What's good!?

Woefully broke womanist with wanderlust

[unbotheredmuse]

the woman you’re becoming will cost you people, relationships, spaces, and material things. choose her over everything.

[saturnineaqua]

How Hollywood casts black familys

Parents

Son

Daughter

[jazzisback-deactivated20190120]

Is there a sociological reason on why this is repeatedly done?

[warmhoneyy]

Colorism. A happy, successful black family? The women must be light skinned. Especially the young women

[jazzisback-deactivated20190120]

oh I know colorism is the base cause, I mean why specifically does the young woman in the family have to be light? is this some twisted fetish? the mom is always a medium brown, afro-american lady. The daughter is always mysteriously mixed, but not all women in the family look like her just her alone

[warmhoneyy]

I think that it has to do with what characteristics are most valued at different ages and the characteristics associated with dark and light skin tones. I think it’s no coincidence that the older a black woman is in the media the more likely she is to be dark skinned. Not always, but a lot of the time the grandmothers are darker skinned. That’s because the most valuable thing as an older woman is being a caregiver and that is one stereotype associated with dark skin tones. (I feel like this goes back to the “Mammy” archetype.) But as a young woman the most valuable characteristic is beauty. Our society sees racial ambiguity as the most beautiful thing so our young black women characters are never made to look like they are actually black. And if she’s the main character of course she has to be the most beautiful so they probably make all the other women darker than her to make her seem more beautiful. I feel like I’ve seen this a lot in tv shows where the “estranged sister” is dark skinned.

[alovesogentle]

They also don’t consider dark skin feminine. Being a woman and being dark skinned is a literal oxymoron for them.

[sauvamente]

Yes. And if she is cast as dark skin she is abused to high fucking heaven or casted as a sapphire(angry) jezebel( promiscuous) or mammy(eternal caregiver) rarely three dimensional

[screenshotsofdespair]

[theshitneyspears]

THREE QUEENS

[godiase12-deactivated20220801]

The holy Trinity

[uncle-dre2-deactivated20210813]

[bideogaymes]

Miss Me - Leikeli47 (2017)

[houseofenid]

ILLUMINATION F/W Collection Lookbook by ENID  pt.1

[carla-enjoys]

A Day of Summer by Betty Miles, illustrated by Remy Charlip, 1960 

[forever90s]

[thorodinson]

Janelle Monáe photographed by Shaniqwa Jarvis for Refinery29

[disneydailly]

[marrymejasonsegel]

I wrote a college paper once about gender dynamics in Disney films, and part dealt with the emphasis of androgyny in this film. Mulan is an outsider and unsure of her position of the world when she is adhering to both a total feminine role (the matchmaking scene) and a total masculine role (disguised as a male soldier) and it’s only when she’s able to embrace both sides that she is able to fully showcase her abilities and ultimately save the day. 

The entire climax, from climbing the poles using sashes, counting on Shan Yu’s complete dismissal of women to get the Emperor to safety, to this scene where she literally uses a symbol of womanhood (within the movie at least) to disarm the villain of his symbol of masculinity and beat him at his own game, shows Mulan relying on the aspects of her femininity that she has grown up adhering to and adapting the tactical knowledge and fighting skills that she learned disguised as a male soldier to those aspects. The result is a unique and innovative view of the world and her course of action that leads her to save the day when the male soldiers failed and the women wouldn’t even have been allowed to try. 

[ingu]

This commentary is so curious to me because it’s such an excellent example of white/western cultural bias in portrayals of other cultures. Because fans by themselves are a gender neutral object in Ancient China, especially the large type that Mulan uses in this particular scene is actually masculine if you must code it historically, and in Chinese hands would be used as a tool to support her masculinity and not the other way around. These paper fans are used in general by (male) scholars and artists who decorate its surface with art and calligraphy. It is a symbol of (masculine) intellectual power and the intellectual elite. And if you look to Asian martial arts films, they are a common and almost exclusive weapon of men.

Yet the movie takes this deeply cultural object and either willingly or ignorantly makes it an object of womanhood or femininity. To the extent of my knowledge, this is mostly reflective of western social history. And draws from the coquettish ways Georgian? Ladies would use the fan to signal their romantic interest and all the history and influence around it. The equivalent object for the Chinese lady would in fact be the handkerchief, or a hairstick if you want something pointy.

And it’s all the more curious because at the end of the day it’s a western depiction of a foreign story made for western consumption. It is not a story made by and for Chinese little girls, but to empower and inspire those in the West. Which provides the context for the above (excellent) analysis. It does not need to fully take Chinese history into context because it was never made for us, despite being explicitly about us.

[apimeleki]

[okayysophia]

[grawly]

[retroactivebakeries]

grawly:

someone gave me the context behind that infamous “is this a pigeon?” meme but this isnt helping

[herdreadsrock-deactivated202401]

^^at all lol

[britney-ass-pears]

priest at Harry and Meghan wedding: *makes a speech about slavery in America”

the royal family:

[bug-gin]

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, A Tribute to Women in Struggle

In a conversation with Dr. Felicia Mabuza Suttle, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela talks about the challenges her and other women like Albertina Sisulu faced for freedom in South Africa.

“When they came to fetch me from my cell I knew I had to survive fighting or surrender. I was taken to the HQ of Interrogation…this is where people lost their lives. I was interrogated and tortured for 7 days and 7 nights non-stop, continuously… We are the women who gave up our lives for the struggle… Where are the accolades? I will always remind them of the painful past they want us to forget.”

[itsabreep]

8 Ways Black Women Hold Ourselves Back (And What to Do About It) | DDS Magazine | Divine Dark Skin

1. Being Afraid to See Other Black Women Win In this cut-throat society, where looks, image and success is everything, it can be more than a little intimidating...