The Objectification Of Black Women

While the majority of black women accounts are lost to history due to anti-literacy laws, we do have a good idea of what their lives were, through slave narratives and other records. The life of a female slave in pre-civil war America was characterized by sexual assault, physical and mental abuse along with harsh treatment both in the fields and inside the master’s house. Female slaves were treated as property with no regards to their

“Oh my gosh! you’re so pretty for a black girl.” “You’re black so I know you can twerk.” In society these phrases may be considered as compliments for black women even though they are not. However, people only know what the media portrays black women to be. It emphasizes them as ghetto, loud, angry, and ignorant. Black women are more than the negative stigma that the media portrays. In our society, the media reinforces the plague of African American women by stereotypes and falsities originating from slavery. For young African American women, the majority of media portrayal, especially in music and film, is of a bulumpcious, sexually hyperactive golddigger. This negative image of a black women is damaging to the black community by implying

Karintha’s beauty is associated to dusk and it is described as something that cannot and is not seen, the narrator states, “O can’t you see it, O can’t you see it” (1). The men of the town cannot see Karintha’s inner self so they assume and form her into what their imaginations desire to see. Toomer emphasizes masculinity and the male gaze in this chapter as the reasons to why communication fails between Karintha and men. The men are infatuated with Karintha’s beauty that they construct her as innocent and harmless. They are obsessed with her virginity and desire to have it, the narrator states, “Men had always wanted her, this Karintha, even as a child, Karintha carrying beauty, perfect as dusk when the sun goes down. Old men rode her hobby-horse upon their knees” (1). Karintha’s association to virginity, beauty, and later promiscuity is indicated through nature which suggests that Toomer is pointing to an association of the female body to nature. The gender distinction is drawn and this chapter indicates that the male domination is the reason for miscommunication and misinterpretation between the male and female characters. Karintha is associated to nature and therefore men cannot understand her because she becomes a figurative symbol that men tie to sex and the land. Karintha becomes a part of nature because she is

Since the early 1900s, Black women have had a fascination with their hair. More explicitly, they have had a fascination with straightening their hair. The need to be accepted by the majority class has caused them to do so. Though the image of straight hair as being better than coarse hair still hasn’t left the Black community, there has been a surge of non straight hairstyles since the nineteen sixties. Wearing more natural hairstyles, which ironically enough include ‘weaves’ and ‘hair extensions’ has been considered to be more empowered and more enlightened. However, this image comes with a price, and though it appears the ‘natural’ hairstyle movement has advanced Black women, it has actually set

The stereotypical misrepresentations of African-American women and men in popular culture have influenced societal views of Blacks for centuries. The typical stereotypes about Black women range from the smiling, a sexual and often obese Mammy to the promiscuous Jezebel who lures men with her sexual charms. However, the loud, smart mouthed, neck-rolling Black welfare mother is the popular image on reality television. These images portrayed in media and popular culture create powerful ideology about race and gender, which affects daily experiences of Black women in America. With few healthy relationships portrayed in the media, Black women are left to make decisions based on the options

They mutilate her in order to silence her after tearing her precious chastity away from her unwilling body. They cut her tongue from her mouth and cut off her hands as to remove any and all forms of possible communication, therefore extinguishing any possible outcry of revealing truth. “An environment that makes it shameful to speak of rape disallows a critique of rape and the culture that sustains it” (Detmer-Goebel 221). Women whose most private and sacred piece of their spiritual, emotional, and physical humanity has been forcibly robbed from them are likely to be silenced or shamed. Along with the dangers in speaking, there are also dangers in silence. Women have fought long and hard to have a voice in society, and for the most part they’ve gained that respected privilege, yet when it comes to the main things that affect women so deeply, they are shut down and shamed for the things that they had no personal control over. In this silence they are tormented and blamed. Speaking out against the abomination of rape is so feared and rejected. Due to this, silence is not only physical, it is also metaphorical. As Derek Cohen quotes Peter Stallybrass in The Rape of Lavinia, “Silence, the closed mouth, is made a sign of chastity. And silence and chastity are homologous to woman’s enclosure within the house.”(256) This is saying that the general reason rape victims are silenced, is to save

This reading looks at the negative connotations and attitudes that are connected to the Black Females butt and how it defines their sexuality. Janell Hobson comments on the fact that society generally perceives black bodies as “grotesque” and connects this assumption to the ‘othering’ factor. The white body is what is deemed to be ideal and the pinnacle of beauty, the black female body is the opposite and something that is not to be desired. She goes on to talk about the focus on the black women’s backside in rap music. What it believed to be a celebration and acceptance for a black women’s butt in comparison to a white women’s, is in fact not the case. While white women are mocked for not having as large a butt, black women are still being

Economically, socially, and politically; black women are setup to remain at the bottom of society and whatever they do, society often find a way to keep them down. It is unfortunate that this is how our society operate. The fight towards a truly equal society is far in the future but many activists, writers, such as Bell Hooks, Alice Walker, and artists like Daniel Stewart have contributed greatly to bringing up the discussions around the black women’s experience and to push change in different shapes and

In her 1981 book “Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism” author and social activist Bell Hooks discusses the stigma against black women and how it is rooted in the combination of sexism and racism that black women experienced during times of slavery. Hooks explains that the stigma that this has caused effects black women even today in supposedly safe spaces such as the civil rights and feminist movements. She goes on to explain how the popular “feminist movement” caters only to white women while simultaneously demonizing black (and all other non-white), poor, and even disabled and queer women.

Bell Hooks argues that the neglect and all the brutal criticism of racism and sexism destroyed lives of black women, this was a huge contributor to why black woman had such a low rank in society. They were treated poorly and were considered a disgrace. Even though women in general had such a minimal role in society, white women never came close to horrors black women faced. The harsh comments, the brutal torture, every time they stepped out they became the most people whispered about. They became whispered words and hushed secrets. They weren’t allowed to be seen with white woman, shop at the same stores, and travel on the same buses or even use the same bathrooms. Hook argues throughout this that the stereotypes that were formed when slavery still existed were carried over to today’s society. All the labels and misguided information, the ruthless stereotypes that people still use to beat down black females are still being said right before our eyes. Hook examines that slavery and the degrading of black women gave the white society the okay to stereotype the black society. In a way we created all these issues which in fact we did, we’ve always lived in a judgmental society and if it weren’t for such harsh judgmental people I truly believe we would live in such a simpler world. To this day we still see

In Patricia Hill Collins’ “Mammies, Matriarchs, and Other Controlling Images,” she illustrates four main stereotypes that Black women face. The first controlling image applied to African American women is “The Mammy.” The mammy is the faithful, obedient servant to the white family and the stereotype attempts to hide the fact that black women who work for white families are being exploited. By loving and caring for her white “children” more than her own, the mammy symbolizes the dominant group’s perceptions of the ideal black female relationship to elite white male power. The smiling mammy signals her agreement with the situation, seemingly accepting her subordination (Collins, 71). Next is the image of the Black matriarch (Collins, 73). According to the stereotype, they spend too much time away from home, are overly aggressive and unfeminine, and allegedly emasculate their lovers and husbands. This stereotype attempts to control conduct by punishing black women for assertiveness and hides the oppression by making it seem that black women are naturally this way (Collins, 74-75).

Part II: Core Themes in Black Feminist Thought tackles five themes: 1) a legacy of struggle, 2) treatment of the interlocking nature of race, class, and gender, 3)

Black woman usually start in girlhood to focus their sexuality by performing with their posteriors. Whether in the African-American ring game, "Little Sally Walker," where young girls are encouraged to "shake it to the east, shake it to the west," or in the similar Afro-Caribbean "Brown Girl in the Ring," who is urged to "show me your motion". These circles of black young ladies give a female-focused space for attestation and joy in their bodies, even as these scripts set them up later for the male look. As grown-up ladies, this presentation gets to be more sexualized as well as racialized too, as dark ladies find their bodies subject to error and mislabeling by the prevailing society. That, as well as these bodies no more react to propelled

The objectification of women is well documented in this article. The men in the high-risk fraternities are treating the girls like an object. The men do not care about these girls’ feelings. The quote in the article “Did you know that this week is Women’s Awareness Week? I guess that means we get to abuse them more this week.” (137) This just shows that the men are not looking out for the well being of these females.