What Charlize Theron Doesn’t Get About Black Hollywood
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In Hollywood, where even legendary filmmaker George Lucas had to fight and ultimately use his own money to get an all-black film (Red Tails) made, black actresses still struggle to find quality work. When they do, they are rarely cast as ideals of beauty or objects of desire
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As well meaning as Charlize Theron is, she has no clue what it means to be a dark-skinned African-American woman whose beauty is seldom showcased in national commercials for perfumes or on mega billboards on Sunset Boulevard or even celebrated in the latest video by the hottest rappers
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Ok, but what should be done then? Turn them into objects of desire as well? Are women supposed to be objectified? And is it better and more equal to objectify and Photoshop black women on commercials and billboards just like white women are ? Or should we have some critique about this consumer culture where women are things to owned and made money from instead of human beings with dignified lives? This type feminism is not revolutionary but it’s actually very pro-establishment, and capitalism can easily adapt to that. It does not weaken anything but instead empowers the current structures of the economy and the society. There has to be a wider critique of the institutions, otherwise we will end up embracing the same institutions and all of its tools that generate so many of the problems.
- Jahanzeb Hussain
jahanzeb, while you have a point theres this and also the fact that apparently no one seems to want to grasp that having the entire planet and media tout you as the ugliest most undesirable women on earth over the last 500 years does take a very real psychological toll on black women. that always being made out to be inferior in relation to everyone else is shitty as fuck, and everyone seems to be ok w perpetuating it and agreeing and going “so the fuck what?”. for us sexism comes w an extra blade that is race. even when we win miss universe, you can expect everyone else to be complimented, and crickets for us.
every time black women ask for a bit of humanity everyone jumps in to say we are somehow being irrational for it. to stop being petty. to look at the bigger picture. to fight for anything and everything but themselves.
its not whining to be objectified. its screaming “cant i be human and loved and taken into consideration just as much as anyone else?” —-because being denied womanhood, humanity, access to all kinds of resources across the board come along with being considered “the ugliest, most ratchet and undesirable of all”.
