something secret

Today, I finally saw the Paula Patton led movie, Baggage Claim , and it was.... a predictably mediocre romantic comedy. Girl meets guy, girl wants ring, guy cheats, girl shame spirals and tries to get any one of several ex-boyfriend to propose, girl's plan fails, girl realizes the right guy was (literally) next door the whole time. And, fin.  So, terrible. I did like the man-candy though. But what stuck out to me in this film was Jill Scott's character Gail, best friend to Patton's Montgomery. Gail, a fellow flight attendant, is like Scott, plus-sized and busty. But she's also blatantly sexual. From the first few scenes of the movie, we establish that Gail is "that girl"; the one who has no shame and chases after her men the way she chases her drinks. Normally, the idea of yet another hypersexualized black female character would irritate me, but this was different. We have very specific narratives for how we interact with black women in the media. We get the ...

There's been a lot written online about Beyoncé in the last week and a half. Between the initial frenzy of the release of her new album, the delight over her overtly feminist messages and the almost instantaneous backlash that Beyoncé the woman (and the body of work) was both anti-feminist, or simply not feminist enough, we've all had Beyoncé on the brain. While I did write a essay about her song Partition and had plans to write another piece examining the album as a whole, I've realized that many other writers have already done a much better job than I ever could have. There is already an amazing canon of work that critically analyzes this new album. Here are a few of my favourite pieces in approximate publication order: That Time Beyoncé's Album Invalidated Every Criticism of Feminism Ever  by Christina Coleman Beyoncé's New Self-Titled LP Is The Feminist's Album Of 2013 by Hayden Manders Beyoncé's New Self-Titled Album Is A Manifesto of Black Womanhood ...

There is a longer  more fleshed out essay on  BEYONCÉ in the works, (which probably won't be published until next week at this rate) but in rewatching King Bey's magnum opus, I have been uncovering gem after gem of naked feminist ideology, and I can't get enough. The latest little gem I found is this subversive little quote cleverly inserted in French into Partition , a song about Bey getting it on with Jay Z in the back of a limo on the way to the club: "Est-ce que tu aimes le sexe? Le sexe, je veux dire l'activité physique, le coït, tu aimes ça? Tu ne t'intéresses pas au sexe? Les hommes pensent que les féministes déstestent le sexe mais c'est une activité très stimulante et naturelle que les femmes adorent." According to friends who are much smarter than me, the above translates to: "Don't you like sex? Sex. I mean sex, the physical activity. Fucking. You like that? You're not interested in sex? Men think feminists don't like sex, b...

Back again. This time  to share  this comment thread  (and specifically the comment below) where I talk about Rashida Jones' comments about "women being whores" and how it relates to Rihanna (because Rihanna is the devil incarnate/Illuminati Queen/Bringer of all that is Evil in the world. Naturally), and the way in which the conversations about "pop stars being whores" always manages to find a BW scapegoat: I also think that it's  imperative  that we talk about racial disparities when we talk about this stuff because sexual expectations  are  just different  for WoC. For WW, virginal is the assumed natural state, and expressions of sexuality are seen as liberating (Madonna). For WoC, crass and oversexed is the assumed natural state, and self motivated expressions of sexuality are seen as a reinforcement of that stereotype. (Rihanna) If we push against it we're prudes, and  how dare we refuse a sexual advance with our ugly black ass selves?...

I wasn't online for most of today, so when I got home an hour ago and saw the furor online about #feministselfies , I had a bit of catching up to do. Trust me when I tell you that I was not in any way surprised to discover that Jezebel had stepped in it  again with a pretty condescending piece about the inherent narcissism of selfies. Plus ça change! After reading the piece though, two quotes in particular stood out to me: "Stop this. Selfies aren't empowering; they're a high tech reflection of the fucked up way society teaches women that their most important quality is their physical attractiveness." "Further, self-taken digital portraits are typically posted on social media, ostensibly with the intent of getting people to respon to them that's what social media is. In that respect, selfies aren't expressions of pride, but rather calls for affirmation." Here's the thing; my own relationship with selfies is fairly complicated. I'm a photo...

I've been thinking about writing this post for a while. It was originally conceived as an examination of the "Stripper Anthem" as presented by Nicki Minaj and Rihanna in Beez In The Trap and Pour It Up, as it related to the sexuality and sexualization of black women, but after last week's post on Lily Allen, and some of the... ill-informed responses it received, I realized that there is a different conversation that needs to be had first. That conversation is about the distinction between the exploitation of black women's sexuality for the (white) male consumerist gaze, and a black female celebrity's reclamation of her own sexuality on her own terms. For whatever reason, there seems to some difficulty in grasping the concept that the most significant difference between these two scenarios is agency , and the way in which the presence or lack of agency determines how a display of sexuality is to be perceived and received. To that end, I want to examine the ima...

Last week, I read a great article  by Nichole Perkins on Buzzfeed that talked about the way the character development of the leading ladies of both Scandal and Sleepy Hollow were working towards dismantling the harmful depictions of "strong black women" in media. It was a great read, and I loved that someone else shared my conclusions about Olivia Pope's characterization.  What stuck out to me however, was Perkins' characterization of Gabourey Sidibe's character Queenie  on American Horror Story Coven as a negative embodiment of the "strong black woman" stereotype. She says: "Then there is Gabourey Sidibe as Queenie on  American Horror Story: Coven , a “human voodoo doll” whose supernatural power is the inability to feel pain, even as she inflicts said pain onto someone else. [...]  These Strong Black Women feel no emotional pain, tolerate severe physical trauma with no reaction, and menace others with stone faces." I love American Horror Stor...

I really, REALLY didn't want to post about Blackface Christmas this year, but after this, I couldn't help myself. This morning, Thought Catalog posted a completely tone deaf piece on Julianne Hough's blackface misstep, written by one Kelly Rheel. (I'm not linking to it because fuck TC) In the piece, Kelly argued that Julianne's blackface "isn't really blackface" because blackface only looks like this  apparently, and anything less is just "trying to have some fun." She also argued that though she is white, and doesn't understand the black experience, she didn't think this was an appropriate time for racial outrage. She posits that the Trayvon Martin blackface costume was problematic and racist (it most definitely was), but not Julianne's costume . She was dressing as a character  you see. Yes. That happened. There's so much privilege to unpack when it comes to a white woman deciding that she has the ability to decided what sh...

People think that I'm a princess because I don't like to use public transportation. I get teased about it all the time, and it doesn't help that my sense of navigation is abysmal. People think that I'm well-off and don't travel because I don't want to "slum it." Well, they're wrong on all counts. I do not like to use public transportation because doing so makes me feel unsafe. I hate travelling, and I only do it when absolutely necessary. I will  make plans around whether or not I will be required to travel. I will  sometimes abandon plans altogether if it means travelling through a certain place or past a certain hour. And honestly? I'm just lucky. I have sometime-y access to a personal vehicle, and a flexible enough schedule that I can make arrangements arounds it's availability to me. Lots of women don't have that privilege or that choice, but it's what I do to ensure my own sense of personal security and control. When I was you...

It irks me that people (usually black men) keep saying that black women shouldn't love Olivia Pope because she is flawed. "Flawed" in this case usually equals "having an affair with a white guy". They don't realize it, but the concentrated hate that they hold for her is steeped in a very specific kind of racialized misogyny . Walter White was no hero, but somehow we managed to love him. Dexter was a serial killer  and yet, we lauded him too. What do they have in common? You guessed it. Men. White  men. Who also happened to be anti-hero characters whose virtues were valued alongside their flaws. But I'm going to set that aside for now. I'm a black woman and I LOVE Scandal. I am not blind to Olivia's flaws. I love her  because she has flaws.  Black women are so severely underrepresented in media that Kerry Washington's role has garnered a considerable amount of attention simply because she is a black woman in a lead role of a network televisi...

I had originally planned to do a full and proper follow-up piece, but in doing my research (yes, I do my research so I can back my shit up) I ended up down a rabbit hole that basically demonstrated why wasting my time rebutting would be pointless. This thing with Jezebel.... it's happened before , and it'll happen again. Nothing that I could ever do on that site will change the fact that they Jezebel is not intersectional because it does not want to be intersectional .  It's not hard to instigate a paradigm shift, not really. Not when you have so many WoC speaking up, reading and willing to tell their stories.  Jezebel is not intersectional because intersectionality is not cool.  It's not profitable.  It's too gauche  to give a voice to all the dirty brown poors. It took all of this to make me finally see that, but now that I have, I know that I'm right.  I decided I wouldn't rebut, but I ended up vomiting my displeasure all out on twitter anyway, so I'...

via Natalie Dee Last night I quit Jezebel. It sounds like a dumb thing to be writing about, but for me, it's really, really significant. I'm 23. I'm black. I'm West Indian. I didn't have a lot of exposure to feminism growing up. I cringe when I recall the things that I said about other women when I was a freshman in college, and the attitudes that I had towards sexuality and womanhood. I went to a Catholic school in a country that is still largely misogynistic. It was pretty much a given that I'd grown up to be an anti-woman little shit. But then I found Jezebel. I found Jezebel and I started reading. I'm the kind of person who just likes to know  things, so perusing the site pre-Kinja was like a revelation to me. All of a sudden I had this entire vocabulary to explain the little microagressions that I'd faced all my life, and a community of women who were engaged in parsing those issues. I could finally vocalize why I felt an inconsolable rage when I w...

Because it was apparently  so much fucking fun  when Jezebel did it ,  Gawker  just doubled down  on their "Chris Brown is an asshole for getting raped at 8 years old" narrative. I.... See, this is one of those things that makes PoC go on protracted rants about white people. And I know it's not  all  white people, so please don't start. But the the way that CB has been treated in the media since he beat Rihanna has been tinged with racism from the very start (didn't Charlie Sheen SHOOT a woman?!?!?) and this just confirms that the reason white liberals love to shit on Chris Brown is not because he's an abuser, but because he's a  BLACK  abuser.  In the Guardian article that both pieces reference, CB admits to having been RAPED. He says he lost his virginity at 8.  THAT IS RAPE IN EVERY SENSE OF THE WORD . But it's okay to doubt his story or minimize his abuse because he's black. And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that he gets a ...

I am black and I am a woman. I reject the notion that I can or should, ever separate the two, because my experiences as a woman are modified and amplified by my blackness, and vice versa. I reject the notion that my sexuality does not exist on my own terms. My pleasure exists for me and I use it and claim it however and how often I see fit. I will not be judged for excercising the sexual freedom that follows inherently from bodily autonomy. I reject the notion that I am inherently sexual or sexually available because of my black womanhood. I take it upon myself to be sexual when and with whom I wish, and reserve the right to refuse to be sexual or sexualized against my will. I reject the notion that my sexuality is a commodity to be fetishized or demonized by virtue of my blackness. My sex is not deviant because it is not white. I reject the notion that my body is not my own. I will refuse to be subjected to physical contact that is unwanted or unsolicited, whether it be the petti...