Ongoing Discourse: The Modern Media Representation of Black Women

The mammy trope has been transfigured by Hollywood into side characters or the best friend of the main, white protagonist.  There are certainly more representations of Black women in media, with the 90s and 2000s eras being arguably the most diverse, feminine, and classy times for Black women's media representation, with icons including Aaliyah, Stacey Dash, and Maia Campbell all being able to shine with distinct personal style and body types.  Though featurism and colorism still affected Black beauty standards of the time, it was lightyears from Gone with the Wind.  After Beverly Johnson's 1974 groundbreaking cover of Vogue, supermodels including Naomi Campbell, Tyra Banks, Grace Jones, and Brandi Quinones contributed to an image of the Black woman as classy, high fashion, editorial, and the muse, not the help.  In film, actresses including Lena Horne (whom our heroine is named after), Dorothy Dandridge, Pam Grier, and Marpessa Dawn made the Black woman the main character, full of as much grace, sensuality, and poise as the femme fatales already on the scene.  Singers including Diana Ross and Donna Summer exemplified the style and creativity of Black women, which in times prior was forced to be silenced by the Tignon laws in the post-Civil War era. Pop star Janet Jackson gave us a representation of a Black woman as a girl, just having fun, doing her, and being aware of her desirability without being a video vixen.  Video vixens, too, had a place to take up space and be undeniably fine, being representations of having "made it" for artists in the rap scene, and depicting Black women of all phenotypes as the prize.  Now, influencers such as Jessieca Alford have faced backlash for their representations of Black womanhood online as proximity to wealth, self-care, a "soft life" as it has been termed, illustrating that the world still is not past the years of seeing Black women as the mules of society. Read on below! 

Beverly Jones makes history in fashion and media https://www.vogue.com/article/beverly-johnson-one-woman-play-interview

Post Civil-War War on Black Women's Hair https://wams.nyhistory.org/settler-colonialism-and-revolution/settler-colonialism/fashionable-rebellion/

Soft Life Movement https://www.stylist.co.uk/life/soft-life-era-trend-black-women/692500