Awkward Black Girls as the New Media Makers

The web series The Mis-Adventures of Awkward Black Girl has been getting a good deal of well-deserved attention as of late. It's funny, a bit irreverent, and has struck a chord with the awkward and non-awkward alike. But perhaps more importantly, this series is a successful example of someone taking control of media by transforming it from within. Here's the latest episode. To catch up on previous episodes check out http://awkwardblackgirl.com/.



So WATCH - LAUGH - and TAKE NOTE. We need more media makers to expand the idea of who and how women are. Are you next?

Word Power: Rejecting Sexual Judgment and Victim Blame

The Slutwalks is a movement created to respond to voices and acts that devalue women based on their sexuality. They want to take back the word "slut" and reappropriate it, removing blame, shame, and danger from it's use.

Rebecca Traister is author of Ladies, We Have a Problem, a great article in last week's New York Times that looks at the slutwalks movement and considers it's approach from a feminist perspective. What do the slutwalks accomplish? And what do they overlook? Traister does a great job exploring these issues and considering the tension that lies between rejecting labels that negate and harm and embracing labels for the purpose of changing their meaning. Is it possible to truly change how we respond to firmly held cultural stereotypes and their  underlying meanings by embodying the very image that negates us?

Food for thought. And for action.

~Shani

THE TALK BACK: Public Resistance to Objectifying Marketing

We've been focusing on "talking back" to media that demeans and misrepresents women. Here's a great post from the Ms. Magazine Blog (which originally appeared in Sociological Images) showcasing how some people are working to publicly challenge sexist media.

The method is simple yet effective. If you don't like you what you see - call it out! Read more here:  Culture Jamming Sexist Ads.

THE TALK BACK: Pretty Little Girls

This has been a pretty intense summer. Why? Because I’m focusing my energies on addressing how images are shaping my daughter’s life.

My daughter is sharp – she reads like a fifth grader even though she’s only six. She’s observant, curious, and a bit sneaky. Over the last year I’ve seen how her thoughts, her ideas about herself, her intentions towards others are being shaped by what she sees and hears. The best example yet has surfaced in our many discussions about how she wears her hair. And in these talks I find myself reliving a major battle of my own childhood – the quest for straight hair.

My mother can attest to the years of arguing and bouts of tears because I wanted to straighten my naturally kinky hair. I wanted to look like all the other girls whose mothers let them get perms to straighten out those kinks. Without straight hair I felt like an outcast. I blamed every social slight on my hair. If only I had a perm everything would be ok. My mom fought hard to preserve my natural hair because she viewed my insistence to straighten my hair as a rejection of my natural, African descended self and an embracing of European beauty ideals. Self-hate at its most basic. The lines were drawn and we battled for years. And in the end I got that perm. Victory! And a mere seven years later, I grew it out and went "natural." Fast forward to today and I'm in between. Sometimes I wear my hair kinky, sometimes I wear it straight.  I feel very comfortable about my own sense of beauty. 

So back to my daughter. I’ve been working with her on her sense of identity and her take on beauty. In a world of Disney princesses, glossy lipped dolls, and lingerie-clad superstars defining beauty for oneself can be a challenge.

My daughter’s solution was to create her own show. She calls it the “Kids Can’t Wear Show.” She thought it would be a good idea to tell other kids about how what they see is impacting what they want, and maybe she could tell parents too.

In this episode, a young girl is telling us that she wants to look a certain way BECAUSE she sees that in front of her everyday. Why shouldn’t she want straight hair? Whether it be a Disney show, a PBS cartoon, or a doll, straight hair is the norm. Why shouldn’t she want to put make up on? Even cartoon girls wear lipstick and mascara. If she’s to be expected to FEEL beautiful in her natural state it might take more than being TOLD to do so. What she sees in the mirror does not match what she sees in the world around her. If she knew she were blue and everyone else was green would she think being blue was all that great? What forms of beauty are we presenting (and embracing)? If there’s only one standard then what more can one expect from a really perceptive little girl. She wants to be what our culture says she should be.

So now it’s up to us: the families, the media creators, the mental health protectors, the educators, all the people who hold a vested interest in young girls and boys and the adults that they will become. Media is influencing who our children want to be, which is who they will ultimately become. If that doesn't sit well with us then it's time to act. Lend time, attention and resources to the messages that contribute to positive development - and take away those things from the images that detract. And never forget - media does matter, but so do we. My mother never tired of telling me that my natural self was beautiful. It took me a long time to learn the lesson that she taught me. But the point is that I finally did. 

Woman to Woman: The Art of "Loving Critique"

There's an interesting video making its way through cyberspace. It features a young woman who expresses her strong opinions about Beyonce's new video - Run the World.



Check out the video, THEN take a moment to check out The B(E)-Girl Manifesta's blog response - Why I Like My Feminism Gray. It's a great feminist critique of the ways that feminist critique one another. Make sense?

Be sure to check out the "Blogroll" on the left. It's a great list of complementary blogs and websites that can further our thinking about feminism and media.

Enjoy - and critique lovingly!

THE TALK BACK: A Response

The campaign to assault the self-esteem of Black/African women and girls has been a long sought one. Fought on the terrain of the shapes and size of their bodies, the texture of their hair, the Aquiline quality of their noses and the shade of their skin, Black/African women and girls have struggled to carve out a healthy psychological concept of themselves and their physicality in a society determined to use it as the mark of the “un-beauty”.

The May 15, 2011 publication of, “Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive than Other Women?”, by Satoshi Kanazawa on Psychology Today’s blog, The Scientific Fundamentalist, is the latest iteration of this campaign. Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics, reports that based on his findings, irrespective of intelligence and body mass index (BMI) measurements, Black  women are less attractive than their White, Asian and Native American counterparts and that comparable findings are not evidenced among Black men. His concluding thoughts suggest that Black women’s lack of beauty may be due to their higher than average testosterone levels, though he did not measure or report hormone levels of the study participants.

Assuming Kanazawa’s research on the Psychology Today blog may have been abbreviated for space and content considerations, as a psychologist researching and working with Black/African girls and women, I have methodological and ethical concerns about this work. Several methodological omissions make it difficult to contextualize the findings. For example, Kanazawa does not describe his sample. We do not know the age or race or the number of “Add Health” respondents. Further, “Add Health”, which appears to be a measure of objective and subjective physical attractiveness, is not adequately defined. The strength and validity of the measure are questionable as, physical attractiveness, a subjective construct, is not operationalized. Kanazawa may have considered examining the content, construct and criterion validity with regard to the physical attractiveness variable to legitimize his findings.

The study design is also problematic. Apparently the physical attractiveness of the respondents is measured “objectively” on a five-point scale by an interviewer over “seven years”. Again, Kanazawa does not describe the interviewer, and this becomes important as one’s racial identity, level of internalized racial oppression, multicultural competence and self-esteem, may likely influence the aesthetic to which they attribute beauty. Within a Western context, the concept of beauty varies tremendously from an African aesthetic (Welsh-Asante, 1993). Consequently, for this work to be considered valid these factors should have been considered.  

Perhaps, what may be most troubling of Kanazawa’s work, and until recently (the blog has since been removed from the Psychology Today’s website), wide dissemination of his findings, are the ethical concerns it raises and the socio-cultural and political considerations it engenders. As Black/African girls and women have historically been challenged to form healthy psychological notions of themselves within the context of a “White Beauty Ideal” (Banks, 2000; Boyd-Franklin, 1991; Greene; 2000; Rooks, 1996; Williams, Frame, & Greene, 1999), Kanazawa’s work can be viewed as scientifically irresponsible. Guideline number four of the APA Guidelines for Multicultural Education, Training, Research, Practice and Organizational Change for Psychologists (2002) states.

Culturally sensitive psychological researchers are encouraged to recognize the importance of conducting culture–centered and ethical psychological research among persons from ethnic, linguistic, and racial minority backgrounds.

Beginning at the formation of the research question and the theoretical and/or practical intentions of this work, one may wonder: What is the purpose of this research? What body of knowledge does it seek to extend? Guthrie’s (2003) seminal work suggests that psychological science has long been misused to legitimize and justify racist social and political policy. Further, that the gender-bias of the findings are presented as findings rather than limitations, suggest that the measure, already deemed inappropriate, may not capture its dependence on, not only a “White Beauty Ideal” (i.e., correlations with BMI), but also may play into racist sexual politics relative to Black/African masculinity (Collins, 2005).  This is also problematic.

The public outcry toward Kanazawa’s work and Psychology Today’s swift removal of it from their website speaks to the power of giving voice and putting productive action behind outrage in response to injustice.  Even so, the post continues to circulate as one “Tumblr” writer has posted it in its entirety on her site.  Juxtaposed by photographs of her, I cannot help but wonder whether these pictures are her argument for Black/African women’s beauty. I am personally saddened by the fact that she may even believe she must defend it.

Wendi Williams, Ph.D.

Long Island University - Brooklyn

References

American Psychological Association (2002, August). Guidelines on multicultural education, training, research, practice and organizational change.  Retrieved August 13, 2008 from http://www.apa.org/pi/multiculturalguidelines/homepage.html.

Banks, I. (2000). Hair matters: Beauty, power and Black women’s consciousness. New York: NYU Press.

Boyd-Franklin, N. (1991). Recurrent themes in the treatment of African American women in group. Women & Therapy, 11, 25-40.

Collins, P. H. (2005). Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, gender and the new racism. New York, NY: Routledge.

Greene, B. (2000). African American lesbian and bisexual women. Journal of Social Issues, 56, 239-249.

Guthrie, R. (2003). Even the rat was White: A historical view of psychology. Allyn & Bacon, Inc.

Rooks, N. (1996). Hair raising: Beauty, culture, & African American women. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Williams, C. B., Frame, M. W. & Green, E. (1999). Counseling groups for African American women: A focus on spirituality. Journal for Specialists in Group Work, 24, 260-273.

 Welsh-Asante, Kariamu (1993). The African Aesthetic: Keeper of the Traditions (Contributions in Afro- and African-American Studies). Greenwood Press.

THE TALK BACK: Black Women and Physical Beauty - Who's Defining Who?

This week, a great number of women around the country used their voices, Twitter accounts, Facebook profiles and emails to respond to a disturbing article published by Psychology Today. The article asked why Black women were less physically attractive than other women. There are several problems with the article, from the scientific merit of the author’s methodology & unsupported interpretation of the resulting data to the widespread dissemination of an individual philosophy that promotes negative race-based evaluations. Though the article has since been removed from the publisher’s website the outcry is far from over.

In response to those calls for action, FemPop is publishing a series of ‘talk-backs’ to explore this issue. We look forward to an active discussion and hope that this will be but a first step toward using our skills to combat media and ideas that devalue women, and promote those that elevate us.

Let's get started! 

Comfortable Chains: A Call for Rihanna and Other Black Women to Break Out

 As a psychologist and a Black woman, I acknowledge the commonly held perception that to be a Black woman means we have to be super strong, invincible, and without feelings.  In essence, this perception robs us of our humanity. 

Social scientists have developed the term the Strong Black Woman Syndrome which refers to Black women who feel the need to handle everything alone without ever showing any sign of need or vulnerability.  I was reminded of this syndrome as I read Rihanna’s recent interview with Rolling Stone magazine.  In the interview, she talks about not wanting to look like a victim and not wanting to be perceived as weak.  She stated that she worked to present herself as strong until it felt true.  This is common for many Black women, including those who have survived trauma, violence, and abuse.   It is not that we are immune to pain; rather, we believe it is unacceptable to show our pain.  Black women receive the message from people outside of and within our community that we should not reveal our scars.  In fact, one study with Black women who have survived intimate partner violence indicated that the women perceived that the Black community overall views them as weak and undeserving of care.  This fear of being dismissed as weak silences many women.  Audre Lorde wrote the poignant words, “This woman is Black so her blood is shed into silence.”

This concept can be witnessed in Rihanna’s testimonial in that, regardless of the very public way in which her story was told, her actual narrative and perspective have been silenced.  Rihanna stated she felt the need to figure it out by herself after just one session of therapy.  What keeps her and others silent? 

We have seen what happens to Black women who speak of their pain, especially if the person who caused the pain is also Black.  In fact, there has yet to be an instance in contemporary times where a Black woman has been harmed by a Black male and the Black community collectively rallied to her defense.  Whether it is Anita Hill, Robin Givens, the adolescent violated by R. Kelly, or, more recently, the 11 year old girl gang-raped in Texas, Black women and girls receive the message that their pain is their problem and fundamentally their fault.  As a result, they are encouraged to remain silent.  Rihanna has learned this lesson well.  As a young witness to domestic violence and now a survivor of dating violence, Rihanna has altered her mindset to the point where she can silently find “pleasure” in the pain, comfort in the chains. 

The challenge is to extinguish the pressure for Black women to wear the silent mask of superhuman strength in the most dangerous and dehumanizing situations.  As I read Rihanna’s interview, I thought of all the Black women who work daily to do the impossible, bear the unbearable, and carry loads that would break any woman’s back.  Yes, I celebrate those who show resilience in the eye of the storm.  However, it is not enough to simply survive and just get through it.  Black women need to be whole.  We need to know real happiness and authentic peace.  Maya Angelou says, “Survival is important.  Thriving is elegant.”  To get to a point of thriving, we have to heal.   We have to have space to breathe, tell our stories, and tend to the broken pieces.  This is not a process that we can rush.  It is not a process we should have to do alone.  And, it is not a process we should endure in silence.  I hope more Black women will get uncomfortable with the physical and psychological chains that bind us so we can break free and live.  We do have the right to remain silent, but we have a stronger, more constructive right to speak up about the abuse we have survived and the wounds that still need to be healed.

~Thema Bryant-Davis, PhD

The Psychology of a Big Butt: Vibe.com Interview with Dr. Thema Bryant-Davis

Dr. Thema Bryant-Davis, president of APA's Society for the Psychology of Women, was recently interviewed by Vibe.com, the web version of the popular/hip-hop culture magazine.

In the article, The Psychology of a Big Butt, Dr. Bryant-Davis' provides an insightful take on Western beauty ideals and balancing the celebration of full figures with the objectification of the exotic. 

You can read the full article here: http://vibe.com/posts/psychology-big-butt-how-society-went-flat-phat

Feeling Good Means Healing Good

So it's February and the weight loss advertisements are still flooding into my household.  Like two days into the new year Bobby Flay was in a warm up suit talking healthy eating when October-December he and all his foodie buddies on the Food Network and the new Cooking channel were all about indulgence. But the ad that really caught my eye was the Jennifer Hudson Weight Watchers ad.



I must admit I don't keep up with the latest as much as I should, but I figured I was not seeing her much because she was focused on trying to recover/heal after the tragic loss of her mother, brother, and nephew. What concerns me most is that the new ad manages to do a lot of work while still tricking the public into thinking that weight loss will solve all your problems.  So first off the use of the song "Feeling Good" is amazing because Jennifer Hudson is being read through many lenses.  She is an American Idol runner-up turned super famous celebrity and a black woman who has had to overcome extreme adversity.


But here are a few behind the scenes details to know.  First, CDC statistics indicate that nearly 1 in 4 Black women are "overweight" so we are being actively targeted as a major consumer market by Weight Watchers.   Second, there is no clear indication in the commercial of how much weight she lost or how she lost it, just images of her body in a skin-tight white dress and a powerful song.  Third, I don't buy into the Body Mass Index formula and the body measurement charts because they were no supposed to be used outside of the context of your family medical history and your personal medical history.  I believe, like Surgeon General Dr. Regina M. Benjamin, that we should be talking about being healthy at any size or weight.


In October 2009 the Federal Trade Commission published guides for celebrity endorsements making it difficult for weight loss advertisements to include all kinds of statements while putting in small light font on a light background "results not typical."  What Weight Watchers has done is effectively maneuver around these restrictions by using images alone.  Rewatch the commercial and you will see that it is just an encoded music video for Weight Watchers.  What we see is a smaller Jennifer Hudson singing "I'm Feeling Good" and Weight Watchers Points Plus.  What we don't see is her personal trainer, nutritionist, psychiatrist/psychologist/therapist, potentially a cosmetic surgeon, or her stylist(s).  Furthermore every time she sings this song, Weight Watchers gets to tag along.


If Jennifer Hudson is feeling good I am happy about that, more power to her.  But the way she is using her body or the way her body is being used to promote weight loss-for-all can be devastating for women broadly, and Black women in particular. So here is my "talk back."


#1 Being thin or losing weight does not necessarily equal "feeling good."  I believe this because when I am most stressed, confused, upset, what have you my tendency is to not eat as much as I should, lose weight, and get compliments for it.  That is ridiculous!


#2 Talk to me about Jennifer's support group, her girls who helped her through it all, her supportive partner, therapist, dance teacher, minister, or whoever has helped her to recover.  “Feeling good,” as Nina Simone sings, is for me about a deeper spiritual feeling that resonates from the inside out so when I think about Jennifer Hudson I’m interested in her recovering from the unbelievable loss of her immediate family?


#3 The true winner is Weight Watchers because they managed to get around FTC rules and while they may be "inspiring" people individually, when you think about the shear number of weight loss ads on television in the last two months alone it's more like collectively "shaming" people into saying "if J Hudson can do it after what she has been through then what is my excuse?"


When I say feeling good means healing good, I mean let's feel good because we are taking care of ourselves inside and out "at every size and every weight", loving ourselves "at every size and every weight," NOT because we are Watching our Weight (ourselves) through someone else's eyes trying to look like Jennifer Hudson in December 2010.  


Let us "feel good" responsibly. I officially name and claim January-March as "Love Ya Body Quarter" starting NOW!


~ Sheri Davis-Faulkner

Chicanas & The Lime Light

Comedian and actor George Lopez first caught my attention when I heard him in a stand up comedy show speaking in this ever so familiar Chicano dialect.  It was unbelievably exciting to hear him talk.  Finally, there was one person on television that genuinely expressed himself as we do.  Unfortunately, Lopez is the only person in television today whose stories I can truly relate to when considering my experience growing up in Los Angeles as a Chicana.  It is with a heavy heart that I can not say the same about a Chicana in television today. 

Growing up in the barrio as a first generation Mexican-American, I acculturated into a bicultural world in which a tertiary culture was introduced: the Chicano culture. Chicanos in American barrios speak Calo, the Chicano dialect.  Calo is the combination of archaic Spanish words, Hispanized English and Anglicized Spanish, originating from the fronteras (bordertowns) of Northern Mexico and the Southwest.  Although Calo is not recognized as an official dialect, it is commonly known as pachuco slang, Spanglish or Tex-Mex and is widely used in the Mexican barrios of Los Angeles.

In the stereotypical context, Calo is synonymous with cholo/chola gangsters in society (as is the image of Chicanos), due to the over exposure of these images in the media and in films. Although frowned upon in mainstream society, it is still the lingo that connects us. It is the barrio-wide linguistic code and the common identifying marker of  'La Raza.'

In a country where Mexican-Americans now make up more than two-thirds of all Latinos in the United States, the underrepresentation of Chicanas in television is a social injustice. Chicanas in American television today are missing in action.

In my search for my ethnically relevant Chicana counterpart,  I came across Constance.  In all honesty, I could only think of Constance Marie (who speaks Mexican Spanish and was born in East L.A. to Mexican immigrant parents) because she plays George Lopez' wife on the George Lopez Show.  Although Constance did play Selena's mother in the hit movie “Selena,” it was because of The George Lopez Show that I remembered her.  Supporting roles are good but lets face it...we are yearning for a strong, leading Chicana in a girth heavy role and in the spot light who will not only inspire us but empower us!    

Personally, I feel that the underrepresented group of Chicanas in television is largely due to cultural and societal factors. The media has a powerful influence on girls' and young women's socialization into society. For this reason, it is imperative that we observe and challenge those media representations that perpetuate the notion that Chicanas are not good enough except in the role of the gangster, jailed inmate, housekeeper and sex object.

Though I will always defend my people and my culture against fatuous statements, I refuse to buy into the cultural obstructions that cheat our women of individuation. I can start with gender as the primary focus but Chicana women experience multiple forms of oppression, domination and familial constraints which lends us the title of being a triple or posssibly quadruple minority in society. This experience as one grows often creates conflicting ideals and loyalties.  Chicanas who challenge these structural and ideological ideas within the dominant culture are often ridiculed and labeled as “locas,” and suffer extreme devaluation within their families and communities. Chicanas, who break out of these gender role rules are prone to shame and depression.

The stigma attached to such labels makes us feel cut off, cramped and pushed into a small corner in which Chicanas learn to hide or tone down their ambitions and gifts in order to avoid such labels. I refer to this as the half-light  syndrome.  Eventually, the faded dim lights become the safe haven for Mejicanas who do not dare to live out loud, who often prefer the back and side stage to avoid stepping into the lime light.  Although not everyone is meant for the spot light, it remains a travesty that a woman would delegate herself to such limits because they have been indoctrinated to believe they are unworthy of more.  

To exasperate such matters, these toxic introjects of cultural oppression and concepts of normalcy spread like a virus among women who often feel the need to restrict other women into these subjective roles. The veneration of La Marianista, and the adherence to El Machista, still encourages women to impose a stricture on other women and form ridicule bands against the women who refuse to conform to these long lists of gender role rules and limitations.

It is time for the strong, genuine Chicana to make it into the lime light with her interpretations of Xicanisma and 'our' experience. La Chicana who is not afraid to speak her lingo and attest to her fight to be seen and heard.  La Chicana who will show her true face in the midst of oppression and never stop for cultural convention.

~ Brenda Perez

Calling All Fem-Pop Bloggers!

Happy New Year!

We're looking forward to year full of popular culture musings, interesting tales, and provoking discussions that leave us with new questions and a few good answers.

If you have something to say, something to share, or just want to get a good discussion going - let us know. We're looking for regular and one-time contributors. So keep an eye out for all things popular, and drop us a line when you're ready to share.

You can expect to hear a lot more from us in 2011. And we hope to hear from you, too! 

~Shani