Image of African American Women
Despite the strong presence of the beautiful, powerful, black women in the media, such as Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, and Beyoncé Knowles, African American females have been deemed unattractive in society’s eyes. These notions did not develop overnight, but remain as obstacles birthed from slavery. These stereotypes keep the black female incarcerated under the belief that they are not beautiful. However, black women have fought and are fighting these harmful perceptions in many different ways. My project will focus on two artists in particular, Maya Angelou and Kara Walker. I will look at three poems of Maya Angelou, Phenomenal Women, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and Still I Rise while examining the artwork of Kara Walker to compare the different approaches to transform the unfavorable images of African American women.
An acquaintance of mine expressed to me that he found dark girls “hideous.” I was shocked upon hearing this because not only was his comment insensitive and racist, he was a black as well. This comment did not surprise me as it is popular belief that dark girls are not attractive. In Hey Girl, Am I More Than My Hair?: African American Women and Their Struggles with Beauty, Body Image, and Hair Tracey Owen Patton provides a historical review on the emergence of black stereotypes, elaborating on how black women earned the status of inferiority. Black women are held to the Eurocentric expectations, causing these adverse perceptions to evolve from the created principle that white women are the only defining archetypes of beauty (Patton 26). The societal practice of comparing black women to white women sheds a negative light on the black female community, leading to the manife...
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...ale’s image is still being felt today, which can be clearly seen through the comment on my acquaintance. I am grateful for artists like Maya Angelou and Kara Walker for protesting the perceptions of black females and working to transform them. Angelou and Walker uses their work to demand respect for African American women and classify them as beautiful and crush their harm stereotypes once and for all.
Works Cited
Dekel, Tal. (2007). Sex, Race, and Gender: Contemporary Women Artists of Color, The Case of Kara
Walker. Alantis, 31(2), 82-93.
Feldstein, Ruth. (2012). “The World Was On Fire”: Black Women Entertainers and Transnational
Activism in the1950s. OAH Magazine Of History, 26(4), 25-29.
Patton, Tracy Owen. (2006). Hey Girl, Am I More than My Hair?: African American Women and Their
Struggles with Beauty, Body Image, and Hair. NWSA Journal, 18(2), 24-51.
Visceral. Raw. Controversial. Powerful. The works which Kara Walker creates have elicited strong and diametric responses from members of the art community. She manipulates the style of antebellum era silhouettes, intended to create simple, idealistic images, and instead creates commentaries on race, gender, and power within the specific history of the United States. She has also been accused of reconfirming the negative stereotypes of black people, especially black women, that the viewer and that the white, male dominated art world may hold. This perspective implies that both her subjects and her artworks are passive when confronted with their viewers. Personally, I believe that more than anything, Walker’s work deals in power -- specifically, the slim examples of power black individuals have over their
This term paper was written to shine a little light on one of America’s extraordinary women, Maya Angelou.
The Author of this book (On our own terms: race, class, and gender in the lives of African American Women) Leith Mullings seeks to explore the modern and historical lives of African American women on the issues of race, class and gender. Mullings does this in a very analytical way using a collection of essays written and collected over a twenty five year period. The author’s systematic format best explains her point of view. The book explores issues such as family, work and health comparing and contrasting between white and black women as well as between men and women of both races.
Jackson, P. (1992). (in)Forming the Visual: (re)Presenting Women of African Descent. International Review of African American Art. 14 (3), 31-7.
...can also be applied to other groups. She focuses on the experiences of black women as they respond to this limitation, but her underlying ideas can be used to discuss other peoples’ experiences as well, especially in terms of how they define themselves in relation to the controlling images associated with them. While Skylar is not part of the demographic Hill Collins discusses explicitly, she does illustrate the interaction between controlling images and self-definitions, including resistance, and using dialogue and concrete experiences to determine whether knowledge claims are accurate. Most people, regardless of their place in society, experience controlling images, or someone else’s “first impressions” of them, with consequential limitations imposed on their abilities to be who they really are. Thus, it is important to examine how to confront and challenge this.
Cox’s work is exactly the type of discussion that is needed to move the discourse on black women’s bodies from being regarded as part of a stereotype to being regarded as individuals with beautiful differences. This is not a ‘re-mirroring’ of the ‘un-mirrored,’ but rather a creation of a new image, void of previous misconceptions but filled with individuality. The stereotypes concerning black women’s bodies needs to be abolished, not reinvented like Hobson suggests in “Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture.”
Smith, J, & Phelps, S (1992). Notable Black American Women, (1st Ed). Detroit, MI: Gale
...nd attractive. It creates a double consciousness that is difficult to reconcile. Carla Williams argues that “given the legacy of images created of black women… it is an especially complex task for contemporary black women to define their own image, one that necessarily both incorporates and subverts the stereotypes, myths, facts and fantasies that have preceded them. (Wallace-Sanders et.al, 196) The root of the problem lies within our society. While very culpable, mainstream music and advertisements are not the only promoters of female objectification; the key is unwinding the inner tensions between these two groups. There is a need for the promotion of female solidarity, regardless of their skin color. We need to rid society of the evil of racism—only then will conceptions surrounding African Americans parallel and be as positive as those surrounding white women.
Maya Angelou lived through a time where she was discriminated against for not only her race but also her gender. In her poem “Still I Rise” Angelou sarcastically talks about how no matter what is thrown at her she will rise above it and she will do it with resilience and confidence. Her poem discusses racism and sexism and gives minorities and women a sense of hope to overcome and endure both of those things. Angelou’s self-assurance in the poem makes you believe that you too can overcome whatever obstacle. Although this poem was intended for blacks, and women, and specifically black women, the poem helps build up strong and courageous people no matter what race or gender you are. Maya Angelou in “Still I Rise” uses both pathos and ethos to
By the twentieth century, slavery had damaged black pride, and made it known that black features were inferior. When it came to black women and their hair, black women desperately wanted to match the standard of “white” beauty. Walker’s solution to this was to create a look that was Afro-American without trying to imitate whites. Walker spoke about beauty emphasizing that to be beautiful does not refer to the complexion of your skin, or the texture of your hair, but having a beautiful mind, soul, and character.
The early 1900s was a very challenging time for Negroes especially young women who developed issues in regards to their identities. Their concerns stemmed from their skin colors. Either they were fair skinned due mixed heritage or just dark skinned. Young African American women experienced issues with racial identity which caused them to be in a constant struggle that prohibits them from loving themselves and the skin they are in. The purpose of this paper is to examine those issues in the context of selected creative literature. I will be discussing the various aspects of them and to aid in my analysis, I will be utilizing the works of Nella Larsen from The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, Jessie Bennett Redmond Fauset, and Wallace Brown.
The black woman in the U.S. holds a precarious role: she is a woman, she is black and she is quickly becoming the dominant force of her people. The black woman is increasingly the sole bread winner in her household because she is forced into that position because of the...
Kara Walker’s piece titled Gone: An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred b 'tween the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart represents discrimination on basis of race that happened during the period of slavery. The medium Walker specializes in using paper in her artwork. This piece is currently exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art. Even though this artwork depicts slavery, discrimination is still an issue today in America, the country where people are supposedly free and equal. Even though slavery ended in the 19th century, we still see hints of racial discrimination for African Americans in our society. Walker uses color, image composition, and iconography to point out evidence of racial inequality that existed in the
The purpose of writing this paper is to inform one of the struggles African American women had to endure not only from the Europeans, but from their own people. The lifestyle of African American women in the Black community will be described in detail. Not only will this paper examine the struggle for equality, it will show how gender roles played a...
Maya Angelou was a highly skilled poet who used her writer’s voice to strengthen and guide civil rights. Angelou was born in St. Louis on the 4th of April, 1928 and is still currently writing (bio.com). A victim of sexual assault, Angelou spent years after as a virtual mute (poetryfoundation.org). Facing racial prejudice and discrimination through all her youth, a lot of her works were centred around prejudice and civil rights (poetryfoundation.org). Angelou is a strong civil rights activist and her writings such as I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings certainly reflect that. Angelou was an influential and passionate person with strong motives . Angelou was the first African-American woman to have a non-fiction bestseller, impacting the literature world (bio.com). Angelou was a coordinator of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and worked with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X to bolster civil rights (poetryfoundation.com). Overall, Angelou’s works have affected not only poetry but fr...