Here’s something I wanted to talk about every time a movie comes out that shows us an “empowered” White girl and says how she’s some sort of role model for all women because she shows that women don’t have to be fragile or delicate.
As much as I loved Brave and despised Snow White and the Huntsman, people saying this sort of thing really, really irritates me.
Know why it irritates me? Because so many women don’t get to be seen as fragile, delicate, or vulnerable. Most of these women are women who look like me.
The Strong Black Woman is practically a trope, one that presents Black girls and women as being superhuman rhino-hided she-beasts (h/t witchsistah) who can bear physical, mental, emotional, social, and financial burdens far greater than those “normal” or “real” women would put up with. Abuse? Rape? Poverty? Racism? Sexism? Trauma? No problem. The Strong Black Woman can take it and keep being her sassy, fabulous self like it didn’t mean nothing (Does that sound familiar, True Blood fandom?).
Black women don’t get to be princesses. We are never damsels. And we most certainly do not have people lining up to take care of us or help us even when we need it most. We’re not strong because we choose to be. We’re strong because we have to be. For us to acknowledge our own vulnerability, to confront our own pain and fear and grief, to allow ourselves to be finite and human, is apparently forbidden.
Everyone needs to read this!
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The Black Cat, Edgar G. Ulmer, 1934
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Top 5 Horror Films by Katie C. Turner on Flickr.
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» Contrarian Movie Titles
Debbie Doesn’t Dallas
Divine Secrets of the Nein-Nein Sisterhood
Spies Don’t Like Us
A Kraftwerk Orange
The Cider House Blows
Animal Fifth-Floor Walkup
He’s Just That Into You
In No Way Small Women
The Discreet Charm of the Proletariat
Casino Jim Beam
The Man Who Was Actually There the Whole Time
The Sixth Nonsense
Skeptic Pizza
Lamar Anderson doesn’t Dallas either, but she’ll Charleston if you ask nicely.
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Watch POC LGBT films online (BOOOOST!!!)
PLEASE ADD AND REBLOG A DIRECT LINK TO WATCH THE FILM (subtitles and language of the film) let’s all have a chance to watch POC lgbt films! :)
- Pariah (black lesbian film) (English no sub)
http://www.sockshare.com/file/C27B8D497CD6B586#
- Kamikaze Girls (Japanese film, heavy gay subtext) (English sub)
Miao Miao (Taiwanese lesbian film) (english sub)
