THE REDEFINITION OF BLACK FEMININITY

There are many times when I listen to black men discuss black women. I believe that many black men feel more comfortable discussing black women with a black woman who will remain quiet and not refute every feeling that he is sharing. I am a respectful listener. I love listening because I am fascinated by people, by their life stories, and by their thoughts. While I am usually being asked to speak, or expected to lead conversation in small settings, I prefer to observe the complexity of human nature. I enjoy being intrigued by what seems different and extraordinary. Many women have been taught to feel secure in what is predictable. Our conceptualization about security is fostered at a very young age. For this reason, many women react with nervousness and discomfort and fear when encountering unfamiliar people or unexpected situations.

Many black girls are often taught to accept a self-definition that is confining and restrictive. As a result, many black women hold assumptions about what other black women should be and should not be that are rooted in oversimplified perceptions of black womanhood. How many black women speak admiringly of black women in their families who sacrificed their educational goals and their personal aspirations for others? Unfortunately, many black girls were shown that putting the needs of others first is commonly expected for black women.

If you ask any black woman how she learned about womanhood, she will most likely mention that she was taught about womanhood by her mother, grandmother, aunts and by women who were part of her "village". There are advantages and disadvantages of learning about womanhood from women who have lived in the same environment, who have remained in the same socioeconomic class, and who have spent the bulk of their lives with people from their own culture. If a black girl is primarily (or exclusively) among black people in her formative years, she usually begins to formulate a definition about "what black people are" based on what she is being told black people are, and based on what she is being shown black people are. This informs her self-definition.

I have encountered many black people who will attempt to tell other black people what is and is not black thought, black culture, and black consciousness. They have formulated assumptions of those things based on what they were told "being black" and "thinking black" consists of. They assume that they were taught correctly, and believe that what they were shown encompasses the totality of the black experience.

When they encounter a person whose definition differs from their own, it is easy to decide, "that's NOT black". It doesn't fit into the definition they were handed in childhood and it doesn't fit into the definition they choose to adopt in adulthood.

Since I grew up in an all-white town, in a family where three cultures were intertwined, I learned about womanhood much differently than most black women I have encountered in my life. My parents exposed me to many cultures while I was young because my family traveled abroad for vacations. I saw women many different cultures when I was still developing a definition of my gender. I believe this is why my definition of womanhood was not based on how women defined themselves within one culture, one socioeconomic group or one nationality.

A friend of mine, who lives abroad, has made statements about "the African slave descendants in America" that reflect that their view of themselves is detrimentally influenced by and connected to what they were told about themselves by white oppressors and by white society. Nearly all black people whom I have spoken to about this issue agree that slavery and subjugation have had an impact on our self-definition as a people and as individuals. Every black person has not internalized subjugation, marginalization, or oppression to the same degree. Some, it seems, have not internalized it at all.

Many black people looked upon the victory of Barack Obama as a symbol of what is possible for the entire black race. Unfortunately, many black people still look at other blacks in order to envision how high is high. If they haven't seen another black person achieve it, then they don't believe that it is possible. It is a disturbing mindset for me to observe - yet it is prevalent and widely condoned within the black community.

A white teenager received her Ph.D. at the age of 18 and is now a college professor in Korea. Click here to read the article. I don't hear white people saying, "now we know what is possible for white people!" when a white person makes a major achievement that is well publicized. These utterances reflect the mentality of an oppressed group, and reflect a mentality of a people who can only believe in what has been shown to them. For some people, human achievement has to be personified in order for them to envision it. Even as a small child, I never doubted that a black woman could be elected president of the United States during my lifetime.

There are many blog discussions in the black blogosphere about how Michelle Obama's role as First Lady will change the view that white America has about black people. It is an overly simplistic and rather unrealistic notion. There are plenty of prominent black people who have received world acclaim and they were viewed as the "exceptions" to the black race - and not the new definition for the black race. How easily we forget that there have been many exceptional blacks who were influential in white society but their presence failed to changed the widely held perceptions that white America chose to perpetuate about blacks. Oprah's enormous worldwide popularity didn't alter the way that most white women defined black women. Those who are caught up in romanticism and symbolism, we begin to engage in fanciful notions that having a black president will change our stature as black people in society.

I was in a race and gender workshop many years ago. The participants were white women and black women. For one group exercise, we were given slips of paper. The white women had to document their perceptions about black women and the black women had to document their perceptions about white women. We were told that our responses would be anonymous. After everyone had put their slips of paper in the baskets, the white women were told to take the basket basket and read the responses out loud. The same words were repeated again and again:
strong
outspoken
angry
aggressive
brave
coarse
confrontational
intimidating
colorful
emotional

When it was time for the black women to share what was in the white basket, the same words were uttered repeatedly:
elitist
manipulative
duplicitous
passive aggressive
self-centered
unsanitary
narrow-minded
promiscuous
materialistic
insecure

The facilitator mentioned that all of the descriptions submitted about white women were negative. The facilitator asked if there was one positive attribute about white women that many black women often articulated among each other. The black women looked at each other quizzically - and then shook their heads no. Some white women in the room folded their arms. A few darted their eyes. The black women were asked if we were surprised about the responses in the basket from the white women. Many black women shrugged and expressed that they expected that they were going to be described in the way that they were.

When the facilitator asked the white women to react to the responses in the basket, the white women seemed visibly offended. They made comments that reflected that they believed the black women in the room had "issues" with white women and that the terms placed in the basket did not reflect how "other black women" have perceived them. An open and heated group exchange occurred. After permitting a verbal exchange for five minutes, the facilitator rang the bell. (It had been agreed at the start of the workshop that if the bell was sounded, everyone had to instantly become silent.)

The facilitator pointed out that the white participants did not want to believe the perceptions about them and therefore, attempted to isolate those perceptions to reflect the views of only black women in the room. The facilitator pointed out that the black women were willing to admit that the perceptions about them that were given by the white women were prevalent within society. The facilitator pointed out that by attempting to isolate the perceptions that were shared, there was an attempt to minimize the viewpoints that were given by the black women.

The facilitator mentioned that in (white) society, white women are taught to think of themselves with positive traits. She explained that most white women believe that others associate them with positive traits, so it was shocking and disturbing for them to hear that only negative characteristics were being attributed to them. Many white women in the room nodded their heads in agreement.

The facilitator surmised that since black women are accustomed to being described negatively in society, and familiar with the negative depictions of themselves, they were more apt to believe that the descriptions that were placed in the basket were prevalent among white people and not simply a reflection of the attitudes of the white women in the room. The facilitator observed that the descriptions placed in the basket by white women directly related to narrow images of black women that black women had often encountered in society. Many black women in the room nodded their heads in agreement.

Many traits that some black women believe they must exhibit are based upon their perceptions about how they must navigate white supremacist and white sexism in patriarchal constructs. They adopt traits that they believe will emotionally insulate themselves from black misogyny, commodification and black sexism within the black community.

What was interesting about the workshop was that the facilitator was able to help black women understand that they too had accepted certain traits as being "typical" for black women.

When we were in a small group exerise, I found it interesting to discuss femininity with white women. Black women seemed to speak of femininity in terms of docility. Many black women defined femininity in terms of being demure, being passive, being meek, being gentle. These were traits that were viewed negatively. White women seemed to speak of femininity in terms of "being a woman" and seemed to view femininity admirably.

I was reminded about the differences in the expectations of femininity between white men and black men when a man who read my post about "Black Masculinity and Its Impact on Black Women" sent a note. He asked me why so many black women "chose to be so masculine". He mentioned that he felt that white women embraced femininity while black women shunned it. A four-day email exchange ensued. I wanted to explore why his perceptions about women seemed so narrow. On the third day of our conversation, I asked him, "What's more appealing to most brothas - for a sista to be sexy, feminine or intellectual? Or a combination?" He said he thought that most brothas found a woman's sexiness to be most appealing, but he defined 'sexy' in a way that objectified women. The more we exchanged notes, the more I came to understand that he viewed a woman's sexual attractiveness in terms of both sensuality and femininity. This surprised me because I held an assumption that many brothas defined a woman's sexiness in relation to visual allure and arousal. I began to ask more men about their views about black femininity.

A few of my friends are cross-dressers. They wear women's clothing and different wigs and long weaves and women's make up. It is interesting to talk to them about how they choose to reflect their definition of femininity. They often make comments that reflect a belief that women who are viewed by men as the most unfeminine are those who are boisterous, brassy, cantankerous, obese, sarcastic, argumentative, vulgar, and unrefined.

I don't think that I embody the traditional depiction of femininity and I have never tried to. A long time ago, I was a cheerleader. I have never been told I was masculine by a man. I am most comfortable in a dress and heels, so I wear them every day of the week. I love long, flowing dresses in soft fabrics. I don't do housework and I don't like dirt. There is a sculpture in my house of a nude black woman who is kneeling and tossing her hair back with her eyes closed. I bought it because she looked very feminine and very liberated. It is interesting that almost every time a man comes into my house and notices that sculpture, I am asked if I posed for it. Not one woman has said that she thought the sculpture was me.

I remember an instance when a church member had to come to my house unexpectedly because I had forgotten to bring something to church that was needed for a meeting in the morning. I had just rolled out of bed when I answered the knock at the door. The next day at church, people were asking me, "is it true that you answered the door in a sequined gown?" (Church folks love to tell your business.) I chuckled and explained, "I was not wearing a gown. It was a lounger! And yes, it has a few sequins."

I do not define femininity in terms of attire or carriage.

I am often teased by my peers because I wear stilletos seven days a week. I have worn stilletos every day for at least 15 years. A couple of years ago, I had to call an ambulance to rush me to the hospital because of fluid in my lungs. My friend ran into the E.R. calling my name while security chased her down. She turned the corner to see me lying next to machines and attached to wires. She looked down at the floor beside my bed and chuckled. She leaned over and whispered in my ear, "girl when you get up out of here, I am telling everybody that you came into the E.R. wearing stilletos!" I smiled behind my oxygen mask, and shrugged my shoulders as if to respond: "well, what can I say?" I wrote on a piece of paper and handed it to her: "A true diva must have her stilletos, even in dire emergencies!"

Since my email exchange with one of my male readers, I have found that many black men equate femininity with sensuality. I believe that promoting black femininity has advantages that we may not have examined carefully. Black feminism did not represent femininity in its traditional definition. Womanism did not promote the notion of traditional femininity. I believe that the traditional definition of femininity was rejected by many women who believed that men were projecting their own concept of femininity upon women in order to create a narrow definition for women about themselves. The traditional definition of white femininity that was being depicted in paintings, in print ads, in movies, and in literary works was clearly being promulgated by white men and was therefore, widely dismissed by black women.

In films, in magazines, in literary works by men and by women, black women are never being depicted as wholesome, innocent, gentle, virginal, ethereal, or delicate. When we do not see those representations of ourselves, a mentality can be fostered that "we are not like that".

Rejecting the traditional definition of femininity became an act of liberation and self-acceptance for many black women. Androgyny was initially viewed by many as a feminist statement about the rejection of patriarchal definitions of womanhood. In the minds of many, androgyny is now being associated with lesbianism and homosexuality. A short afro, for example, is usually viewed as a "masculine" hairstyle. Women who tend to wear athletic clothing and tennis shoes and baseball caps when they are not participating in athletic activities are often viewed as "masculine". A woman who is deemed "masculine" is often assumed to be a lesbian.

I remember being in a store once and mistaking a man's wife for a man! I was deeply embarrassed. After apologizing profusely, I walked away interrogating myself about why her appearance led me to think that two men were standing there.

There are two vastly different concepts of the depiction of womanhood that have been embraced by women in my life span - androgyny and traditional femininity - neither of which seem to be embraced by black women to a large degree.

This blog focuses on collective examination, redefinition and redirection. Our self-definition reflects the parameters that we have given ourselves. The world takes note of those parameters and utilizes them in framing our existence. For this reason, I believe that it is empowering, critical and necessary for black women to begin to place a greater emphasis on the redefinition of black womanhood.

Many black women have accepted definitions that have been thrust upon them by black men, by white men, and by white society. Many black women have also accepted definitions of themselves that were drilled into their psyche by black women who were conditioned to accept patriarchal subjugation of their personhood.

I would like to engage in discussion about how black femininity can be redefined so that black women have taken control of the definition of black womanhood in a way that does not promote hetero-superiority and that does not allow for commodification of our sensuality.

The current issue of Ebony Magazine has a photo of Serena Williams in a bathing suit that has an intentional camera angle to display her often-discussed behind. Serena is very attractive and extremely fit. She has never been portrayed as a black woman who is well-read, well-educated, world-traveled or culturally sophisticated. Her depiction has been largely one-dimensional.

Many black women are disillusioned and demoralized by how we are repetitively being portrayed by black men who are hired by white conglomerates to depict black women through demeaning and insulting characterizations to the world. Many black women are angered by the extent that black-owned corporations that attempt to adhere to mainstream expectations of the commodification of black people. While I hear all of the gripes, I don't hear new definitions being introduced by black women that are being widely communicated.

I want to encourage intense discussion of black femininity among lesbian and heterosexual sistas so that together, we can fully examine the parameters we have adopted in relation to black womanhood and so that we will understand how the redefinition of black femininity will serve our collective objective of dismantling the prevailing over-sexualized, one-dimensional depiction of black women.

The Starting Point:

1 - Name someone who represents traditional femininity and someone who represents the definition of femininity that you are currently embracing.

2 - How were you taught about femininity as a child?

3 - How has your definition of femininity evolved?

4 - How has the depiction of white femininity impacted your definition of femininity?


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RELATED READING (Click on the title.)

Ethnic Notions (6-part documentary on the systematic conceptualization of black stereotypes)

Are Black Women Undesireable Because They Have Been Masculinized? (Racialicious)

The Bluest Eye Revisited

The Perilous and Imperiled Black Family Romance

The Essence of Res(ex)pectability: Black Women's Negotiation of Femininity In Rap Music and Music Video

Imagining Home: Gender, Race and National Identity 1945-1964