Body Politics: The Black Female Body in American Society

       
            Several millennia ago, when I was still in high school and consequently subject to the gross indignity of a mandated dress code, I and many other students began to notice a trend in the students who were typically accused of violating the dress code. They were nearly always black and female. Some were tall, some were short. Some were buxom and curvy, some were flat-chested and thin. However, curiously enough, their Black femaleness was sufficient evidence enough to override their physical differences and incite adult men in positions of power to deem them "too sexy" for school. Simultaneously, the white girls of the school twitched about in miniskirts, Nike running shorts, and spaghetti strap tops that showed more sternum than actual breast tissue (oh, to be flat-chested and young!), never eliciting so much as a blink from school administrators (though, sometimes, the Humbert Humberts of the administration staff would stop a white girl to compliment her on her short dress, leering at her Lolita-smooth legs as she scurried off to class).

          High school is a time when young men and women experiment with style, sometimes striving to see just how far they can push our cultural boundaries with their style of dress and expression. It is also, conveniently, the years when Black girls and women begin to realize that their bodies are indecent, that they are not their own.

          This discrimination extends well into adulthood as Black women (as well as Asian and Latina women, who are subjected to the demeaning stereotypes of the "submissive geisha" and the "hot tamale," respectively) struggle to express themselves within a society that has cultivated an unnatural fear and suspicion of the Black female body.

          A clear example of this in modern pop culture would be the Nicki Minaj/Lady Gaga dichotomy. Nicki Minaj rose to prominence in 2009 as an up-and-coming female rapper within the overwhelmingly male and historically misogynistic (particularly against Black women) hip hop industry. Despite her sponsorship by well-known rapper Lil Wayne, Minaj fielded credibility issues about her lyrical skills and intense criticism from both Black and White media outlets about her eccentric style of dress. At the height of Minaj's album Pink Friday's popularity, Minaj's outfit choices were labeled "ratchet," "trashy," "slutty," "hood," and "ghetto." To add perspective, while Minaj faced criticism for her experimental dress, her White contemporary Lady Gaga was lauded for her "avant garde" and "inspiring" fashion choices (these were comments said about an individual who wore a dress made of raw meat). Interestingly, despite the clear visual similarities between the two women's outfit choices, only one was featured in Vogue, Glamour, and Harper's Bazaar magazine, whereas the other was relegated to MediaTakeOut and other obscure Black publications. Whereas Gaga's near-nudity on several occasions was regarded as a complex feminist statement against the patriarchy, Minaj's skimpier outfits were deemed "unacceptable" and "degrading to women."

          Historically within American culture, negative campaigns against the Black female body began with the origination of the Jezebel trope during the nineteenth century. Drawn from the biblical Jezebel figure, the Black Jezebel of the South was a hypersexualized terror who lacked sufficient control over her raging sexuality. She was a danger to the sexually and ideologically "pure" White female population and would seduce and trap any man- especially a White man- who crossed her path. Of course, this myth was created largely as a justification for the systematic rape of enslaved (and later, free) Black women by slaveowners, overseers, and assorted townspeople, but that tidbit of truth is usually lost within the annals of history.

          Thus, it is important to recognize that there is no scientific or anthropological truth to the idea that the Black female body is any more sexually attractive or destructive than the bodies of any other ethnic group. However, it is this unverbalized logical fallacy that parades through our culture and stifles Black female creative expression. The societal rationale generally goes: when a White woman does something socially questionable with her body, it is immediately classified as creative expression and therefore must be protected at all costs. When a Black woman attempts such a feat, it is immediately perverse and incendiary and therefore must be subdued before it-- or she-- can infect the general population with wanton sexuality.

          The idea that society has a say in the way that a woman may perceive her own body is outrageous enough, but the additional restrictions and criticisms placed upon Black women as they attempt to form their own complex sexual and social identities are biased and dangerous to the progression of society as a whole. The mass shaming of Black female bodies (especially when this shame is placed in direct contrast to the effusive praise bestowed upon Eurocentric female aesthetic ideals) results in the (at least brief) internalization of these ideas for many Black women as they begin to fear and despise their bodies, their sexuality, and their potential to make creative contributions to society. And a woman who is shamed becomes weak and malleable, easily tricked into the throes of mediocrity or the arms of a catcaller who has somehow managed, through crude psychological control, to make her believe that she has no right to her body, her identity.


And how could he be wrong when an entire society stands in haughty judgement behind him?


But he is wrong. And so are the selective dress codes, the suppression of Black female creativity, and the oversexualization of the Black female body.


Besides, my skirts in high school really weren't even that short.

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