Hello void and all who inhabit it, it's me
and if you're one of those people who doesn't believe in colorism, I'm going to need you
to just go ahead and click off this video. So I was looking up more stuff for Lovecraft
country, looking to add quotes and links for my character development videocast, and I
noticed that a lot of people rebuke criticism of how Ruby was written by pointing to her
clothing, her being seen as desirable and her outward confidence as major pluses for
her character. “It’s rare that we get to see dark skin
Black women, let alone dark skin plus sized Black women, who are sexy, well-dressed and
proud.” Which is true and led me to start thinking
about the dark skin women we are shown as desirable. And while they may rarely be seen, they do
share a lot of key traits. Enough to be a trope. Then I watched Bad Hair *tired sigh* there's
so much that could be and has been said about that movie and by the time I upload this,
I think it will have been on Hulu for like a week. However a character I haven't seen talked
about as much, and who immediately stuck out to me, was Sandra. If you haven't seen Bad Hair, and I wouldn't
suggest that you do, Sandra, as played by Kelly Rowland, is a late 80s-early 90s pop
star. She is the movie’s Janet Jackson/Whitney
Houston type figure. She has very few scenes but is set up early
as a rising icon and longtime Idol for Anna, the main character. Sandra is stunning; she is poised; she is
ambitious; and there is something deeply wrong about her. Sandra is the Desirable Dark Skin Woman. To get to the heart of the Desirable Dark
Skin Woman trope you should first look at the three major stereotypes tropes Black women
have been strapped with since the beginning of TV and film in the US... since the beginning
of literature in the US to be honest, girl. There is the Jezebel who, not to be confused
with a website or Biblical figure, is the hypersexual, promiscuous temptress. The Mammy who is the maternal, often asexual
figure. Usually a maid for white folks, literally
and figuratively. And the Sapphire, who as the origin of the
angry Black woman stereotype, is the aggressive domineering emasculator of all who stand before
her. These aren't the only tropes that exist for
Black women in Anglo-American Media but understanding this foundation helps us see how other images
of Black women have come to be, both negatively and positively. Rapid fire vocab lesson, what's the difference
between a stereotype and a trope? A stereotype is an oversimplified generalization
of a person or a thing. A trope is a commonly occurring theme, device,
situation, or image in media. Tropes may include stereotypes but all stereotypes
aren't necessarily tropes. Tropes function more like archetypes in that
they are templates from which we build a character, for example. The major difference between those two is
that tropes are culturally specific. None of these things are inherently good or
bad. Stepping out of English 101 class the trope
of the Desirable Dark Skin Woman is one such image with roots in these two ye olde racist
stereotypes, the Sapphire and the Jezebel. While the traditional Sapphire stereotype
depics an aggressive woman whose assertiveness drives away love, of theDesirable Dark Skin
Woman trope morphs than energy into ambition, typically related to her career but this can
also just be a desire to get rich or die trying. From the Jezebel, we pull the idea of her
sex appeal being used as a tool or a weapon but notably there is a veneer agency in said
sexiness. She knows what she wants and she's not afraid
to ask for it. Which at face value, isn’t a bad addition
to women and TV but within this trope, sex appeal remains a tool either for her explicit
use or for the narrative to use to ensnare her character into a shallow storyline -- or
both. I also want to point out that there is an
extra spin on this aspect of the trope that pops up in most of the few times we see dark
skin plus size women being desirable -- which is that sex appeal is presented comedically
or via a comedic relief character. It is giving very much “I can't believe
she actually has pull like that, that's soooo funny.” If we look back at Sandra, we are being given
a repeated set of culturally specific images and character traits but, like I mentioned,
she's in very few scenes and Bad Hair is the film not a show, so while she provides a quick
glimpse at the Desirable Dark Skin Woman trope, there are more fleshed-out examples. If you look at the media renaissance that
is 90s Black television, you'll see a lot of attractive dark skin women but notice that
a lot of these women are also antagonistic. My two favorites are Maxine Shaw from Living
Single and Pam from Martin. Both of these women are framed as loud, abrasive,
and aggressive. Even in storylines where they’re loved or
cared for, we have to be reminded that they are still the angry one. One of my favorite episodes of Living Single
is when Max and Kyle sneak off to a hotel for the weekend. As the episode carries on, we see them dissolve
back into bickering and fighting. And while they end their weekend with a kiss
and the suggestion that their relationship will just always have an aspect of back-and-forth,
it's also a reminder that Max is rarely allowed to be soft for a whole episode. Likewise, Pam is only shown in a long-term
relationship with Tommy and that barely lasts for more than a season. Though these women are attractive, are shown
to be desired by somebody in the story ,they aren't the characters the show wants us to
find the most attractive. That award goes to Regine and Gina. The best and first instance of the Desirable
Dark Skin Woman trope I saw growing up was Toni Childs from Girlfriends. From day one Toni is introduced to us as the
beautifully Black and bougie one. She is the Regine, she is the Whitley, she
is The One. And while she is full of faults, she is a
dark-skinned Black woman being shown as desirable, as actively sexual again and again, not just
for a rare short story arc or a one-off episode or to pair her with one person specifically. Toni is the fly hot sexy and beautiful one
the whole series long but more so what separates Toni from say, Laura Winslow is the idea that
Toni is deeply flawed. At the end of the day, there is still something
to her that you shouldn't like. Despite Girlfriends having an ensemble cast,
the main character is very much Joan and Toni is very much her main antagonist for the six
seasons that she's on the show. Their friendship does not dissolve amicably
and even the storyline of Toni's departure is rooted in conflict. This is important as it highlights the last
crucial aspect of the Desirable Dark Skin Woman: her inherent and unavoidable acidity. Future television shows won't portray their
Desirable Dark Skin Women as drastically but that is in part because shows with similar
setups to Girlfriends are rare. We don't have a lot of shows that focus on
the intimacy of friendships between grown women, let alone Black women. And most ensemble female cast or all women
friend groups we see on TV after the show are not majority or entirely Black. We’re most likely to see dark skin women
within family dramas or as one of the few, if not the only, Black character in a cast. Which is important for two reasons. One it shifts the way their toxicity is framed. Making Michaela Pratt, for example, a colorist
wouldn't have had the same impact as making Toni one. Not just because of the audience for How to
Get Away with Murder but because of the cast. After season 2 Michaela is the only Black
member of the Keating Five and, honestly, until Gabriel and Teagan appear, we really
don't see her interacting with any Black people other than Annalise. Family dramas created after 2003, if they
even have a dark-skinned woman, will often portray her as the odd one out or the outcast
of the family. An excellent example of this is Candace Young
from The Haves and Have Nots, who is evil or, more specifically, has a tense relationship
with her mother due to her Jezebel-esque activities. Another example from a better written show,
though she doesn't fit within trope, this is Charity from Greenleaf. I'm admittedly not up to date but, at least
in the first season, it is very clear that nobody in the family really gives a sh-t about
Charity. Even when she points that at out, fairly early
in the show, it's just taken as “whatever Charity’s b-tching again.” Unlike Candice, Charity seemingly has no reason
for being the least loved child, she just is.Your best options for the contrary are
shows that feature multiple dark skin women, which are few and far between. The other importance of seeing dark skin women
in larger, less Black casts is that we often see them partnered with white men. And look -- a lot of people still don't like
the idea of interracial relationships, that's just the truth, especially if one of the people
in the relationship is a Black woman. Some shows see that continued societal tension
as something to weaponize against their Black women characters. When we're looking at dark skin women, in
general, who are placed in interracial relationships there are two types: the narrative/character-driven
choices that are met with feral racist fans and the deliberately controversial choices. When you look at most characters with the
Desirable Dark Skin Woman trope who even get relationships, their relationships typically
fall in the second category. Let's look at two couples in opposite camps:
Michonne and Rick from The Walking Dead and Nova and Calvin from Queen Sugar, if for no
other reason than both the men are/were cops and both of the women have locks. While one show builds up a relationship irrespective
of the ickiness some viewers still feel about interracial relationships, the other show
creates the relationship specifically TO capitalize on that tension, even more so by making the
white man a cop. The result is while Michonne's relationship
with Rick is woven into her character arc, Nova’s relationship with officer friendly
is a springboard on which to doubt her moral fiber. You can replace Nova with Ruby from Lovecraft
Country, a woman who very much does fit this trope, and have a similar impact. At the end of the day, a Desirable Dark Skin
Woman has to have at least one tragic flaw that pushes the viewer to question and potentially
reject her desirability. “How desirable can she really be if she
believes XYZ, if she is willing to do this, that & the third, if she wants oo aa whatever.” The way a lot of shows introduced this flaw,
if not outright choose this as her main flaw, is to pair their Desirable Dark Skin Woman
with a white man, particularly a white man who ain’t sh-t. The result is the reaction from viewers that
think “this woman is so smart and so beautiful but she’s in this relationship?” The narrative is negging its own character
and encouraging the viewer to as well. Mind you, wanting to wrangle an Alaskan Bull
Worm isn't the only tragic flaw available. Maybe she wants to be the Alaskan Bull Worm,
maybe she arranged for the deportation of an immigrant, maybe she robs motherf-ckers,
maybe she's possessed by her weave -- whatever it is, there is something rotten about the
Desirable Dark Skin Woman at her core. And there has to be, for the purpose of ultimately
drawing viewers attraction away from her. Because the Desirable Dark Skin Woman isn't
actually supposed to be desired. Let's recap: our Desirable Dark Skin Woman
is poised, confidence, sessi. She is ambitious, almost cutthroat even and
potentially aggressive. And she's deeply flawed. No matter how strong and sexy she is, something
is still off. Bonus points, if partnered with the white
man. So why build her up if we are eventually supposed
to be turned off? Well the story doesn't want you to feel bad
for the inevitable bad sh-t that'll happen to her, potentially even wants you to root
for it to happen. And that is because the Desirable Dark Skin
Woman is still just an object of the plot, not a participant in it. It's because there is a drive to punish the
object of the viewer's “taboo” desire instead of unpacking the insecurity around
desiring them in the first place. It's because a lot of creators refuse to admit
that they are perpetuators of colorism themselves and don't want to examine why their character
can so easily boil down to a caricature once you remove her fancy set dressing. It's because despite an influx of new shows
and movies, the white heteropatriarchal dumpster fire that is Anglo-American media culture
still believes and wants us to believe that dark skin women are less than. It's because of all of the above! At the end of the day the Desirable Dark Skin
Woman is still a negative portrayal of Blackness and Black Womanhood not because of her beauty
ambition or gray morality but because of an inability for her to have all of those things
and still be worth developing beyond her eventual descent into cardboard cutout villainy. In the grand scheme of representation, it's
not enough to just plop a dark skinned actress into a shell of a character. I'm not part of the “anti-Biracial Black
women being cast as Black characters Brigade” nor am I trying to fight every light skin
Black woman in the world but it is f-cked that seemingly after all those sitcoms from
the 90s ended, our representation of well-written dynamic Black women on TV got lighter and
has mostly stayed that way. There's a tendency for a lot of people to
say, “well at least there’s a Black woman in the show, what more do you want?” *mic tap* I want rounded dark-skinned female
characters. I want our collective understanding of who
Black women are capable of being to be expanded. I want media to have more substance than a
slice of Wonderbread. I want writers, directors, and producers who
are creating something more than a regurgitated stereotype to be given the platforms to make
good stories. I want rounded dark-skinned female characters. Now if you’re a colorism denier and you’ve
made this far, your throat may be burning with the building scream that “we’re all
Black, it doesn't matter” and while there are plenty of easily accessible resources
kindly explaining why colorism actually very much does matter so that I don't have to,
I will say this: as we are producing more and more media with Black women as main characters,
we should still be looking at the quality of the content being created. More doesn't mean better. Trading in one shallow set of features worth
representing for another is not progress just because we switched out the set. I’ve said this before, and I will probably
say it again, but the messaging can be more damaging if we care more that the media has
been created than we care about what is actually being said. if you made it to the end, thank you for making
it to the end. I think this is coming out on or right before
the best holiday of the year, don't fight me fight your mama, Happy Halloween. there is also a full moon and the election
coming up, so while I mean this every time, I mean it even more right now: stay safe. i'll catch you the next echo chamber
