September 7, 2022
Confessions of a Black Female Introvert
Tati-Anna Robinson '24
My experience with anxiety
I am a chronic overthinker. It’s taken endless meetings with school counselors and therapists to come to terms with the fact that I am a living, breathing, ball of anxiety—and I have been since I’ve been able to conjure up a thought in my head. I stress about everything—if my family is okay, if I’ve upset someone close to me, if I got good enough grades to get me into Grad school, if I got all of my issues across to my therapist, if being anxious makes me difficult to be around. Living like this for so long I didn’t realize that it wasn’t the norm until my counselors expressed so. I’ve called myself self-aware, thoughtful, cautious; but really I think I’m just frequently in my head, trying to figure out the best personality to present to the public and which of my insecurities to hide that day.
One of my biggest insecurities is about how intimidating I come across to people—which is a comment I’ve heard at least 50 times since I stepped foot on campus. I’m 5’10, I grow muscle like a body builder, and I am a black woman. None of these traits are things I can ever change about myself or hide on a daily basis—I’m frequently forced to embrace these insecurities and how people perceive them. That being said, I don’t think there’s been a moment in my 2 years as a Brown student where I haven’t been anxious about how people are perceiving me—my anxiety affects anything and everything I do. I refuse to use anything that weighs more than 15 pounds for my arms, and I stay away from anything that will build my quads. I constantly struggle with feeling like my “intimidating air” will scare people off, but I myself am too scared and shy to go up to people. I spent the first 18 years of my life feeling as if to be pretty was to be white because of how many times I’ve heard “You’re so pretty for a black girl!”, so I never pursued a relationship with anyone—and I thought anyone who showed interest was pranking me.
Black Women and Femininity (Mohdin)
Growing up in an Afro-American tennis family, the Williams sisters were—and continue to be—role models to me, my sister, and my mom. They are successful black women doing what they love daily and inspiring millions of people. Back in 2018, Serena faced a lot of gossip and backlash for not being feminine enough. Her muscular legs, glutes, and arms led skeptics to claim she used steroids, and they commonly called her and Venus “the Williams brothers”. Alongside tennis, I participated in ballet from ages 3 to 18, and was disheartened to learn the history of black ballerinas being passed up for non-POC ballerinas based on the ideal “ballerina body”—slim and consisting of very lean muscle. It seemed like the world was not set up to think someone like me was pretty, graceful, and desirable.
In the United States, there has been a longstanding discourse that black women are too muscular and aggressive to be seen as traditionally feminine. The common stereotypes of black women include being too loud, too rude, too ugly, and too sexually promiscuous—which often puts us in dangerous situations and makes it more difficult to navigate social scenes. These stereotypes run rampant in the US today, but recent social media trends call for black women to embrace their own brand of femininity in order to resist those stereotypes. As stated by Adia Harvey Wingfield of Washington University in St. Louis, although it seems society has “deemed black women incapable of being vulnerable, warm, beautiful, and graceful, it can be powerful to choose to identify as feminine.”
Life (so far) as a Black Woman in America
I live in constant anxiety of how being a black woman in America will affect my quality of life. In my present, everything is scrutinized; the company I keep, the clothes I wear, my taste in men, the extracurriculars I’m involved in. I felt like a lot of people see me as a black girl trying to “act white”, as opposed to someone who just tries to do things that keep her happy—whether that is cheerleading or joining a sorority on campus. I feel like I am under a microscope everywhere I go; as if the eyes of all my peers are following me no matter what I do. It truly doesn’t feel like there is a way to make people happy.
In my future, I worry as I hear more horror stories about the trials black women experience every day as they try to live their lives to the fullest. I’ve always wanted to be a mother, but with every story about the relatively high rate of black women that die during childbirth due to medical racism, I have more and more doubts that that dream will ever come true. I’ve always wanted to buy a house for myself and a house in upstate New York for my parents, but earlier this week Ma shows me a news clip about a black family getting cheated out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in a housing appraisal when compared to their white colleague that showed the same house. I’ve always wanted to be a leader in whatever job I hold, but once again I hear of the lack of opportunities for advancement and the wage discrepancies due to sexism and racism. It seems like every dream I have requires a battle, and although I believe I have the support and perseverance to make it through, I’m already thoroughly exhausted from the battles I’ve gone through thus far.
Concluding Thoughts
All in all, these stereotypes have affected black women for years, and will probably continue to affect black women for years to come. Being a student at a predominantly white institution currently—and for the majority of my education—this is something I have dealt with for most of my life. Coupled with my anxiety, it is often very hard to navigate relationships with my peers inside and outside of the classroom so every day I work on building my self-confidence and creating my own brand of femininity; and I hope that everyone who feels like this has the opportunity and support system to do the same.
References: Mohdin, Aamna. “For Black Women, Femininity and Feminism Are Not Mutually Exclusive.” Quartz, Quartz, 6 Jan. 2018, https://qz.com/quartzy/1158081/for-black-women-femininity-and-feminism-are-not-mutually-exclusive/.