GRSJ224/The Sexuality of Black Women

The sexuality of women, particularly black women has been degraded in the popular media. Female celebrities in America are against this phenomena. However, the black women's strong presence of black women against this stereotype is controversial and the society has contrary views on assessing expression of sexuality by black women compared to white woman. This is seen as the contemporary system oppression on black women and this oppression is negatively influential to the stereotypes. With the intersectionality, the black feminist activists in media have fought for the stereotypes to break the cycle of the oppression on black women.

Stereotypes on the Sexuality of Black Women

Stereotype

Stereotype is defined as "beliefs about the characteristics, attributes, and behaviors of members of certain groups (240)," and this can work positively and negatively to a certain group. The stereotyping makes easy to recognize and understand the certain group, but it can produce the over-generalization of the group, which can cause the group to be confined in the stereotype. There have been numerous stereotypes developed on black people, and the stereotyping negatively has an impact on the black women's sexuality.

Stereotypes on Black Women's Sexuality

From the severe discrimination history on black people, the strongly biased perspective on black people has been developed, and this led the current society to still hold the prejudiced views on black people. As the feminism movement has started, the black feminism activists have fought for the stereotypes because the severe discrimination on black women, along with women, still exist in our society. With “the strong association that people hold between blackness and maleness(141)”, black women has been perceived as masculine. From the American slavery history, black women was sexually exploited and this history forms the stereotypes of black women as sexually animalistic, so that less attractive. Black women have been hypersexualized and the consequences stick out in the popular media toward the black female singers in comparison with the white female singers. From the time when black feminism was started, the mass media started moving toward the rights of black women along with the efforts to break the stereotypes on black women's sexuality. However, the society developed another stereotype towards the black women who stand up for their rights and the wrong stereotypes, which is called the “Angry Black woman Stereotype.”

Angry Black Women

Along with the stereotypes on black women, the myth of the angry Black woman has been developed through the cultural ideology as undesirable. However, the anger itself is a very natural emotion to everyone, but the anger from black women are described as animalistic. The black women’s strong presence on their race is described as unfeminine and unacceptable even when they express the anger toward the social injustice. As an example, the black celebrities like Rihanna has stood up for the black women’s rights and developed the strong presence of their own race, but was labelled as an “Angry Black Woman,” which is biased and unfair. 

Controversial Black Female Celebrities

Nicki Minaj's "Anaconda"

When Nicki Minaj released her album, The Pinkprink, in 2014, her song, "Anaconda," and the music video took the world by storm. There were two opposite reactions on her music video. Some describe this as a porn and says Nicki Minaj “reverts to the hypersexualization of women and their bodies” and some support Nicki’s black feminist activity to “take on female sexuality” beyond the sex-positive statement. This two opposite views are even more apparent when comparing with Miley Cyrus's "Wrecking Ball." Miley Cyrus was also criticized with her music video of "Wrecking Ball," but audience's attitude was changed to support her brave confrontation with the social norms on women and to praise her sexuality. As considering the incident that Nicki Minaj's music video was temporarily banned in MTV, the contrary reactions on these two music video are controversial in black feminism community. However, no matter what the society think of her, she bravely kept continuing on her way with her music.

Rihanna's "Bitch Better Have My Money"

What is anti-feminism conducted by a feminist? This question was issued when Rihanna's music video "Bitch Better Have My Money" was released. This video was criticized as anti-fiminism and also Rihanna, who actively supports the feminism (and also black feminism) in her music, fashion, and even her single speech on TV shows, was questioned as a fake feminist. The reason of getting criticized was her video contains a lot of violent scenes targeting women. In an interview with a media, she answered to these criticisms and questions, saying "at the end of the day the women won. The bitch was the man. So I'm confused." This answer questioned to those critics, why isn't there any anti-menimism when there are numerous videos torture men even worse?, and why are only black women's artistic presence of their identity so controversial every time?