Episode 02: Diary of a Soft Black Girl
Hello beautiful people, thank you for joining me. Today, I want to talk about some of my writing philosophies and why I got into writing. This is “Diary of a Soft Black Girl”.
I toss around the phrase, “Soft Black Girl” a lot. It’s on my blog and in relation to my upcoming novel, “With These Words”. I’m probably going to say it a thousand more times while writing this blog, in my newsletter, or just because it’s fun to say.
But what exactly is a Soft Black Girl? Why is it a thing? Why do I feel the need to pluck that particular phrase like the notes to my favorite song?
In short, Soft Black Girl is a battle cry. It’s a call to action. It’s a rebellion to the harmful, dangerous stereotypes people clutch to when it comes to Black women. And to understand it, at least where I’m coming from and how it informed my writing, I have to take the long way around.
One thing you’ll soon learn about me is that I take the roundabout way of explaining things. Call it a consequence of my childhood, trying to be as clear as possible when the world was committed to misunderstanding me. And as a lonely little girl, there was nothing worse than being misunderstood.
So, to understand why Soft Black Girl is a battle cry, I have to start where these dangerous images and stereotypes came from. And let me get this out of the way early. I am not a historian. I am not an expert. There are far more qualified people out there who can dive deeper into this subject if this blog piques your interest. However, I did go to film school and studied some of these stereotypes. And besides, you’ve seen these stereotypes over and over. You’ll probably know more than I do.
Where to start? There’s so many places to start, truly, because it’s all interconnected. It’s not like there’s any one part to point to and say hey, this is where it started. Some may say slavery and you’d be right. Some may say it started with the advent of film. You’d still be right. Since we’re talking about writing and being Black, I’ll start with film and weave in why slavery was a factor as well.
Picture it, it’s 1888 and a French inventor created the first moving picture. You’ve never, ever seen a moving picture before and it’s only two seconds long. It just shows someone walking yet it made waves. People didn’t know what to think. Fast forward to 1903. There was a short film involving a train. And they filmed it in such a way that the train looked like it was coming straight for the audience. People ran out of the movie theater, thinking the train was heading right for them!
If I were a time traveler, which you know it wouldn’t even be safe for Black folk, I would want to be there just to see people lose their minds over something like that. To be on the ground floor, in the muck, seeing movies be born. However, I doubt those early inventors and filmmakers could even conceive of the kind of entertainment we have now. They’d probably have a heart attack seeing a Black person on screen.
Why do I bring these two examples up? Because I want you to remember some things. Film was created by white people, for white people, to celebrate white people. I wish I had still kept some of my old film books. There was a line in my media arts class that genuinely said, “Camera lights were invented to make white people look better”, and they haven’t changed the formula since. Why should they?
Even as they were telling stories about people of color, they’d still rather hire a white man in blackface to play a sickening caricature of Black people carried over from slavery. See, it didn’t take me that long to get there. During slavery, many, many harmful stereotypes were born. You’ve seen the images. A dark figure with huge, painted on red lips or a female figure with big boobs and butt.
They brought those images into films to carry on the propaganda of the “inferiority” of Black folk. Because as they lost control of Black people as slaves, they had to get the word out, right? They had to incite fear of the Black body to justify their boots on Black folk’s neck.
I won’t go that far into it. We’re all capable of Googling or researching more on that. Let’s just say, film and slavery worked hand in hand to perpetuate these stereotypes. These are not the only things that lead to it, but for the sake of this blog, film and slavery may as well be kissin’ cousins when it comes to their portrayal of Black people.
And I know what you’re thinking, jeez Nicole, way to bring down the party. What does this have to do with Soft Black Girls? I’m getting there, bear with me a little longer.
So imagine roughly thirty years of silent film perpetuating this idea that Black folks are stupid, lazy, oversexed, angry, brutal, animalistic, scary, and any other negative adjective you can think of. Thirty years. Thirty years of rapid innovation in cameras, lights, sounds, writing, actors, all working towards the same two goals: to make white people look better and Black people look worse.
The stereotypes in question are the Pickaninny, the Jezebel, the Mammy, the Coon, the Tragic Mulatto, Uncle Tom, etc. You’ve heard those terms before, you’ve seen those terms before. And if you haven’t, if this isn’t your experience, then I encourage you to research it. Thirty years of not only getting people used to the idea of moving pictures, but also to these stereotypes of Black people. Of dehumanizing Black bodies in a novelty way using a medium humans used as a form of escapism. Telling stories is in a human’s nature. But to tell those stories in a way where masses of people would watch over and over…I mean, if I were to ask what your favorite scene is from a movie, you’d probably already be thinking of one. You understand how images are so powerful, right?
Now, imagine, it’s the 1930s. Sound was now introduced. Gone were the inserts showing a line of dialogue. Now you have a game changer in the industry. Now there was some room for the independent Black cinema folks and white studios converging and meeting and producing during this time. And studio heads had to grudgingly acknowledge Black audiences have money.
But guess what? The only thing white studio heads allowed was for Black people to take over those same tired, pathetic, hurtful stereotypes. They became comic reliefs and servants, and directors demanded that these actors overact. Wild expressions and movement to mimic what white actors in blackface did. Black actors had to perpetuate a caricature of Blackness invented by white people. It was insidious.
I won’t get into all the stereotypes. I’m only going to focus on the ones portraying Black women. The three most common types of Black women leading roles are the Mammy, the Jezebel, and the Sapphire. The Sapphire was a new term to me, so see, we all learn something ‘round here.
The Mammy is typically a domestic worker, cleaning house, looking after white children with a smile on her face to boot. This character is just so full of joy. She’s usually heavier, mother-like, quick with a piece of advice, and she just loves those angelic white people.
The Jezebel is a hypersexual and insatiable woman. Everything about her body is just an enticement for men. She could wear a nun outfit with a dress that reaches her ankles and she would still be considered a thot trying to get attention. This was definitely born out of slavery, from the tragic abuse Black women suffered at the hands of slave owners. And wouldn’t you know it, to explain their children, these slave owners would just throw up their hands and say they couldn’t help themselves. They cast the blame at Black women’s feet, knowing they couldn’t deny it, and painted them as oversexed horn dogs who “just had to have it”.
The Sapphire is the angry Black woman trope that is a mainstay in cinema. She’s aggressive, dominant, loud, masculine, with a sassy attitude. She snaps her fingers, she rolls her neck, she pops her gum, and says, “I ain’t got time for that!” This is often the token Black friend, who states the obvious and it’s always funny to the white counterparts, is the voice of reason, bitter, man-hating, plate-throwing, and typically has no other agency in the narrative than to check off a diversity box.
Bear these in mind then, when it comes to the most notable actress during the 1930s. Hattie McDaniel. If you don’t know who she is, she was the first African American to ever win an Oscar. She won for her Mammy role in Gone With the Wind. And due to segregation laws, she wasn’t allowed in the hotel. She had to get a special pass to attend and was still seated way in the back in the segregated section. She was criticized from all angles. Both by Black people who supported what she was trying to do, a Black woman breaking ground and winning an Oscar, and other Black people who saw her as selling out to act in these films.
As movies progressed, as TV progressed, to this day you still see these stereotypes portrayed. Think of Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer in The Help or Tyler Perry in the Madea movies. These are recent films where the Mammy trope is used to assume that heavier, mother-like Black women are “safe”. They’re knowledgeable. They care. They are the matriarch. Forever a martyr sacrificing her own needs in service to others. And oof, doesn’t that sound familiar? As a Black girl, especially as either the only girl or the oldest girl, you’re automatically thrust into that role.
You have to take care of your younger siblings as a fill in mom. You have to become a mother to your own mother because she raised you to be the mother she never had. You end up overachieving in academia or sports just to hear someone say good job. You overwork yourself at work trying to put out all the fires either because of the people pleaser in you or your boss keeps adding more and more tasks to your overwhelming job. Meanwhile your white or male counterparts look on in fascination. Look at you go. And doing it all with nary a complaint, nary a day off, nary a chance to scream your pent up frustration into the void. You just sit and simmer in it, because you have to be strong. You have to do it with a smile on your face because no one’s going to help you anyway and because of this racist stereotype, they think you like to do it.
Jezebels are much the same. Think of every single rom-com. Jezebels are typically romantic rivals in some way. Gabrielle Union in Two Can Play That Game, Aaliyah in Queen of the Damned, Tiffany Haddish in Girl’s Trip, Halle Berry in pretty much anything in her early movies. Always the unattainable, sexy vixen whose only purpose is to get you thinking about sex. They are the funny, loud friends in movies who're always talking about sex, always talking about dating someone or hopping onto someone new. They have all the tips and tricks. They are always down at the club. They are always being flirted with. They are the first girlfriends before the hero meets the heroine, the scheming temptress out to steal men from their wives, the type of mean girl that looks down on other, more prudish women.
I don’t know about you, but that also calls to mind how Black moms become authoritarian in the way they don’t want their little girls to be “fast”. Don’t hang out with that little girl, she’s “fast”. Don’t wear that skirt, you’re trying to look grown. And growing up, you don’t think much of it until it becomes clear that it’s a roundabout way of saying that the little girls are too oversexed. Their very nature invites people to look upon them as an object rather than a little girl. Wearing short shorts or skirts, midriff tops, short dresses, hanging with boys, are all things used to point out fast little girls.
Now Black girls cannot have their own style. They cannot dress as others dress because it sends the wrong message. They have to dress appropriately for their age. Now you can’t wear shorts around the family because there’s always that one Uncle. You can’t wear lip-gloss because you’re calling attention to your lips (which people already think are “too” big). You can’t hang out with boys in a completely platonic way because what self-respecting “good girl” would hang around boys anyway? And why are you even thinking of boys at your age? At any age?
My mom was convinced that if I went to camp I’d return boy crazy. Which still blows my mind today. I’m sure she had other, more adult reasons like not wanting her daughter to be abused. Which is absolutely valid. But as a kid, that’s not even crossing my mind. And neither was suddenly waking up boy crazy. I have been teased all my life by Black boys. All Black boys ever taught me was that something had to be deeply, unendingly wrong with me and the way I look. So, no, the last thing I wanted was to entertain their foolishness. I just wanted friends. I wanted to go to camp because it was such a foreign concept to an inner-city Black kid and because camp as a concept dominated my screen growing up. Happy white people got to go to camp. Yes, I’m referencing the Parent Trap. They made camp look fun, okay!
Anywho, you get me. They planted the idea that Black girls are inherently sexy and therefore evil and demonic and out to steal husbands. So we don’t even get a chance to be a happy Black girl. We are criticized at every single stage. And by the time you grow into an adult, you grow into someone who has a twisted relationship with her body and sex. And don’t get me started on religious households.
And finally, the Sapphire. She is the most hurtful stereotype, in my opinion, because the chokehold this stereotype has on people is insane. Just think Tichina Arnold in Everybody Hates Chris, Regina King in The Harder They Fall, Tasha Smith in Why Did I Get Married, or the baby momma in any hood film. They are loud, ghetto, mannish, and are never seen as the object of someone’s affection. They either are already in relationships where they emasculate their men or they’re just not partnered with anyone. Ever. Because who would romance a Sapphire?
Here’s a good part to remember that all of these tropes came from slavery. In order to reinforce Black people as subhuman, they had to highlight over and over again that white women were pure, sweet, and innocent while Black women were savage, beast-like, or mannish. They called Michelle Obama an ape. They said similar, horrific things about Kamala Harris. Once you have an opinionated Black woman, she’s immediately casted out as an undesirable.
But see, once you state your opinions, you’re “talking back”. Now you have an attitude. Now you’re sucking your teeth, rolling your eyes, rolling your neck, and causing a headache for your parents. Now you have employers who say you have an attitude problem for just speaking your mind. Now you have to work twice as hard in a Mammy-like role to prove you’re not like a Sapphire. You have to choke on your words to survive. And what this dangerous trope did was put down any Black girl who may happen to act like this yet allow a modern day blackface with famous celebrities using the Sapphire stereotype to get ahead in life. Actors like Awkwafina and singers like Billie Eilish adopt African American Vernacular English terms and claim it’s “internet slang” while they also snap their fingers, roll their eyes, and call everyone “girl”.
And who can forget Miley Cyrus going through…whatever that phase was. Also adopting this caricature to get buzz going. To shake off the good girl image she carried on the Disney Channel, to break people’s perception of her, and rebel and end up getting the world to take her seriously. Now that her little phase is over, she’s back to the sweet, brown haired girl next door just trying to sing her songs. As if that phase never happened. Because it did the trick. It’s a coat she put on for marketing purposes, and then shook off because she’s able to. And unfortunately, Katy Perry tried doing the same thing with less results.
That’s why I call it the most dangerous trope of all. Because that’s the first thing that comes to mind when people think of a Black girl. You may be thinking that’s a generalized statement and that can’t possibly be true. But think of other countries, especially those countries that don’t have a lot of Black people in it. Think of one of them who’s never seen a Black person in real life before. All they’ve seen are music videos with Black women shaking their behind half naked, portly women who can’t help but take care of those around them, or Black girls with attitudes that somehow turn spicy when it’s a Latina or cute when a white girl does it.
Now imagine they do see a Black person in real life. What’s their first thought? Hey, that person looks friendly, I should go make a friend. No, they’re going to think Black women are mannish, mean, and loud. Talk to any Black person who has traveled and they’ll tell you a story about a person reaching out to touch Black hair as if we’re a zoo animal. Because Black people are commodities to them. They’re a foreign concept or an idea on TV, showing only three ways to view a Black woman. I could tell you several stories about other ethnicities reaching for my braids to rub their disgusting fingers against the texture while they marvel over how long it must’ve taken or how it was achieved.
Don’t get me started ya’ll. We’ll be here all night. But I hope that I’ve shown how powerful stories and storytelling is. How humans are drawn to stories looking for things to connect to. And how these stereotypes shape the modern perception of Black women. You’re automatically loud or rude, or worse, you cross into that other sphere. You’re the overachiever at work that everyone considers the Good Negro so they feel safe coming to you with all their racist questions. Or want to address any and every racial issue as if you’re the expert. Or somehow always manage to whisper “Black” to you as if you aren’t Black as well.
And ya’ll. Isn’t that just exhausting? I’ll share another tidbit about me in how these stereotypes are so commonplace, so deeply implanted in the human psyche, that these biases just roll right off the tongue.
The character of Zora in my book is not solely based on me. She’s an amalgamation of every Soft Black Girl I know, but I did draw from my own experiences.
One time in film class, it was my birthday. I had the entire row of seats to myself in the theater and I was as happy as a clam. I didn’t show it on the outside of course, I was in film class, like why would I grin like a loon? And call attention to myself? Me, who didn’t even want my own shadow seeing me? Yeah, no. I kept my face neutral, ready for class to begin, happy that I’m studying what I hoped would be my future. Only for two white boys in my class to arrive somewhat late, looking for seats. One literally said, “Let’s not sit next to her, she looks mean”.
That threw me off. First of all, how dare you perceive me. Second of all, I was literally just sitting there by myself. How could I look mean with no expression on my face? I ended up having that row to myself all class, all throughout the movie that was presented, and just kept thinking, “why would they say something like that?” Why was that their first thought? What about me repulsed people so badly? I know now that it wasn’t on me. But again, the people pleaser in me, just felt bummed. Reinforced that I was a lonely young adult, barely any friends in college, and would likely never find love. Not when boys were turned away by just a look on my face.
And to be clear, it’s not like those boys were my cup of tea. Ew. I like my white boys fictional and traumatized like Bucky Barnes. It’s not like I was sad that I was rejected without even getting to know me. I was more frustrated that for no reason, no other consideration beyond my skin and my face, I was “mean”. Unwanted. Undesirable.
Obviously, that was a them problem. But when you grow up lonely, shy, the butt of everyone’s jokes, yes, you’re going to internalize it for a while. You’re going to think something is wrong with you. You’re going to think that you’re an alien, or this can’t be your dimension, or whatever other coping mechanism you’ve used to get by.
So imagine me, a lonely little girl with a tiny hope in her heart to write and share her stories. I spent too long chasing what I thought people wanted from me. Stories about cool girls doing cool things that ended up not really looking like me. I didn’t write white characters but besides me saying they were Black, the character could be Marvin the Martian for all I did to “show” that they were Black.
I spent too long in writing circles being supportive of others’ works and hearing crickets for mine. Because suddenly, once my character is shown to be Black, no one can relate anymore. No one can feel anything anymore. The thought of a Black character that didn't fall into the three stereotypes was so foreign, people couldn’t stop to relate to the universal theme of two people falling in love.
A year and some change ago, I joined a new writing community. No one knew it was me. I lived and died on my own merit. But I went into it with the intention to re-discover my love of writing. And by throwing caution to the wind, by posting even though my hands shook, I found a community that loved that about me. They loved that I wrote Soft Black Girls. Girls who deserved to be loved on without being sexual, taken care of without the expectation to suffer in return, to have fun without someone coming along to steal their joy, to express their needs and concerns without someone saying she has an attitude. And none of these girls were perfect. My characters all have flaws. But they resonate.
I found a community that understands me. A community that is also tired of the stereotypes. Tired of the idea that we’re nothing more than a stand in to help white people achieve their ultimate fantasies. Black women are routinely shut out of the conversation. And studio heads continue to perpetuate the lie that no one wants Black leads, Black shows, Black actors, or Black stories.
They lie and say that representation is a joke. That we are constantly force-fed the notion that white people get everything and then some in life and we can’t even have one Black mermaid without drawing the ire of fifty-thousand neckbeards in their basements.
I’m not hating on white people, despite this post. I’m saying I want to live in a world where they aren’t a factor because we’re not a factor in theirs. I want to create a safe haven for Black stories that deal with love rather than struggle. Joy instead of pain. A future instead of the blood of the past.
That’s why Soft Black Girl is a battle cry. It’s a rebellion. A rejection of the idea that my story doesn’t matter because people can’t relate to a human being with a different skin tone.
I reject your Mammy. I reject your Jezebel. I reject your Sapphire.
I am a Soft Black Girl. I write for Soft Black Girls. My characters are Soft Black girls. And will continue to be.
See you next time for "The Struggle With Love". Like why do they think we want that?
And remember, Black girls deserve to be seen.
*Coming Soon* Listen to full episode :