On Chloe, Lizzo, Megan and YOUR Problem with Confident Black Women
Examining society’s problem with confident Black women and the punishment we receive for "feeling ourselves"
This was originally posted on Medium.com in 2021; it has been updated and expanded for Substack in October 2022 :)
It’s a story as old as time: whenever a Black woman realizes her potential and experiences success, there’s a problem. We’re too sexy, too large, too loud, too Black. The truth is, society hates confident Black women. Unambiguous, confident Black women, at that. Fat, dark, short, tall, curvy, brown, slim—we’re always too much of one thing and not enough of the other thing. There’s something inherently terrifying about the audacious, proud, confident Black woman. And what do people do with something they fear? They try and destroy it.
If you’re a Black woman reading this, you probably don’t need me to tell you that. So the question remains: what is the confident Black woman supposed to do in a hostile world?
Deconstructing the Trope of the “Strong, Black Woman”
Before we can answer that, we have to examine where this idea of the “strong Black woman” comes from; as “strength” in Black woman is often conflated with confidence (as a negative trait, you understand).
The phrase “strong Black woman” evokes both myth and reality. The myth is of a proud, no-nonsense woman who faces hardship with wisdom, but in the end, she must accept her fate. The reality is a proud woman who has no other choice but to persevere, survive. It can often be difficult to distinguish between the two.
- Yvette Cozier, DSc, Associate Dean, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Justice, BU School of Public Health1
Dr. Cozier is, of course, correct—we have no other choice. We have to survive. Without the luxury of protection, we often have to forge ahead under the most inhospitable environments, and yet somehow, we persevere; beyond that, we succeed.
I think I first heard about this particular trope in early 2000s studies about teenage girls and body image issues (of which there were many; society had just started to dive into the effects of media on the developing mind). As a teenager in the early 2000s, the idea of me being studied fascinated me. I devoured them from all the popular women’s magazines: Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, etc.
All studies pointed to the same conclusion: while the media negatively impacted how adolescent girls felt about their bodies, BLACK girls were (slightly) less affected. In a 1997 study, 32% of white girls and 34% of Black girls were classified as obese, however, over 10% more of the Black girls studied were more likely to be “somewhat, or very happy about their body size.” What these studies showed, over and over again, was that Black girls and women did not invest as heavily into white standards of beauty to form opinions of ourselves. In fact, research reveals that by and large, white people “do not contribute significantly to the formation of Black self-esteem.”
We been out here creating our own standards of beauty, and that’s partially where I think our confidence comes from.
Here is where my theory starts to form (so, stick with me) — between the angry Black woman trope, the Black superwoman image (formed heavily around our history of enduring suffering) AND our own community-forged self-confidence? We’ve been set up.
Our greatest gift, and mental protection against white supremacy, it turns out, was also a curse.
Michelle, Beyonce, Serena, Chloe and Lizzo…Same Play, Different Actors
This is where Chloe, Lizzo, Megan, Serena, Simone, Michelle, Et.Al. come into the equation. Like me, you’ve watched ALL of these Black women unapologetically share themselves with the world, only for the world to volley back hatred.
We saw Harvard-educated FLOTUS Michelle Obama referred to as “an ape in heels.” One of the greatest athletes of all time, Serena Williams had ONE emotional outburst on the tennis court. It prompted an Australian cartoonist to portray her as a grossly-exaggerated caricature throwing a tantrum (never mind the fact that John McEnroe has had multiple, well-documented, temper tantrums on the court).
Even Beyoncé got it when her music began exploring themes around Blackness and Black womanhood, “I like my negro nose with Jackson Five nostrils” she proudly proclaimed on 2016’s Formation. That was the same year several police unions called for a boycott of her world tour because she supported “Black Lives Matter.”
So, color me unsurprised, but still extremely frustrated, when 22-year-old Chloe Bailey (one-half of the dynamic singing duo ChloexBailey) took to Instagram live last year to defend herself against negative commentary about her image. Like any other college-age young woman, Bailey is in her exploration phase; and apparently, people don’t like that. They seem to hate it, actually. Bailey was overcome with tears trying to not only defend herself but all confident Black women. While our white and other non-Black counterparts are allowed to openly explore their sexuality (I mean, who could forget the two years Miley Cyrus refused to put her tongue in her mouth while twerking across the USA in Jordans…?), but us? No. We have to be born knowing the rules for a game we were, quite frankly, set up to lose.
We saw the same old song and dance play out with musician Lizzo (whose fatness is literally an affront to some small-minded people, never mind the fact that you literally don’t have to look at her), except in Lizzo’s case, because she’s fat, even other Black women by and large deserted her because she’s a fat, Black woman who, “makes music for white women” (whatever that means).
This conversation also has to include H-town Hottie Megan thee Stallion, whose 5'11" frame continues to be a punch line about her gender, even in the wake of being shot in July 2020. Fashion models are routinely over 5'10," and yet I don’t think I have ever heard anyone refer to Kendall Jenner or Taylor Swift as a “ man.” No, those remarks are reserved for us; Black women who refuse to shrink, step back and take up less space.
Black Women Aren’t Afforded The Protection of Womanhood
What’s most infuriating about Megan’s treatment, besides the fact that she was literally SHOT, is how we know if she merely looked different, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Many reading this might be too young to remember, but when singer Ciara first hit the scene in 2004, there was a vicious online rumor about her being transgender. Let me be very clear: being transgender is not the issue; assuming Ciara was MTF transgender simply because she was tall and lean with the body of a dancer (because she is a dancer) and then spreading malicious online gossip about the lie, is the issue.
And it’s nothing but good ‘ol white supremacy at work. Taken in a larger societal context, Black women are often assigned the “Sapphire” stereotype: aggressive, hyper-masculine, and overbearing. The Sapphire berates her husband and children, she’s shrill and mean; a dictator who runs her household with an iron fist, even if white people are a “part” of that household (yes, I am talking about enslaved women and domestic servants). Interestingly enough, the Jim Crow-era rise of this popular caricature (and her counterpart, the “sassy mammy”) was a ploy by white supremacy to lessen the brutality Black women faced during enslavement. She’s not that oppressed, see? She gets to yell at us white folks, too.
We can see that stereotype continue in contemporary portrayals of Black women—where every failure of the Black community is traced back to Black women’s inadequacies, our nagging, our fatherless homes, our manliness. Megan is a young woman navigating the world after losing both her parents and her grandmother before the age of 25…do you think she gets any grace? Nope. That’s reserved for dainty women, pure women. White women.
What Was it Maya said? Oh Yes, “Still I’ll Rise.”
But you can’t keep a good [Black] woman down. And I guess that’s really the problem — it would be easy just to dim our light, or live within the box society has assigned us and not succeed, grow, or flourish. Even other Black women sometimes struggle to rectify their feelings towards confident Black women — and sadly, it’s understandable. How many times could you be shown, and proven, that you’re less than, before you start to believe it? The world hasn’t been kind to any of us, and too often that becomes ammunition for the very group of people who should understand MOST of all. Internalized misogynoir has taken a toll on us, and confident Black women seem to bear the brunt of the backlash.
But does that stop the confident Black woman? No. Hell no. I can’t speak for everyone, but I know my grandmother didn’t claw her way out of racist rural Houston, the daughter of perpetually poor sharecroppers, for ME to dim my light. Yes, society does have a problem with confident Black women, but that’s society’s problem; not Chloe’s, not Megan’s, not Lizzo’s and not mine. Still, I’ll rise.
https://www.bu.edu/womensguild/2022/02/07/the-strong-black-woman-dr-yvette-cozier/