Pretty Doesn't Save Black Women

Originally shared by Kymberlyn Reed

Pretty Doesn't Save Black Women

A few months ago there was a meme on my Pinterest wall which claimed to be a picture of a “young and beautiful” Harriet Tubman elegantly dressed in the height of Victorian fashion. This meme alleged the only images of Tubman that we normally see are those with her in a kerchief and/or holding a rifle, looking old and haggard.

Turns out the photograph was of Sarah Forbes Bonetta, a young woman of West African royalty whose incredible journey began in slavery and ended with her as the goddaughter of Queen Victoria. A fact I and several others pointed out to whoever posted the image in the first place. It made me wonder where this desire to see a “glamorous” (and fake) version of Tubman rather than the flesh and blood figure who risked her life to free hundreds of slaves, and who spied for the Union Army came from.
It took two films - Wonder Woman and Black Panther - to finally connect the dots on something that has been simmering beneath the surface of my consciousness for a long time.

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I read an online critique of the new Wonder Woman movie. Now I enjoy a well-written, thoughtful social critique of media (even media that I enjoy, such as Game of Thrones). I understand that art, books and other media do not exist in some untouchable vacuum. That even the best of these endeavors may contain problematic elements. I'm good with that, even if I don't always agree.

While some of the criticisms of the film were valid - like not letting Zach Snyder anywhere near a movie with female characters - ever - (still reeling from the creeptastic pedobear rape-fest that was ‘Suckerpunch’) there was one criticism in particular that made me say “oh hell no, not again” and made me think back to that fake Harriet Tubman meme.

Recently I'd been watching a ton of reaction videos about the upcoming Black Panther movie. Now, most of my fellow nerds of color (and nerds in general) are super excited about this film. One young African man was so overcome with happiness that he started crying. I know I've watched the official trailer like a zillion times and just looking at the elegance of Florence Kasumba, the nobility, the way she carries herself. Add to the cast Lupita Nyong'o, Angela Bassett, Danai Guerra, Letitia Wright, Phylicia Rashad and it's like a generous heaping of #BlackGirlMagic.

Of course, with all the positivity and excitement, there just had to be the faux-black foot in the mouth types who know absolutely nothing about the character and who don't bother to support Black comic creators (because geek stuff is for ‘white people’ dont'cha know). Amongst those was a ‘Dee Dee Downer’ (not her real YouTube name) who, in her desire to prove how ‘woke’ she was, decided to take a different tack. Her argument was the dark-skinned Black women of Wakanda weren't ‘feminine’ enough for her. That their very looks and physicality rendered them ‘too masculine’.

It's a criticism that I've seen leveled over the years at Black women, especially Black women like Grace Jones, Leslie Jones, Danai Guerra, Venus and Serena Williams, Michelle Obama, and Viola Davis. A criticism with its genesis in white supremacy and heteronormative norms and one that seriously needs to be examined instead of unthinkingly embraced.

No matter how much makeup we wear, the color of our contacts, or the length of our weaves or 4C curls, Black women remain the most unprotected class in America. Our beauty is derided on the one hand, co-opted on another. Little Black girls get suspended for wearing braids. Kendall Jenner gets magazine covers and accolades on fashion blogs. Yet we're still trying to live up to beauty standards that were not even made for us in the first place. Just as respectability politics won't save Black people, supremacist notions of femininity and beauty don't save Black women. Our value and our right to be vulnerable, complex human beings has nothing to do with what we look like and everything about the fear and loathing (and fetishistic fascination) blackness holds.

Pretty doesn't save us. It has never saved us. It will never save us.

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In Wonder Woman, the two Black Amazons - Artemis and Phillipus - are on the training grounds while the young Diana watches, completely enraptured and wanting to be out there. In those scenes, I felt exactly how that young Diana did, watching these proud and noble women kicking ass and looking great doing it. I admired their strength and their dignity, and yes, their beauty. They were warriors and behaved as such. Frankly, that's what I was there for, to see women of all shapes and colors going full tilt on the battlefield. I saw Black women like me up there on that big IMAX screen in living color, living in a world where their contributions were valued, their voices heard.

Yet, because their characters didn't fit those traditionally accepted standards of beauty, this made them problematic in some eyes. That their image somehow contributed to the supremacist idea that Black women don't need protection nor are worthy of it. However, this criticism ignores the stark fact that no matter how close to the Eurocentric ideal some may strive for, both the dark-skinned field slave and the fairer skinned house slave were still subject to violence and abuse.

Then there's Black Panther and the Dora Milaje. Firstly, this is a popular comic series about a fictional African country that was never colonized by Europe. So why would the standard of beauty/femininity be centered around those ideals? Secondly, Ruth E. Carter, the costume designer for Black Panther, looked to the Masai and the Suri for inspiration - not New York, Paris or Milan. The entire look of Wakanda and its people are centered around an African aesthetic. The villain, Erik Killmonger, has ritual scarification on his upper body, mirroring that of several African cultures.

Neither the Black Amazons of Themyscira nor the women of Wakanda are meant to be the epitome of white supremacist femininity, and that's okay. They - and the women who portray them - have their own beauty, and it's one that we should embrace. Instead of shaming them, we need to do a better job protecting Black women in this racist and sexist system, not policing them because of internalized self hatred. With that said, I admit I'd love to see both Artemis and Phillipus with larger roles in the next Wonder Woman movie. It would be nice for their screen personas mesh with their fully fleshed comic roots.

Quiet as it's kept, why shouldn't we embrace warrior women in our culture? Africa has a long, storied history filled with them - from the Kandake (Queens) of the Kushites (a country that resisted the might of the Roman Empire long after Egypt had become another province) to the Amazons of Dahomey to Queen Mother Yaa Asantewaa of the Ashanti who raised and led an army of thousands against the British colonial forces in Ghana.

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I understand very well how Black women are viewed in our supremacist society. We are either long-suffering Mammies taking care of everyone but ourselves, sexually irresponsible Jezebels aka Baby Mamas aka hoes; or loud, “emasculating” Sapphires. I get the whole ‘strong Black woman’ syndrome, which has its roots in slavery. However, fifteen year old Dejerria Beckton was not an Amazon, still we watched her being slammed face down on the grass by a two-hundred pound white cop. Korryn Gaines wasn't Dora Milaje yet was gunned down by police. Sandra Bland was found hanging in her jail cell. Zerlina Maxwell and Melissa Harris-Perry are both survivors of sexual assault. Thousands of Black women are living (and dying) due to domestic violence. The ones sitting in prison for defending themselves or being ‘ride or die’ chicks. There are thousands of Cookie Lyons’ behind bars right now. Five year old Black girls are considered more knowledgeable about sex than their White counterparts. Who could be more elegant and classy than former First Lady Michelle Obama, yet she was dragged through the swamp of racist bigotry because she wasn't blonde, blue-eyed and thin.

But hey, let's complain about Black women with bald heads. Let's buy into the idea that the two Amazons in Wonder Woman, Ann Wolfe (in real life a boxer) and Ann Ogbomo (in real life a Nigerian heptathlete) are not satisfactorily “feminine” in a world that values the feminine only as a means of oppression or ownership. Somehow their strong looks and dark skin marks them unworthy of esteem and protection.

No matter what we do as Black women, it will always be viewed through the white supremacist lens. We can't be funny without it somehow having to do with lack of intellect. The pretty Black girl often ends up as sassy sidekick or magical negress for the white heroine. We sure as hell aren't allowed to express healthy desire without dealing with our supposed lack of morals.

When we are afforded complex narratives, such as Halle Berry in Monsters Ball or Kerry Washington in Scandal, the only thing a lot of Black people cared about was that both of these women were having sex with white guys. Never mind that Washington’s Olivia Pope is way more than her sexuality (which by the way she owns). Never mind Berry’s heroine was a woman trying to make sense of a her husband's death. Even the remake of Cinderella with Brandy and the late Whitney Houston came under the faux-Black knives for being ‘unrealistic’. How many of these Black people are watching Still Star Crossed? Or don't they believe there were Blacks in Renaissance Europe?

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I won't cosign white patriarchal notions of beauty, notions that have never ever included Black women to begin with. This whole discussion of looks (coupled with an unhealthy dose of colorism) doesn't help real life Black women in our struggle for equality. Sojourner Truth, one of this country’s greatest figures once said:

“Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?”