Roxane Gay Bad Feminist Summary

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Black Female Misconceptions
As a black woman in America’s society there are different stereotypes placed upon you, especially throughout media. Roxane Gay’s essay called Bad Feminist talks about her implications of being a feminist. Gay has a Ph. D. in rhetoric and technical communication, and has done many works on different social issues (Barrios 168). In this passage, she discusses the complexities of being a feminist, and how she feels like she is not fit to be a good feminist. However Gay ultimately comes to the conclusion that she wans to be a femensit, because not being a feminist is worst. Gay goes on to discuss the essential feminist, then she discusses how she fits into feminism, and she then discusses states her final position in feminism. I would like to discuss the …show more content…

In her piece Gay mentions these essential versions with different names in “working against these trenchant archetypes black women are forced into (angry black woman, mammy,Hottenot, and the like” (Gay 171). In this quote Gay gives the names of what the most common stereotypes of black woman are though society. The first type is the “jezebel”. This version of the black woman is hypersexualized and wants to engage in sexual activity all the time. This image of the hypersexualized black women is across all forms of media, but is prevalent In music videos and reality TV. The second version of the black woman is the “mammy”. She is a fat, old, and dark skinned. The purpose of these traits were to prove to society that black women are unattractive. Another purpose was to show society during Jim Crow that black women are meant to be domestic workers. The mammy character is found in books, likes Uncle Tom Cabin, advertising like Aunt Jemima, and movies where Hattie McDaniel was the first black woman to win an Oscars in 1939 for playing a mammy character in the movie Gone with The Wind. The last most common stereotype about black women in media

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