Feminist Media Studies

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“Roll up your sleeves!”

Black women, black feminism in Feminist Media Studies

Robin Means Coleman

To cite this article: Robin Means Coleman (2011) “Roll up your sleeves!”, Feminist Media Studies,
11:01, 35-41, DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2011.537023

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Published online: 18 Mar 2011.

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“ROLL UP YOUR SLEEVES!”

Black women, black feminism in Feminist

Media Studies

Robin Means Coleman

At the 2009 BET Awards, its host, Academy Award winning actor/comedian Jamie
Foxx, previewed for the live in-house and television audience a film project that he was
developing with actor/comedian Martin Lawrence entitled Skank Robbers. The two-minute
clip showed Foxx reprising his role of Wanda, a character from his In Living Color
(1991 –1994) television variety show days. The “joke” that is Wanda is that she is a
grotesquely ugly Black woman—cross-eyed, protruding lips, an enormous rear end—who
not only does not know she is freakish and undesirable, but has the audacity to be a
hypersexual flirt. The clip also featured Lawrence in a co-starring role as Shenenah, a
character he popularized in his TV sitcom Martin (1992– 1997). Shenenah is a hot-tempered,
quick to “whoop ‘dat ass” kind of gal whose ridiculous clothes are as loud as her mouth.
Together, the two “skanks” form a trashy, ghetto-fabulous bank-robbing team. The clip
concludes by claiming the film was brought to viewers by the makers of Godzilla and by the
producers of Planet of the Apes.
The high-quality film preview was a prank, something Foxx and Lawrence created just
for the BET Awards show. In the aftermath of the show, however, Internet buzz revealed
that there were a great number of people who, wishing the film project was real, would be
excited to see Foxx and Lawrence portray Black women with demeaning comic effect.
The swell of interest was so great that a few months after the Skank Robbers preview aired,
Foxx and Lawrence’s imagination proved prescient as it was announced that Screen Gems
Studios, a subsidiary of Sony, would make the film. With backing from Screen Gems Studios
secured, Lawrence began promoting the coming of the film on the talk show circuit; on
10 April, 2010, for example, he appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres show discussing the film’s
production. In all of the hype, no one asked “Just because you can, does that mean you
should?” Few were speaking up for the Sisters.1
This essay is a bit about silence—that lack of speaking up—and how, through
feminist media criticism, we can become more communicative on some key issues and
debates as it pertains to Black women and their relationship to media. For example, none
can benefit (that is, except Screen Gems, Foxx, and Lawrence) from a silence around one of
the most symbolically devastating treatments of Black womanhood. The film project recalls
nineteenth- and early twentieth-century blackface of stage and film in which White men
stereotypically portrayed Black women (e.g., as mammies). Such depictions have (barely)
been reformulated in the twenty-first century into a sort of “Black woman face” with Black

Feminist Media Studies, Vol. 11, No. 1, 2011

ISSN 1468-0777 print/ISSN 1471-5902 online/11/010035-41
q 2011 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2011.537023
36 ROBIN MEANS COLEMAN

male performers distorting both Black women and the rituals of drag. Black women are cast
as intellectually inferior and physically repulsive for entertainment, while drag becomes a
punch line, thereby denying any understanding of the cultural significance of a practice
which serves to broaden definitions of and reconfigure manhood. Feminist scholarship
could, and should, speak up far more loudly about the trends and implications of these
performances.
However, this is also an essay about what does get talked about in feminist media
studies. My goal is to also celebrate the great contributions that feminist criticism has made
as it pertains to Black women and media through Feminist Media Studies. These two
threads—silence and presence—may shed some light on what issues we speak up on, as
well as new directions our scholarship can take in the coming years to break silences.

Presence: We Hear You My Sisters!

Ten years is not a long time in the life of a journal. However, if some of the numbers as
they relate to the topics attended to in Feminist Media Studies are any indication, the journal
is evolving as a resource for scholarship for and about Black women and Black feminism.
Searching the journal, the terms “African” and “American” appear forty-eight times (which
typically represents the term “African American”), while “African-American” appears sixteen
times (this is not surprising since the hyphenated term is used less these days in most
scholarship). “African” results in fifty-two hits, and “black,” eighty-eight hits. This very basic
counting reveals that Blackness2 (in some form) is referenced, on average, in each of the
forty issues to-date of Feminist Media Studies.
Behind these numbers is some qualitatively impressive scholarship, which directly
attends to Black women and/or Black feminism. One of the very first pieces of scholarship to
be published in Feminist Media Studies (literally, in vol. 1, no. 1) and which substantively
attends to Black feminism, specifically African feminist media studies, was Aida Opoku-
Mensah’s (2001) article “Marching on: African feminist media studies.” Here, Opoku-Mensah
presents a call to arms for feminists: “Now, Sisters,” she commands, “roll up your sleeves—
we’ve work to do!!!” (2001, p. 33). With this statement, Opoku-Mensah advances a feminist
agenda that interrogates the relationship between a quickly evolving media landscape and
queries whether media can both “reconceptualize notions of femininity [and offer] a
genuine public sphere for the advancement of women and feminism” (2001, p. 26). Opoku-
Mensah notes that media can serve as the perfect tool for women of the world to advance
their democracy. Moreover, she provides researchers with a rubric for further inquiry into
women’s relationship with media. The author suggests examinations into: (1) users of and
uses for information technology, (2) images of women in media, (3) the development of
women’s media (content, organizations, institutions), and (4) media monitoring.
Opoku-Mensah’s article in many ways effectively captured the aims of Feminist Media
Studies, and her call for all of us to get to work on these topics is just as timely today as it
was one decade ago. The very presence of this article may also function to highlight where
gaps remain in scholarship. For example, Opoku-Mensah’s work can move us to consider
how we might offer up other feminist explorations in conjunction with media studies.
To illustrate, we might consider producing an interrogation of African American feminisms
vis-à-vis media for Feminist Media Studies.
Opoku-Mensah also encourages an attention to imagery and content, and over the
decade key contributions have appeared in Feminist Media Studies from scholars such as
“ROLL UP YOUR SLEEVES!” 37

Jade Boyd (2004), whose essay, “Dance, culture, and popular film,” attends to the
racialization of dance in teen films. Boyd (2004) examines the representational treatment of
women’s bodies in dance films such as Save the Last Dance (2001), while delving into the
sort of fetishistic fascination with Black bodies in rhythmic movement that media has
relentlessly exploited. Janell Hobson’s (2008) “Digital whiteness, primitive blackness” also
attends to imagery and content by innovatively theorizing how the spectacle of Black-
women-as-primitive is no longer the purview of colonialist-themed jungle adventure films
in which Black women are cast as savage and pre-modern. Media has simply updated the
primitive, placing her in the “Africanist space of the inner-city” (read: a housing project) in
the Matrix or in opposition to technology in Strange Days (Hobson 2008).
Both Boyd’s and Hobson’s articles make key contributions to feminist media
scholarship. That is to say, both fit the bill of scholarship attending to media content and
women’s images and deal substantively with Black womanhood. Over the last decade in
Feminist Media Studies others have also commented on issues pertaining to Black women,
albeit with varying degrees of attention. These scholars, therefore, contribute to the many
hits that come up when searching identity terms related to Blackness in the journal.
However, this wealth of research should not be given short shrift as it reveals the great
range of topics which are relevant to Black women—a range that can be explored from the
vantage point of Blackness with focused attention. Without completely enlisting these
discussions, a few of them include: tokenism, style among celebrities, and beauty and the
body image; black women as unwed mothers or as excessively emotional (or “angry”) also
have been subjects of focused attention.3 Of course, as it should be, there have been, and
will continue to be, articles in Feminist Media Studies which address the needs of all women.
It might be worth reiterating, however, that research which does not take Black
womanhood as its principle subject provides an opportunity for us to complicate or deepen
our analyses by considering how Black women are unique (or mundane!) users, developers,
and monitors of media, or are unique or mundane in content and imagery.

Absence: Silence Cannot Prevail

I now return to where I started, to the coming movie Skank Robbers which promises
to pull off the remarkable feat of simultaneously rendering Black women invisible while also
vilifying their image. There is a bit more to the story. Just before showing the preview clip at
the awards show, Foxx briefly and sardonically berated actor/media mogul Tyler Perry.
According to Foxx, he tried to contact Perry about the faux film project and wanted to
include in the clip Perry’s (in)famous character Madea, an enormous, pistol-packing,
rambunctious grandmother. Much to Foxx’s chagrin, Perry refused to answer Foxx’s calls,
thereby refusing to hear Foxx’s invitation to participate. Again, the public had much to say
about this, including indicting Perry for blowing the grand opportunity of co-starring in a
comedy sketch which would bring together not two, but three, popular characterizations of
skank’alicious Black womanhood. Some assumed, very likely correctly, that Perry thought
his Madea was too good to be associated with the likes of the Wanda and Shenenah
characters. After all, Madea is a vehicle for Perry’s Christian message. However, Madea is far
from exceptional. In fact, she joins a string of other recently seen offending characters such
as: (1) Rasputia, the morbidly obese, gangsta’ sex kitten portrayed by Eddie Murphy in
Norbit (2007); (2) the portly Klump family matriarchs (mother and grandmother) from the
Nutty Professor films (1996, 2000), also with Eddie Murphy under the make-up and fat suits,
38 ROBIN MEANS COLEMAN

and (3) Martin Lawrence’s “Big Momma,” with Lawrence in a fat suit in the 2000 and 2006
versions of the films. The 2011 film, Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son, boasts not one, but
two such characterizations with actor Brandon Jackson joining in on the making-sport-of-
women mania. Perry’s silence, and subsequent self-exclusion, is clearly not a satisfactory or
sufficient mode of protest, if it can be interpreted as such. And yet for some, Perry’s absence
from the project is speaking most loudly and sparking debate. Certainly Perry, whose
Madea is presented as a role model for empowered Black women, should not be the arbiter
of our thinking, particularly when giving advice such as:
Cheat with your husband or your wife. If you’re wondering how do you cheat with your
spouse—a wig, a pair of high heels, and a street corner can sure make a difference in your
relationship. . . . My husband and I used to play this game called Pimps Up, Ho’s Down,
where I was the ho and he was the pimp. We meet out on the corner . . . (Perry 2006,
pp. 62– 63)

Leave silence to Perry, as we scholars are the ones that must get “loud” about Black
women’s participation in media; silence in our scholarship is an ineffective strategy.
However, such speaking up is not going to be easy for some. Simply, to properly
attend to such debasements means that we first have to be consumers of them. This is
quite the dilemma for some of us who find Perry’s Madea portrayals plebian and
scandalous, and Murphy’s Rasputia nothing short of revolting. But, if we turn our backs to
such portrayals they will not go away (just as Skank Robbers did not). In fact, our silence may
contribute to such images thriving unchecked. Indeed, these (few) presentations of Black
women in mainstream media are popular and dominant. Interestingly, our scholarship
gives few hints of such phenomena. Black women must become more than part of a string
of key terms in our work. Clearly, too much is at stake and our Sisters cannot afford the
silence. This means that we are faced with, not one, but two challenges. The first challenge
is making Black women a key part of our research whenever appropriate. The second
challenge is for us to ask ourselves if our feminism includes a libratory message for those
whose tastes and cultural investments may run counter to ours (e.g., those fans of “skanks”).
As Patricia Hill Collins (2000, p. 38) implores, “education need not mean alienation from [a]
dialogic relationship” with a diversity of women and their issues. It is easy to indict these
men for their annihilation of women, but we, as feminist scholars, have to be careful not to
add to the problem by also rendering Black women invisible in our scholarship. Our
research methodology—how we proceed with data collection and analysis—and our
modes of inquiry—how we craft our discussion questions—must attend to the pitfalls of
erasure. Certainly, to write of that which may be outside of, or distant from, our experiences
is a tough undertaking. To do so we run the risk of “parachuting in,” writing top-down, or
even writing with a colonizing eye—acting as savior. But there is far more at stake for our
Sisters if silence prevails and inclusion eludes us. Audre Lorde (2007, p. 43) understood what
this all means: “And it is never without fear—of visibility, of the harsh light of scrutiny and
perhaps judgment . . . ”
Feminist Media Studies, one of our discipline’s leading journals, must be given the
opportunity to deliver scholarship that can bring complexity and nuance to debates. We
know now that Black women in media have been doubly denied their “representative”
womanhood by being portrayed by men who portray woman as “skanks.” According to
Helene A. Shugart and Catherine Egley Waggoner (2005), Black women can be implicated
in their own denial of womanhood by portraying themselves as “mac daddys” putting
“ROLL UP YOUR SLEEVES!” 39

on a hyper-masculine or drug-dealer material aesthetics akin to the likes of Shaft of the

movie Shaft or Priest of the movie Super Fly. Here, Shugart and Waggoner pit the singer
Macy Gray against divas such as Diana Ross and “hoochies” such as Beyoncé. Gray is the
biggest loser in their analysis because of her occasional 1970s-style stage costume of a
pantsuit, unprocessed hair (in their words, a “gargantuan ’fro”), platform shoes, and
sunglasses. In their analysis, all of this marks Gray as “strikingly different” and “pimp-like.”
Shugart and Waggoner’s essay is provocative scholarship out of which can come much
deliberation and significant debate around understandings of Black femininity. For example,
Gray’s costumes, from her 1940s flapper dresses to her pantsuits, may also be viewed as
presenting a rich expressionism around style constructed by a Black woman whose skin
color and gender would have made it difficult for her to formally contribute to style
innovation. That it is a Black woman’s critique of Black women’s marginalization, Gray’s self-
stylization, or the politicization of her presumably dated costuming is, perhaps, the ultimate
feminist act. Moreover, in seeing Gray as not only a dude, but aligning her imagistically with
those who violently exploit women raises an important question for our scholarship: Where
is the proverbial pedestal for Black women upon which they are allowed to be feminine?
As Norma Manatu argues, “until Black women . . . are allowed access and participation in
the ‘feminine,’ until they are allowed the choice of accepting or rejecting it, they can hardly
join in a fight to escape that which they have not been privy.”4 Black women have been
defined as divas, hoochies, mac daddies, skanks, and even “Stokely Carmichael in a designer
dress” (that last bit came from Fox’s Juan Williams in reference to Michelle Obama), but less
frequently as feminine, as simply woman.5 Certainly, it would be intriguing to uncover when
and where definitions of Black femininity arise in media. The point here is that scholarship
should continue to be built upon and encourage heterogeneous dialogue so that, in the
end, diversely rich understandings of Black womanhood can be heard. Feminist Media
Studies is the appropriate outlet for such important intellectual advancements.

Conclusion: Say It Loud!

Feminist Media Studies is unique in its service to the field. Central to its mission is
examining the diverse feminist and media practices from around the world. From its very
first issue, the journal has distinguished itself for presenting a range of topics, sites of
analyses, sociopolitical investments, and theoretical interrogations all with the goal of
advancing this heterogeneous, varied field we call feminist media studies.
Importantly, from its start, Feminist Media Studies demonstrated that multiple
perspectives in terms of race, ethnicity, class, age, ability, and sexual identity have a home.
This is not merely diversity for diversity’s sake, but a purposeful aim so that these critical
positions and experiences reach and enter into local, national, and global dialogues and
debates. The interests of Black women were represented in Feminist Media Studies from the
outset, and the journal has as its agenda that we continue to press hard in answering
questions such as “what constitutes ‘feminist media studies’ one decade into the twenty-
first century?” or “what directions within feminist media studies should be re-thought
and/or further developed?” As we craft answers to these and other questions about the new
directions our theories and research might take, perhaps it is also worthwhile to consider
how our answers to these questions may or may not change if we add “Black women.”
For example, “what constitutes a Black feminist media studies in the twenty-first century?”
I have tried to illustrate what new issues arise when one explicitly adds Black women to our
40 ROBIN MEANS COLEMAN

research questions about imagery or femininity. And so, I will end this essay similarly to how
Opoku-Mensah ended hers ten years ago: “Now, My Pro-Feminist Sisters and Brothers, roll
up your sleeves—we’ve work to do!!!”

NOTES
1. I found hundreds of press releases about the film. However, it was surprisingly difficult to
find any head-shaking over the project in the press. I found two fairly notable websites—a
blog and a news portal—that were dismissive of the film (Cruz 2009; Kyles 2009).
2. Here I use Blackness to describe racial location and social formation, as well as the cultural
practices and tropes that make up a Black lived experience, to include histories, rituals,
identity investment, power relationships, and even rituals. The literature in the journal over
the last decade talks across the range of these definitions and issues.
3. Pamela Thoma (2009) addresses tokenism. Shugart and Waggoner (2005) talk about style
among celebrities. Einat Lachover and Sigal Barak Brandes (2009), Rebecca Coleman (2008),
Sujata Moorti and Karen Ross (2005), and Marc de Leeuw and Sonja van Wichelen (2005)
attend to beauty and/or body image. Black women are also commented on when Ruby
Tapia (2005) takes on unwed mothers and when Rachel Dubrofsky (2009) writes about
excessively emotional (“angry”) women on talk shows. Stacy Takacs (2005), Deborah Cohler
(2006), and Allison Perlman (2007) all explore issues of bias.
4. The question I pose here is based on a similar question raised by Norma Manatu (2003,
pp. 52– 53).
5. To this I would add Black women never get to be a “lady.” No, not the historical discourses of
a “lady” associated with Southern White womanhood, or even some bourgeoisie attempt to
appropriate the optics and performance of that kind of lady. I would like to see Black
women viewed as a “lady”—a value independent of such an association and one that stands
outside of and in opposition to the skanks, hoochies, tragic mulattos, and the like. There
must be a new variable for Black women. The question is, how can feminist media studies
get us there?

REFERENCES
BOYD, JADE (2004) ‘Dance, culture, and popular film’, Feminist Media Studies, vol. 4, no. 1,
pp. 67– 83.
COHLER, DEBORAH (2006) ‘Keeping the home front burning’, Feminist Media Studies, vol. 6, no. 3,
pp. 245 –261.
COLEMAN, REBECCA (2008) ‘The becoming of bodies’, Feminist Media Studies, vol. 8, no. 2,
pp. 163 –179.
COLLINS, PATRICIA HILL (2000) Black Feminist Thought, 10th edn, Routledge, New York.
CRUZ, ALICIA (2009) ‘Martin & Jamie in “Skank Robbers”’, The Black Urban Times, 13 Nov., [Online]
Available at: http://www.theblackurbantimes.com/2009/11/martin-jamie-in-skank-rob-
bers (14 Jul. 2010).
DE LEEUW, MARC & VAN WICHELEN, SONJA (2005) ‘“Please, go wake up!”’, Feminist Media Studies, vol. 5,
no. 3, pp. 325 – 340.
DUBROFSKY, RACHEL (2009) ‘Fallen women in reality TV: a pornography of emotion’, Feminist Media
Studies, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 353– 368.
“ROLL UP YOUR SLEEVES!” 41

HOBSON, JANELL (2008) ‘Digital whiteness, primitive blackness’, Feminist Media Studies, vol. 8, no. 2,
pp. 111 –126.
KYLES, KYRA (2009) ‘Skank Robbers: nothing good can come of this . . . or can it?’, Kyles Files, 12
Nov., [Online] Available at: http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/kyles-files/2009/11/skank-
robbers-nothing-good-can-come-of-thisor-can-it.html/#ixzz18KMCq8f3 (14 Jul. 2010).
LACHOVER, EINAT & BRANDES, SIGAL BARAK (2009) ‘A beautiful campaign?’, Feminist Media Studies,
vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 301– 316.
LORDE, AUDRE (2007) Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, Crossing Press, Berkeley, CA.
MANATU, NORMA (2003) African American Women and Sexuality in the Cinema, McFarland &
Company, Inc. Publishers, Jefferson, NC.
MOORTI, SUJATA & ROSS, KAREN (2005) ‘Introduction: gender and the plus-size body’, Feminist Media
Studies, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 237– 260.
OPOKU-MENSAH, AIDA (2001) ‘Marching on: African feminist media studies’, Feminist Media Studies,
vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 25– 34.
PERLMAN, ALLISON (2007) ‘Feminists in the wasteland’, Feminist Media Studies, vol. 7, no. 4,
pp. 413 –431.
PERRY, TYLER (2006) Don’t Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings: Madea’s Uninhibited
Commentaries on Love and Life, Thorndike Press, Waterville, ME.
SHUGART, HELENE A. & WAGGONER, CATHERINE EGLEY (2005) ‘A bit much’, Feminist Media Studies,
vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 65– 81.
TAKACS, STACY (2005) ‘Jessica Lynch and the regeneration of American identity and power
post-9/11’, Feminist Media Studies, vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 297 – 310.
TAPIA, RUBY C. (2005) ‘Impregnating images’, Feminist Media Studies, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 7 – 22.
THOMA, PAMELA (2009) ‘Buying up baby’, Feminist Media Studies, vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 409 –425.

Robin R. Means Coleman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication

Studies and in the Center for AfroAmericanand African Studies at the University of
Michigan. She is the author of African-American Viewers and the Black Situation
Comedy: Situating Racial Humor (Garland, 2000) and Horror Noire: Blacks in American
Horror Films, 1890s to Present (Routledge, 2011). She is also the editor of Say It Loud!
African American Audiences, Media, and Identity (Routledge, 2002), and co-editor of
Fight the Power! The Spike Lee Reader (Peter Lang, 2008). E-mail: [email protected]