January 1, 2023
episode description
I love the increased representation that I’ve been seeing in the media lately. From cereal commercials to blockbuster movies, there has been a noticeable movement to feature a greater range of actors with different appearances. But I can’t help but notice the narrow box that Black women keep finding themselves in with the representation of only one kind of Black women. Why does this keep happening? And what does it say about us as a society?
Links: Buzzfeed Article: Mixed Race Celebrities Glamour Tiana Article: 2018 Disney Tiana Scandal Color of Change: https://colorofchange.org Tik Tok Video: Overmasculinization to Hyperfeminity
transcript
Today we are gonna be talking about the whitewashing that occurs to black female main characters in book to movie adaptations. And I have two core examples that haunt me to this day.
My first example is The Sun is Also a Star by Nicole Yoon. It's a movie adaptation that came out in 2019, and I remember being really, really, really excited about this announcement because I'm such a big fan of her books. And I was like, this movie's gonna be so iconic. Like we're talking like the next Twilight or something. Some kind of romance movie epiphany was gonna occur in the world because of this movie— but that didn't happen.
First of all, let me say I really love this book because of the connection it has to Jamaica. I have Jamaican heritage so I really connected when I read this book. I was really excited cause I don't remember seeing a lot of books marketed towards my demographic at the time, which was like the young adult book world, with a main character who is Jamaican.
And not just Jamaican, like a Jamaican American. So I really love this book, like I fell in love with this book. Like hard—head over heels in love with this book.
One time I remember that I recommended this book to a friend while I was in high school and she said that she doesn't really like to read books where the couple in the romance book is an interracial couple.
And I was just blown away when she said that. I just had a loss for words and honestly I felt a little bit insulted because she had like kind of lowkey criticized one of my favorite books. And thinking about that, what she said now, like looking back on it, I kind of wonder if she still has that same sentiment now and I kind of wonder like what she talking about, is she talking about like subscribing to, or like only wanting to read books that showcase black love in its purest form?
Like a black woman loving a black man? Like what is she talking about? I just, I don't know. I was just so excited to see a black woman at the center of a book. And the book is not like, sad or about slavery or discrimination. I was just excited about this book and I was blown away that she wasn't as excited as me.
So that was really interesting and that one hurt my feelings a little bit.
So the actors who played the characters in this book were Yara Shahidi, she played the main character in this book, and Charles Melton, who played the the love interest the male main character in this book.
Now, let's talk about these actors. I have nothing against these actors, and I'm sure they're great actors. I watched the trailer briefly when I was kind of like, oh, maybe I actually should have watched this. But Yara Shahidi, she, ethnically she is, has an African American and Iranian background. So her mother was African American and her father was Iranian.
And Charles Melton, he had a white dad, and his mom was is Korean. So that kind of grinded my gears because I was like, both of the lead actors are mixed, like from mixed races, like—I don't know.
I just, I just feel like Hollywood has this obsession with diluted ethnicity, if that makes sense. Like it's not that I'm criticizing these actors, it just feels like, a person who was fully Korean or a person who was fully African American or Jamaican American didn't have a chance against them because they were too ethnic for Hollywood.
So the next example that I want to talk about is The Hate You Give by Angie Thomas. That was a movie adaptation that came out in 2018. So both of these examples are coming out around relatively the same time, and they were kind of like double insults. Like as soon as I got over the first one, the next one came out and like insulted me again.
I was like, ah, how could they do this? It was just like a lot because the main character is played by a Amandla Stenberg, um, who goes by she/her/they/them pronouns and identifies as non-binary. Their ethnic background is African-American and Danish, so their mom is African-American and their dad is Danish.
So I kind of wanted to talk about like the book cover comparison of the main character portrayed, which her name is Starr in this case, versus the actor's appearance. Now the actor's skin tone is lighter and her hair is looser and texture than the person who is portrayed on the cover. So that was kind of like, ugh.
But I don't have anything against Amandla Stenberg. She played Rue in The Hunger Games, which I loved her in the Hunger Games. Like I fell in love with her as a young girl. She was really important representation for me to see her. And she was just, she looked so beautiful in that movie. And she also was in one of Nicole Yoon's movie adaptations where they played the main character of in Everything, Everything.
And I kind of didn't have sour feelings towards this movie adaptation because a Amandla Stenberg, they played a character who the book already explicitly mentions that the character is of a mixed race background. So this role kind of felt like it really fit her. But when they played the main role of The Hate U Give, I kind of felt like this one might not have been for her.
Now at granted, I haven't watched either of these movies, but I did read both of the books and I kind of didn't watch the movies because the casting alone made it feel kind of inauthentic and upset me, so I just avoided it. But I did find this article where Amandla Stenberg said something really interesting about her ethnic background and what advantages it gives her.
So let me read that quote for you. Amandla Stenberg said, "Something interesting has happened with me, Yara and Zendaya. There is a level of accessibility of being biracial that has afforded us attention in a way that I don't think would've been afforded to us otherwise. Me and Yara and Zendaya are perceived in the same way, I guess because we are lighter-skinned black girls and we fit this interesting place of being accessible to Hollywood and accessible to white people in a way that darker-skinned girls are not afforded the same privilege."
Wow. Go off literally exactly what I was thinking. Because it just feels like, kind of like a cop out to cast these same three girls, you know, Amandla, Yara, and Zendaya. And they're phenomenal actors. It's just that it feels like they're purposefully overlooking other very talented actresses. In favor of black women that are more palatable to the white audiences, not just—well, like I said, whiter, I meant wider—but also whiter.
Both is true. Both audiences find this appearance of blackness more accessible, palatable, tolerable than like a darker-skinned black girl with coarse 4C hair.
Now let's look at the IMDB ratings, which was, uh, very interesting, to say the least. So The Sun is Also A Star, it got a 5.9 outta 10, which is like yeesh.
And honestly, I'm not that surprised because when I watched the trailer, there was some parts, like some lines that were so cringey, and I was like, how could they do my favorite book like this? How could they tarnish its reputation? Like, I swear, I swear, I feel like I'm fighting for my life. I swear the book wasn't that bad.
Like, I swear the book is amazing. But, uh, it was kind of cringey when some of the actors delivered some of their lines, especially the male love interest. Like, it was kind of like, ugh, kind of. I don't know if I like that. That didn't, that didn't go off the way you thought it would, like it didn't work.
But The Hate U Give has 7.5 outta 10. Also, I've not seen that movie. It kind of feels like an inauthentic call to action. Granted I haven't seen these movies, so I could be totally off, but just from the trailers alone, it kind of felt like a we can change the world and anything we try our hardest to do we can achieve, like a we can change the world type vibe.
Like that's the vibes that was giving me that kind of message. So I just didn't, I didn't feel the need to watch it. And also I kind of didn't really love that book either. So I also didn't have like a strong motivation to want to watch that. So I think we're grappling with this really interesting concept here with the idea of measuring your blackness as a mixed person.
Like are you less black just because you're mixed? Like are you diluted? You know, like I said earlier, um, but I think the reality is that most people, most African-Americans or people from the African diaspora—the Black diaspora who have encountered colonialism to some extent some percentage of them is bound to be mixed.
Like even for me, my DNA results from Ancestry was like almost 25% white, which was mind blowing to me. I was like, oh, take it back. Like take it back. Tell me it's not true. But it's just the reality that we live in. Like we're all mixed to some degree in the black diaspora.
But the problem is not that you need to measure your blackness as a mixed person, because when we think of Barack Obama, do we think about him as a mixed person or a black person first?
You think about him as a black person. Or like Megan Markle in her recent documentary that talks about how people perceive her as a mixed person. How black you appear on the outside sometimes determines how black people consider you to be, which, you know, all mixed people, if their mom or dad, one of them is white and one of them is black they same amount of mixed, it shows up in different ways.
But here's the thing, the problem is not that mixed actresses are being cast as black characters. The problem is that more often than not, only mixed actresses are being given the opportunity to play leading black roles. And I wanna put that emphasis on leading because those are those roles that are getting played by Zendaya and Yara and Amanda.
And I think it's important to acknowledge that there are people in the black community that look like these actresses because as we know, blackness is not limited to just one kind of appearance. But I think that especially when the story is romance-based Hollywood or casting directors refuse to let the main character be like someone who is undeniably Black.
Someone that doesn't fit that kind of standard of ambiguity, in regards to their blackness where they can like, kind of look less black than like the average black person in America. A far as like having more Eurocentric features. And I think, I think this is a problem mainly because when these romance based stories only have a black girl that looks one type of way, it begs a question about what desirability, what appearance desirability takes. It's essentially telling all other black girls that don't look like Yara or Zendaya or Amandla, that their appearance is not desirable in the same way that these mixed actresses appearances are. And I feel like we keep going on like this hamster wheel. We keep dealing with this over and over and over again.
Cuz I'm thinking about that scandal that Disney had with Princess Tiana in 2018 where that, Wreck It Ralph Sequel movie was coming out. And there was like that scene with all the princesses and Tiana looked completely different. Like her hair was looser. She had little hazel highlights in her hair and her nose was smaller.
Like it was like, who is that black girl? It has to be Tiana cuz she's the only black princess in Disney. So it was just, you know, a process of elimination, but there was a lot of backlash in that clip. And rightfully so because it's like, how could you do that to our darling Tiana, like literally an iconic queen.
How could you do that? And it was really interesting to me cuz the entire clip is only about like a minute long. And overall I thought the clip was a little bit cringey because it was like, the final line where the princesses ask one of the Wreck It Ralph Main characters, "did all of your problems get solved when a big strong man showed up?"
Like they, that's one of the questions they asked to determine if she could be considered a princess or whatever. That was a little cringey. I appreciated their like attempt at self-awareness that the stories of a lot of princesses are deeply ingrained in misogyny and do not align with a lot of feminist values, like in the ability to make fun of the stereotypes placed on princesses.
But it kind of fell flat a little bit and maybe I am just looking at it with like a different perspective. Because this was what— almost five years ago now, that's crazy, but it's almost five years ago.
Amidst the backlash to this, you know, gentrified Tiana, the voice actress of Tiana and the organization Color of Change met with Disney to discuss how they would reanimate Tiana to make it more true to her original appearance and less, um, making her features seem less Eurocentric in the way that they had originally made her. And I really liked what the Color of Change, this organization, their statement that they put out in response to Disney's decision to reanimate it.
They said, "Disney's decision to restore Princess Tiana's image to that of an unapologetically black princess with full lips, dark skin, and dark hair, and Ralph Breaks the Internet Wreck It Ralph:Part Two is a victory for Color of Change members, black children and their parents, and black audiences who want to see the variety of shades, shapes, and sizes of black characters accurately represented."
That is beautiful. That's beautiful and that's really the core messages I've been trying to get out at this whole episode. Like the variety of shades, shapes, and sizes of black characters that we see in our society. I wanna see that in not just the books, cuz we are starting to get there in the books. We're slowly but surely starting to get there, but I also wanna see it in the movies that are based on these books.
And it kind of feels like if the publishing industry is gonna put all this effort into increasing diversity in our books, but not make ensure that that same diversity is maintained, is preserved in the movie adaptation of the book, what's the point?
You know, because the movie reaches a larger audience in most cases than the book does. So if we're not gonna maintain that message, like how, what is, what is the point of putting all this effort in the beginning? I mean, obviously there's a point, but you guys get what I'm saying. It kind of feels counterintuitive.
The Color of Change Organization is a really cool organization. Their motto is, we design campaigns powerful enough to end practices that unfairly hold black people back and champion solutions that move us all forward until justice is real. That's crazy. That's, that's a cool organization. I'm gonna definitely look more into this organization and what they stand for because it feels very inspiring just from the things they've said and the statement they put out in regards to Tiana's reanimation.
So why am I even talking about this in general? Like, why do I care that mixed lighter skin actresses are playing these roles? Like some would say stuff like shouldn't I just be glad these roles exist in media, that black people are being represented in any form, um, in some form compared to in the past when they weren't.
And to some extent, I feel kind of like sometimes when I talk about this, like I'm being ungrateful, but really I'm not. Like, why should I have to settle? For like two dimensional representation. Why should I have to settle for like low, minimal effort representation from the media that I consume? I shouldn't and I am not which is why I'm making this episode.
But I think that this is important mainly because when we only see mixed actresses as representations of the black community, their hair is not always representative of everyone's hair in the black community and just, just everything about them. It doesn't encompass all of the lives, the perspectives, the appearances of black people in America.
And I just think limiting ourselves to these three actresses is doing a disservice to how people perceive the black community.And what they perceive as desirable, because once we start showing all types of black women experiencing romance and experiencing being loved to the fullest extent in the way that they deserve, until we do this, until we're truly representative of all black women, we are still gonna be stuck in this, this mindset that black women have to fight to be loved the way they deserve, in ways that women of other races don't relate to.
Because it feels like sometimes I think, and I think a lot of black women can relate to this, that we are not desirable to any community. And I know that that's not true. That's just a generalization. But a lot of the times, because of the media that we consume or are faced with, it feels like nobody wants black woman or finds black women attractive.
There's the black men who don't want black women. The white men don't want black women. The Latino men don't want black women. The Asian men don't want black women, it just feels like black women are at the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to desirability.
And when we portray these mixed actresses only in roles where black women are desirable, it continues to enforce this narrative that black women who don't look or have Eurocentric features or lighter skin with, you know, freckles and all kinds of things, or looser hair, like 3B hair type. If you don't have that, then you're just not attractive.
You know that this is not true, and we all know that, and we all have our own journey to accepting our beauty as something that is not questioned as a black women. And honestly, how could we question it when all kinds of women are going through a lot to look like us with lip injections and self tanning and stuff like that.
Matter of fact, it's so awkward to me when I'm in a predominantly white setting and the white people are talking about like tanning. It almost feels like kind of prejudiced to some extent. I know it's not like, it's definitely not, but for some reason I feel like they're talking about me low key cuz they're like, oh my gosh, I'm so pale. I need to go to the beach. Or I need to go sit in the sand. Or I found this great self attaining lotion. It doesn't even look like you're wearing anything. Like what? What are you talking about? Like you're going through all this to get darker skin, something that I have naturally.
I'm not necessarily hating, but I, I didn't grow up appreciating my brown skin. So it's just, it's just an interesting dynamic to be in that situation.
Part of the reason why I think this is so important is not just because I wanna see black woman being desired and loved and attractive in media. It's that message being communicated to a community who is starting to believe it. I mean, I even believe it sometimes.
I saw this TikTok, which I'll link in the podcast description, that was talking about the masculinization of black woman, which influences a hyper-feminine lifestyle for a black woman. To the point where you're like, you can't leave the house without makeup because you feel like you look like a boy.
Which like ties in perfectly to what I was saying in the learning how to do my 4C hair episode because it's just like, you feel like people perceive you as very masculine, which in turn is like not desirable as a woman. And so you, like, you have this need to overcompensate to show, yes, I am a woman.
Look at my boobs. Like, not look at my boobs, but like, look at my cleavage, or like, look at me wearing tight clothes. Even if that's not necessarily how you dress on the regular. Um, and the comments for this TikTok like literally broke my heart. Like one of them was like, "I still get called a guy even when I wear hyper-feminine outfits.So I just wear what's comfortable now."
Another one said, "I literally was told, I look like a man by a black man. And it broke me to pieces." Another one, "when I show my natural hair, I always feel like I have to show my skin or I'm not gonna feel right. Feeling like a boy, feeling like I look like a boy without earrings as a kid."
Or, "I felt like I was non-binary because no one treat treated me like a woman." Another says, "the need to wear lashes and lip glosses all the time." And, "When you used to cry cuz you looked like a boy with your natural hair." Oh my gosh. "I'll never know if I'm non-binary or just suffering from society stereotypes and trying to run away from them."
Wow. Look, this, this one is kind of, I think this one is good. This is happier. "I have dark skin and my first name is unisex. I was constantly misgendered as a child, both accidentally and with malice. I didn't even realize what it had done. Now I'm on TikTok finding my femininity." I love, this is so sad and true, like why does society makes us feel so lost, oh my gosh.
And then black women in that same sentence will get ridiculed for wearing overly long lashes or like, you know, putting a lot of makeup on or very long hair. Or skintight clothes and are criticized and called sluts and whores because of the way they dress or because of the way they look, or ghetto, because of the way they wear their makeup or their earrings.
And it can all stem back to the masculinization of black women, you know, by society. And then them in turn overcompensating with hyper-feminine dressing or styles and stuff like that. So it's just really like a vicious cycle, I guess, and that's why I think like writing black woman characters, A bunch of different scenarios, worlds, you know, genres is so important to me, especially as a writer, um, to increase representation of black women in all forms, and that black women are women without needing to prove that they're women.
Like you just are a feminine person. If you, if you identify as feminine, you are feminine, and you don't need to prove it to anyone by dressing a certain way or presenting yourself in a certain way, which is why I think it's so important. That, um, the characters are not whitewashed and, um, that we're showing all types of black women in all types of scenarios.
I feel very proud of the role that these actresses have in the black community. I think they've had a phenomenal impact by just seeing more black women more frequently in major blockbuster movies. And I don't wanna feel like I'm discounting their, their hard work and the moves that they're making to support the black community.
I definitely see it and I definitely think it's amazing, but I still want more from Hollywood. I wanna see a wide range of black women in different environments, also black women with different identities. You know, in the LGBTQ community, I wanna see that perspective, that story in leading roles where the story is not mainly about their suffering.
And I feel like a lot of the stories where these darker-skinned black women are getting the leading roles is about like, them suffering or them going through a, a horrible ordeal like, you know, slavery or discrimination. Before they can even get to the end. And at the end it's not even sometimes a happy ending.
Sometimes it's just like the majority of their suffering has ended and it's just about how hard they've worked and, or it has this kinda motherly role that doesn't have any type of, um, desirability to their role. It's just like they, they need, they're stuck in that kind of stereotype of motherhood or being a caring figure or putting others above themself.
It just feels like, like black women or black characters of a darker skin tone are very pigeonholed in Hollywood or in just media representation as a whole. So it's kind of kind of disappointing. I'm hoping that we're on the right direction. I see changes coming about, but the thing about this kind of demand is that representation is something that takes a long time.
It takes a long time for these stories to get it written. It takes a long time for these stories to get picked up by publishers, and it takes a long time for the stories to actually get published. And then from there, even when you're producing like movies, that that whole process takes a long time.
So these things might be in the works right now as I'm currently speaking, but we may not see the results of it until like 2024. So I know that change is happening, but I also know that change is slow.
All in all, I think that, you know, we as black women want better representation in media, and I honestly think we deserve better representation in media.
I think we've been waiting long enough. And I think it's just, it's about time that we see these changes and if another one of my black books with these amazing black characters come out and it's another mixed girl, I'm gonna throw a fit because I really, really, really wanna see some dark-skinned black women with 4C hair being desired, achieving their goals, you know, risking it all, overcoming challenges and laughing and just experiencing all facets of life in the same way that I see other races, other communities doing the same thing in media, experiencing these same thing. Us.
So I'm gonna end the episode there. That one was a passionate one. But if you wanna stay up to date with the podcast, feel free to follow us @jumblepodcast on Instagram. I post updates on there every week along with some like bonus content. But as always, thank you for listening to me and I hope that tomorrow is better than today for you.
For you and me. Tomorrow will be better than today. I'm gonna manifest it for all of us. Tomorrow is gonna be better than today.
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