Shoving aside the politics of respectability: black women, reality TV, and the ratchet performance

Pickens, Therí A.

doi:10.1080/0740770x.2014.923172

Cited by 32 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…Although Black feminists have since challenged the boundaries of what constitutes respectability, reclaiming and rebranding some of the negative terms associated with Black behavior (Pickens 2014), the media dragging of Meghan as an unfit mother based on her allegedly indecorous maternal behavior is a reminder of respectability's deep-seated function of racial policing. Equally insidious is the direct comparison of Meghan to a nanny which positions her simultaneously as subservient racialized other (the mammy) and (im)proper white mother, echoing the experience of many Black mothers being mistaken for the nanny.…”

Section: Mothersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“How Any Woman Does What They Do Is Beyond Comprehension”: Media Representations of Meghan Markle’s Maternity

Orgad

Baldwin

2021

Women's Studies in Communication

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In 2019-2020, Meghan Markle was one of the most intensely-mediated mothers in the Anglophone media. This article examines how UK and US media representations of Meghan negotiate, trouble, challenge, regulate and reassert the boundaries and meanings of contemporary motherhood. Situating Meghan's mediated representations in the context of the increasing visibility and shifting meanings of motherhood in contemporary culture, and particularly in the context of the growing visibility of voices and accounts of "mothering while Black," we examine the mediation of Meghan's maternity in three moments: 1) Prince Harry's announcement of the birth (May 2019); 2) Meghan's public outing with the baby (July 2019), her later (September 2019) interview for an ITV documentary, and lawsuit she filed against the British tabloid Mail on Sunday; and 3) the royal couple's South Africa tour (September 2019). We conclude by examining a fourth mediated moment-"Megxit" (January 2020)-and highlight the mediation of Meghan Markle's maternity as a site that might open up a space for rewriting motherhood, and particularly Black motherhood, however limited that space may be.

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Section: Mothersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“How Any Woman Does What They Do Is Beyond Comprehension”: Media Representations of Meghan Markle’s Maternity

Orgad

Baldwin

2021

Women's Studies in Communication

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“…While Black women's sexual agency and revealing fashion disrupts images of the poised and respectful southern woman, female rappers are going up against patriarchal southern American values and social constructs of Black manhood in rap music. Many hip-hop feminist scholars have pushed for the end of respectability politics and the deconstruction of notions of gender critique and shame (Harris 2003;Pickens 2015). This is evident in the way that hip-hop has a long relationship to the production of pornography in the early 90s coming at the same time that we saw the birth of southern hip-hop.…”

Section: Battling the Heteronormativity And Respectabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Dirty South Feminism: The Girlies Got Somethin’ to Say Too! Southern Hip-Hop Women, Fighting Respectability, Talking Mess, and Twerking Up the Dirty South

Johnson

2021

Religions

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Within southern hip-hop, minimal credit has been given to the Black women who have curated sonic and performance narratives within the southern region. Many southern hip-hop scholars and journalists have centralized the accomplishments and masculinities of southern male rap performances. Here, dirty south feminism works to explore how agency, location, and Black women’s rap (lyrics and rhyme) and dance (twerking) performances in southern hip-hop are established under a contemporary hip-hop womanist framework. I critique the history of southern hip-hop culture by decentralizing male-dominated and hyper-masculine southern hip-hop identities. Second, I extend hip-hop feminist/womanist scholarship that includes tangible reflections of Black womanhood that emerge out of the South to see how these narratives reshape and re-inform representations of Black women and girls within southern hip-hop culture. I use dirty south feminism to include geographical understandings of southern Black women who have grown up in the South and been sexually shamed, objectified and pushed to the margins in southern hip-hop history. I seek to explore the following questions: How does the performance of Black women’s presence in hip-hop dance localize the South to help expand narratives within dirty south hip-hop? How can the “dirty south” as a geographical place within hip-hop be a guide to disrupt a conservative hip-hop South through a hip-hop womanist lens?

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“…African American cultural scholar, Therí A. Pickens (2015), argues that both the enjoyment and performance of Black women on reality TV is a challenge to respectability politics as well as the racial and gendered behavioural boundaries imposed on Black women in America.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Trash Tiddas podcast makes similar offerings, representing Blak love and life while also engaging in Blak queer readings of reality TV, also known as terrible television. African American cultural scholar, Therí A. Pickens (2015), argues that both the enjoyment and performance of Black women on reality TV is a challenge to respectability politics as well as the racial and gendered behavioural boundaries imposed on Black women in America.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trash Tiddas: Blak queers, terrible TV and the Blachelorette

Day (Murri),

DeVries (Gamilaroi, Dharug),

LF (Yuwi)

et al. 2024

AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples

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Trash Tiddas is a podcast about Blak—a reclaiming of Black from English as a colonising language, and used by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people—Millennial life and culture produced by First Nations digital content platform Awesome Black. In this article, the hosts Tully DeVries, Amy LF and Brooke Scobie speak with Madi Day about the cultural significance of Brooke Blurton’s season as Australia’s first Blachelorette—Blak, queer Bachelorette. The authors discuss Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander presence and absence in Australian reality TV, and the rigid behavioural standards imposed on Blak participants on reality TV dating shows. In doing so, we identify a pattern of refusal of colonial norms in alternative Blak millennial content and how humour is used by Blak women and queer millennials in the face of White propriety and colonial impositions on Blak love and lives.

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Shoving aside the politics of respectability: black women, reality TV, and the ratchet performance

Cited by 32 publications

References 12 publications

“How Any Woman Does What They Do Is Beyond Comprehension”: Media Representations of Meghan Markle’s Maternity

“How Any Woman Does What They Do Is Beyond Comprehension”: Media Representations of Meghan Markle’s Maternity

Dirty South Feminism: The Girlies Got Somethin’ to Say Too! Southern Hip-Hop Women, Fighting Respectability, Talking Mess, and Twerking Up the Dirty South

Trash Tiddas: Blak queers, terrible TV and the Blachelorette

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