exported worldwide for centuries. In homogenous countries, where there are zero white people found in the native population, this specific image was displayed on their television screens for decades. Reddit has plenty of stories coming from Africans or Asians expressing their disappointment in the lack of beauty of white Americans once they finally got the opportunity to travel to the USA. This propaganda even works on low-income Black people who live in white-majority countries. Many low-income Black people truly believe white people never get divorced, are all rich, and take three million vacations every year. As a suburban Black girl that grew up among both rich and poor white people, I am here to tell you that this is not the case. Black women need to start taking notes from East Asian women. They too receive little representation in the Western world which is why they make sure that when they do get a chance to represent themselves, it is a Thai beauty pageant queen, a sweet soft spoken Japanese woman, a sexualized samurai warrior, or an ultra-thin hyperfeminine K-pop singer. There are American men who believe all Asian women are skinny, submissive, and sweet. Why? Because these are the only images American men receive of Asian women in the western world. As I stated before, that is how representation works. Representation functions as a propaganda tool to make one look exceptional.

Black women must also remember that unlike nonblack women, we are a part of a failed patriarchy. This makes having good representation even more difficult. Black men have made it very clear that they have no interest in building strong functional societies for us to thrive in. They have made it clear that they will destroy and tarnish our image in order to get themselves ahead. This is not normal male behavior. White, Asian, and Latino men do not highlight the beauty of their female counterparts out of the goodness of their hearts. They exalt the exceptionally beautiful women within their race because it makes THEM, the males who provided the sperm to create these women, look and feel good. They protect their women because their women help produce more of them, and unlike Black men, nonBlack men actually like themselves enough to create children that resemble them. Real men like to colonize, dominate, and own the majority of land or businesses within their country. (Can someone please remind me why most of Africa is currently owned by a European or Asian man again?) I also want to point out how there are plenty of poorly behaved trailer trash white women, but you do not see white men retweeting videos of them at the same rate you see Black men intentionally drawing attention to videos of low-income Black women fighting in restaurants or showing up at their child’s school in a bonnet. Could you imagine if Black women spent all day retweeting the crimes Black men commit all across this country on a daily basis? We would be attacked and called racist, but when Black men do this to Black women, nobody says anything. I really need Black women to comprehend how unnatural this behavior is and how Black men’s refusal to behave like real men affects our ability to have positive representation. NonBlack women have their positive representation reinforced by their male counterparts, but as Black women, we must remember that many Black men hate themselves, and thus, hate us by extension too. Seeing Black women represented positively causes an unnatural response from Black men. As soon as the “Black Wife Effect” started trending on TikTok, Black men insisted on reminding everyone of Black women’s “lack of desirability”. No other race of men would be upset at their female counterparts being portrayed as good wives because they understand that this makes them, the fathers of these women, look good. The way Black males behave is not normal in any biological sense. This behavior is only found in the failed patriarchy that is the African and Black community.

 When it comes to the poor representation Black women receive in the media, I want to address the hypocrisy and delusional mindset liberal Black women have surrounding media representation. The 2010’s were full of liberal Black women protesting for Black males who were shot by police officers. There were several campaigns started by these Black women demanding that the media stop portraying Black men as violent thugs who spend their days committing crime. They made the connection between how Black males were being portrayed in film to how they were being treated in real life by police officers. Liberal Black women are perfectly capable of understanding how media representation affects how one is treated in real life. When Black women who have escaped the Hollyweird propaganda matrix, such as myself, try to bring awareness to the poor and racist ways Black women are currently being portrayed on TV by Hollyweird and how that is affecting Black women in our daily lives, these same exact liberal Black women act obtuse and throw accusations of transphobia, fatphobia, colorism, and homophobia in our faces. I need all of you who are reading to understand that liberal Black women are not dumb. Liberal Black women just have an unusual obsession with forcing themselves into spaces where they are clearly not wanted, at all costs, no matter the repercussions, due to their extremely low self-esteem. Liberal Black women have a mindset of “Any press is good press!” when it comes to Black female representation. 

 When Black women who have escaped the Hollyweird matrix point out how clothing fitness, and beauty brands consistently put overweight Black women (usually with no makeup on and poorly done hair) next to dolled up ultra-thin white women, liberal Black women accuse us of fatphobia. They know we are not fatphobic. They know that we are not upset at fat Black women for existing. They know we are frustrated with the constant juxtaposing of fat Black women next to super skinny white women. Fat Black women deserve better representation than to be used as a tool to reinforce white supremacy. These ads affect the lives of your everyday plus sized Black woman. Almost every plus sized Black woman I know embraces her femininity and is dressed to the nines 24/7. The ads I see on Youtube or scrolling Twitter portray fat Black women as homely, downtrodden, and masculine. The deodorant brand ‘Secret’ recently released a commercial about their whole body deodorant. The commercial features a plus-sized Black woman who sprays deodorant on her body and then proceeds to say “More than just my armpits stink.” There is nothing positive nor inclusive about this type of representation. Black women, such as myself, pointing this out does not make us fatphobic. Liberal Black women know this, but their desperation to be included in white spaces at all costs is more important than protecting the image of Black women. They do not even care that this type of imagery leads to plus-sized Black women being harassed in real life.

Another negative stereotype we see Hollywood constantly use to portray Black female characters on screen is making them as masculine or visually unappealing as possible. Both Black and white liberal women love this portrayal of Black women, because they have been working overtime to convince the public that trans women are “real women '' and have decided to validate the trans identity by using Black women’s image as a human shield. Among a sea of long haired, feminine, makeup wearing nonBlack women, Hollywood will randomly insert a bald or masculine Black woman into the cast. This is not because white executives care about representing bald Black women. This is to masculinize Black women and reinforce this idea that we are not feminine and somehow different from other races of women. If white people truly thought being bald on a woman was cool, they would make the nonBlack female characters bald as well.

 Along with attempting to equate Black womanhood with maleness, liberals have also been working overtime to make sure every single Black female character is a lesbian or queer-coded. Many white female fans of the show “The Bear” desperately want Ayo Edibiri’s character in “The Bear” to be a lesbian despite her character showing zero romantic interest in women. This is not because they genuinely care about LGBT rights. They want Ayo’s character to be a lesbian because they do not want to see a Black female character with the popular white male lead. They view Ayo’s character as sexual competition. They are upset at the idea of a Black woman potentially being in a relationship with a white man they find attractive. Whenever a Black female character is conventionally attractive, skinny, and dark skin, conspiracy theories about the character secretly being a lesbian start to arise. Hollyweird and the liberals who find the creations that spawn from it entertaining truly believe all Black women should just be asexual side-kicks or butch lesbians.

Do you want to know how I know white executives are actually mocking Black women when they use the tropes I described above to portray us? In the rare instnace Hollywood remembers interracial couples outside of a white female and Black male exist, look at the type of Black woman they cast as a white man’s love interest.

When it is time to pair a Black woman with a white man, Hollywood magically knows where to find a conventionally attractive Black women. These women are allowed to exist on screen as long as they are making the white male lead look masculine and positive in comparison. These women function as a “diverse” trophy wife in a sense. This is a common theme in western media. If casting directors allow a Black female character to be paired with a white male character, nine times out of ten, she will be modelesque, have shoulder length or long hair, be dolled up, and be extremely soft spoken. The unattractive, bald, queer-coded, or butch dressing Black woman that liberal Black women constantly push to the forefront are nowhere to be found when it is time to find a Black woman to pair up with a white male character. Again, liberal Black women know Hollyweird does not truly care about diversity. They know these corporations are using Black women who are not deemed attractive by white beauty standards as pawns to elevate or reinforce white supremacy.

As Black women, we have too many demographics that have a vested interest in portraying us poorly to not care about how we are being represented. Liberals, especially liberal Black women, trying to convince us to be fair and moral when it comes to our representation must be ignored. We must boycott any Black actress, singer, or entertainer that aids in masculinizing, destroying, or tarnishing the image of Black women. Female rappers like Sexyy Red and Sukihana have got to go. Comedians like Tiffany Haddish and Leslie Jones have got to go. Black actresses, like Cynthia Erivo, who insist on playing roles where it is extremely obvious that the Black female character is being used as a pawn to elevate the white female character’s beauty (ex: Cynthia’s new upcoming film ‘Wicked’) have got to go.

 

Black actresses that identify as nonbinary, have a masculine aesthetic, and insist on taking certain roles despite knowing the character is supposed to be portrayed by an exceptionally attractive feminine Black woman (ex: the actress that plays Uhura in the new Star Trek reboot) have got to go.

Respecting your image means boycotting the upcoming season of Bridgerton that decided to not only raceswap but genderswap an extremely popular white male character with a dark skin Black woman who is going to be portraying a lesbian chasing after a white woman. Respecting your image means not allowing corporations to photograph you at your worst next to nonBlack women at their best. Respecting your image means boycotting films that masculinize Black women by giving roles to Black males that identify as women instead of actual Black female actresses. It does not matter if Black women boycotting these forms of media hurts the feelings of the Black actresses in them. It does not matter if boycotting Black female rappers means there will be none at all. It does not matter if our boycotts result in there being zero Black women on screen. We must unlearn this mindset that all press is good press. We need three entire decades where no one besides exceptionally beautiful Black women are allowed to be on screen. I want dainty, soft Black princesses being chased after by a charming prince. I want to see Black women with afros, beautiful soft glam makeup, and well fitted clothes. I want to see Black women with otherworldly, ethereal, and girl next door beauty being represented. Whether this makes your average Black woman feel good is irrelevant to me. Trying to appeal to the insecure among us has cost us our image. It is time we take our image back and stop allowing our demographic to be used to boost the egos of others.