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Domestic worker. Drug addict. Struggling single mom who has been abandoned or whose husband is in prison.
Baby momma. Gold digger. Primary emotional care-giver to a white employers kids.
Slave. Victim of society. Token black funny friend with swagger and attitude. Angry black woman.
These are the roles reserved for women of colour on screen. And they’re all true reflections... to an extent. The renderings are necessary to educate the masses about the struggles of black women.
But a lot of these roles are also harmful perpetuations of racial and often sexist stereotypes.
To women of colour like myself, they come across as offensive, false and to be blatant, they make us cringe. Still, we feed the pockets of white filmmakers who produce and direct them (and who have no idea of the real struggle) because we are so desperate for representation.
We are so desperate to see someone who looks like us and might feel like us on the big screen. We want to relate. We deserve to relate.
I take nothing away from these struggles. They are real. Art depicts life and life depicts art. But women of colour are more than these roles. We are also powerful. Successful.
We come in different ages and sizes. We have relationships outside of the ones that show us as sad and abandoned.
We have friends, good families, support structures. We have hobbies and careers. Weddings and parties and baby showers and bachelorettes are not reserved for white women with quirky personalities.
We are fun. We too are capable of having fun and dammit are we funny. We are funny as hell!
Read more: Is the new wave of female body comedy feminist or just gross?
Again: Art depicts life and life depicts art. Where are these films? Where are these depictions?
I have one answer for you at present. One very successful story and it involves the blockbuster record-breaking film: Girls Trip.
This film is a case study for the ages if white audiences and white funders of commercial films ever needed one. It is scientific proof if you will, that stories of women of colour with dynamic personalities and dynamic lives work.
Why?
Because it is a vacation. It’s a vacation in its narrative (four women travel to New Orleans for the annual Essence Festival) and it is a vacation from society.
Women of colour, believe it or not, are currently treated worse than any time in history (according to a research paper on the social transformation of black women).
The burden of these struggles is all too real in every day life, regardless of the social lives we live outside of them. We’re still faced with a lot of castigation and adversity in ‘da clurrrb’ for example. In this way, Girls Trip is a chance to escape from these burdens.
We know these burdens well and while the rest of the world needs to be educated on them, we ourselves, do not need reminding on a night out to the cinema.
What we do need is a portrayal of the portions of our lives that deserves no punishment for having a good time.
The fight for diversity in films when it comes to representation continues. But there is another angle to this fight. And that is the struggle for diverse stories.
This era of wokeness in society has resulted in a lot of success for other movies with an all black cast. Get Out and Moonlight are just two examples of films that got bums of all races in seats.
But mainstream movies with an all black female cast who give women like me a sincere feeling of representation are still a rarity.
The struggle for reflection must end. And the exposure and appeal of films like these does not have to be exclusionary.
The film grossed over $100 million, more than any other comedy this year.
The proof is in the bank account (just in case anyone needed convincing in the form of monetary value).
Societies have been conditioned to seeing women of colour a certain way because of the way mass media reflects our stories. Well, it needs to end.
We need to shake society out of their seats so they can stop seeing us in a way they’re comfortable with, and start seeing us in the way we see ourselves.
