Discussion

AR IANE C UZ

M S AY N L - NESS: R NDERI G BLA K FEMALE SEXUALITY IN THE MISADVENTURES OF

.. AWKWARD BLA..C.!S (:;JRL (2015) .. vania State Un

uality Studies at Pennsyl ty Sh vers i d S i ex d s Gen er, an Women' f · e ' and sexu gender . nd representations of race, , " . . t d y, a l rac1alize s�

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teaches classes on feminist visual culture, i a ty. Obscura The Feminist Porn Book Hypati , e sexuality n C a, andamera l i

include art,c·Ies on black femaHer publications , Her first book is The Color of Kmk: Black Women,

Women & Performance.

Source: Cruz, Ariana. "{Mis)Playing Bladmess: Rendering Black Female Sexuality in The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl.' InBlack �emale Sexualities, edited by Trimika Melancon and Joanne M. Braxton, (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press 2015}., Copynght O 2015 by Rutgers, The State University. Reprinted by permission of Rutgers University p

Ariane Cruz is Associate · p ro f essor O

' and Pornography (2016). BDSM

T he Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl (ABC), which premiered on YouTube on February 3,eee

2011, is a comedy web series that chronicles the lifeeee and times of J, a young Black woman living in Los Angeles played by actor/producer/director/writer Issa Rae. Two seasons and twenty-five episodeseee later, ABC has transformed from a self-fundedeee •guerrilla style" project into an award-winning web series with a sizable and devoted fan following, a professional staff, significant media coverage, and financial investors (both public and private).' ABC has come a Jong way from its humble grassroots origins and has projected Rae beyond the realm of web celebrity status .... She has been the focus of media attention on biogs and websites, as well as CNN, NBC, NPR, the New York Times, the Associ­ ated Press, BET, Vibe magazine, Essence magazine, Jet, the Huffing ton Post, Rolling Stone, and Forbes. 2 In addition to establishing Rae as a web series guru and a veritable force in American popular enter­ tainment, ABC has transformed the web series into "legitimate entertainment" and has profoundly challenged prevailing representations (and lack thereof) of Black women in American popular culture. 3

ABC is a dynamic example of Black women's use of new media to challenge dominant codes of Black female sexuality anchored in a foundation of pa­ thology and policed by the politics of respectability,

silence, and patriarchal heteronormativity. The show paints a complex and contradictory portraeee of Black female sexuality that is simultaneously un

i � wieldy and easily consumed, hyper-racialized andeee deracialized, unique and universal, aggressive and diffident. ...

When the character J first started spinning around in Rae's head two years before she created the show, she consciously set out to challenge hege­ monic and trite paradigms of Black womanhood. Twenty-seven-year-old Senegalese American Rae­ who graduated from Stanford with a BA in African American Studies and Political Science and studied filmmaking at NYU-aimed to challenge the "pop cultural idea [or better yet ideal] of Blackness" and fill a void in the televisual rendering of Black wom­ anhood.4 This gap is primarily addressed through the main character, J, a young Black woman living in Los Angeles, who channels her frustration over her dead-end job, irksome co-workers, pro­ found social awkwardness, and difficult love life by writing and rhyming ferocious, profane raps. J's failed sexual relationships are the core of this romantic comedy. The "awkward" in the show's title is performed via moments of sexual liaison: getting dumped, sleeping with a co-worker, choos­ ing between two suitors ( one white and the other Black), and experiencing difficulty consummat­ ing a new relationship. It is the fractured, bipolar

ress. 160

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itiOO of timorou , gawk pro\ tarian andeee th tit\ and mu h of the plot, which chronicleseeecofl'lP0 out pok n •ratchet• that mak th quotidian happ nings of an awkward Bl�ckeee.• .,,

ti charact r and nabl Ra to botheee not just an awkward girl. Thi� quasi-colorblindeeegirl, stJC� a nd r buff prevailing ter otyp ity defies the unique events Jeeeof B\a keeenotion of universaleere eXUaht w multan ously adhering to , I e 1ee sheeee, experiences as a Black woman. For example I fefl'l_a. of r pectability and bucking the e conven- must field racist questions about her hair from hereee

P_ what s most fascinating about theeeeIndeed, 1ee and has to throw up hereee(white) boss, Boss Lady, b. cter

l i her am iva enceeeI her simultaneouseee "nigga shield." Part of this colorblindness com�s,eee: contestation of stereotypes andeee from Rae' desire to market the show meee

entations of blackness within the dominanteee I contend, perP

a way that appeals to wide and diverse audiences.eee cultural 1magmat1on a . .ee within the span We could read this universalizing tendency as aeee

fan episode. Moreover, effects an urgent self-J sort of sales technique. A similar impetus of dera­o an "exaggerated" version of Rae esentation, cialization resounds in Black female screenwriter/ her expee encesee 1t was more for me, for repee: director/producer Shonda Rhimes s escnpuon ° -

ae notes, esentation oeme, ecause it ... filledeeeher Black female protagonist Olivia Pope, played

by actress Kerry Washington on the hit ABC drama �

Scandal. Rhimes describes this first African Ameri­l aladroit female character in the highly acclaimedeee can female lead on a major network television

show in thirty-eight years as "any human being• • s pet peeves or Liz Lemon's insecurities, buteeewho happened to be born female and Black." 10 Likefeld'ee

Rae, Rhimes wrote her Black female lead into being with the hope of changing both prevailing images

[Nlotions of colorblindness that Rhimes and Rae

women's representation.

The Power of Awkwardness

161(Mis)Playlng Blackness

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as "the Black Liz Lemon,"a similarly sociallyee

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r void that I just didn't see in media.6 Rae imag­"e ines m NBC sitcom 30 Roe ae.k1Ree " lre ate[sl to Jerry Sein-

·t bothers {herl that there aren't people of color ineee :hose roles."8 In the tradition of Black female racialeee sexual alterity and its performance on screen byeee and the collective imaginings ofBlack women.11 ... an enduring though evolving set of stereotypes­ mammies, sapphires, jezebels, matriarchs, tragiceee articulate are not necessarily evidence of either a

mulattas-this awkwardness is a different kind of modernist racial ideology or postracial politics in

difference. J's awkwardness, that is, represents a contemporary American television ; rather, it rep­ diefeeerent enactment of exclusion, deviance, nonbe­ resents an urgent, if even veiled, campaigning for longing, otherness, outsiderness, and marginaliza­ recognition of Black women's humanity.12

tion than previously seen in the tradition of Black This universalizing tendency signals both the limits of our collective imagination in envisioning Black women and the enduring legacy of oppres­ sive images of Black women in popular entertain­

Rae relies on universality, as she consistently dera­ ment. Where are the boundaries of our vision

cializes the character J and, through her, the show when it comes to conceiving Black womanhood?eee itself.In various interviews she posits this univer­ What does it mean for Blackness, Black feminin­ sality through the trope of awkwardness. ... ln ity, and Black female sexuality to be universal?eee ... interviews Rae confirms the racial dilution of What kind of Black womanhood is not universal?eee awkwardness, stating that "even though J is Black, I am especially interested in these questions, the the things she goes through are universal"and that identity politics that animate such inquiries, and "awkwardness doesn't have a race."9 This deracial- how awkwardness mediates performances of Black ization is significant for many reasons. First, it is female racial and sexual authenticity on ABG. If contradictory. In many interviews, Rae is outspo­ awkward is something that Black people are not ken about having created J in response to a dearth or should not be-as another web series, Black Folk

of Black female characters in mainstream televi­ Don't (which also comically explores Blackness, sion and ABG as a political project of Black (self )e authenticity, and the notion that "Black folk don't representation and reinvention. It conflicts with do awkward"), suggests-J's awkwardness seems to

162 SEXUALITY

dis-authenticate her Blackness. Yet, Black woman­ reference to gender. If being Black and aw'k hood remains ultimately legible through its non­ "the two worst things anyone [can] be" Ward il• , We •e belonging however comic. 13 I read J's awkwardnes , with the oft-cited words of Janie's granctrn are left

what Rae calls •the idea of being a ocial misfit," as 1-Iurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God ri Ot~er iti

being both prompted by her Blackne s and instan­ our ears: "De Nigger woman is de mule uh ~81 ng iti

tiating it. If we under tand Blackne s to be a state so fur as Ah can see." 16 What happens whe eworlq

of nonbelonging, abjection, and marginalization, is added to the mix?' 7 Hearing how Rae ec~ fernille

then we might read J' awkwardness as a charac­ voices of her African American literary ance

Oes the

teristic of her Blackness and not as a quality that allows us to not only place ABG in a vib st0rs rant 1·

somehow nullifie it. eage of African American cultural productio 1ll-

The first episode of season 1, "The Stop Sign," critical artistic self-authorship, it also inspi· n anq . res u

depicts an important sequence of events, the first take pop culture and new media seriously . s to continuing project of Black reinvention .... in thisof which is J's reading of the stop sign itself. She

states, •The stop sign: to any ordinary person, Against Ratchets: New Kind ofit's a simple sign of direction, but for me it's the

epitome of social misdirection, because I am awk­ Single Lady? ward.• More than cueing J's signature style of self­ Pharrell Williams is one of Rae's most enth .

· h h d ~~ depreciating self-analysis via the voice-over as a astic fans and one wit t e . ee~est pockets. The primary narrative mode, which evidences Spike three-time Grammy award-wmnmg rapper, sin

c h. d . ger, Lee's influence on her work (Rae produced and composer, producer, and 1as 1On es1gner is nOw staged two theatrical adaptations of Lee's films a media empire potentate and the executive p ro. while at Stanford), this confession asserts her awk­ ducer of ABG. Williams says, "When I saw th wardness as a misplay while establishing ABG as a show I didn't see . . . this Black woman caterin e

. . h g deliberate project on the nature of belonging that, to that annoying charactenzat10n t at you see on in turn, makes evident its investment in the ontol­ every television show, . .. you saw someone that ogy of Black women. It is a critical moment of leg­ was incredibly honest ."18 ... Williams's comrnent ibility: not just how we read J but also of how she highlights two themes that recur in critical reviews

reads broadly. The second event is J's introduction of the show: stereotypes and authenticity. The

of herself, a performative declarative utterance of common view is that ABC projects less stereotypi­

Blackness and awkwardness executed through her cal (less galling) images of Black women and that

statement "My name is J and I'm awkward .. . and these new representations are somehow less trite

Black. Someone once told me those were the two and more real because of their non-recital of such

worst things anyone could be." . .. This proclama­ stereotypes. Although J is a critical intervention in

tion is a critical moment of Black female subject the popular stereotype of the single lady that per­

constitution and self-narration. As such, J's per­ meates the televisual topography of Black female

formative declaration resonates with what Henry representation, she challenges, through her ratchet

Louis Gates Jr. identifies as the Black American's alter ego, prevailing paradigms of Black female sex­

urgent need to write himself (herself) into "the uality as pathological.

human condition" in and through the genre of the As the phrase "single ladies," the title of both

slave narrative as a testament of Black female hu­ Beyonce's 2008 quadruple platinum hit song and

manity.14 Echoing the slave narrative's characteris­ a VHl sitcom suggests, Black women's solitary ro­

tic opening statement, "I was born," J's narrative is mantic status is a hot issue in American popular

one of both self-definition and self-constitution.15 culture. The low marriage rates of Black women,

But what do we not hear in this critical J's asser­ especially those who are financially successful and

tion? While the title Awkward Black Girl explic­ highly educated, has recently received attention

itly announces a specific gender, J's affirmation, in the media and academia. 19 . . . Despite stud­

her introduction of self, lacks any assertion of or ies that suggest that Black women prioritize their

163

·onal development and standard of living ducall . h l ,

e ources poSit t at B ack women are at fault 1ner s .

o neir single status. Televisual performances of Ifor h d · " . le Black woman oo , m reality" TV in par-

5'.0g1 r represent Black women as complicit in their ttcll a , b

loneliness, there y condemning them as un- own 1· . d. "b . ble idea 1st1c, an 1mposs1 le (unloving andsulta '

lovable) partners. 00

The character J is distinct in a reality television

landscape that ~s domin_ated by shows such as Bas­ k tball Wives, Single Ladies, Love & Hip Hop (all on :Hl), and The Real Housewives of Atlanta (Bravo), wherein romantic relationship drama reigns, ani­ mosity prevails between Black women and their (Black) men, and Black women's sexual labor eclipses their actual labor. J challenges these preva­ lent characterizations of single ladies on multiple fronts. Her awkwardness mediates her Blackness as a kind of performance of racial authenticity. Moreover, Jalso challenges stereotypes about class, physicality, and sexuality. She is definitively work­ ing class, and her work is an important element of the show's narrative, much of which revolves around J's nine-to-five job as a telephone salesper­ son at Gut Buster, a company that sells weight-loss

products. She looks nothing like most single ladies we see

in the visual media (she wears very little makeup and has no weave, no cocktail dresses, no Loubou­ tins, no implants, and no bling). With her darker skin and short natural hair, she may be seen as resisting Western ideals of beauty, body, and skin color. Mistaken for a butch lesbian in season 2, episode 1 ("The Sleepover"), she asks, "Is there a non-homophobic way to tell someone you're not gay?" This reveals that J often reads as if not queer, then queer-allied, and while she resists popular ste­ reotypes of Black female sexuality, she succumbs to sexual hierarchies. Indeed, her fervent denial of lesbianism through statements such as "no lesbo" and "pussy tastes like fish, fish, fish ... no homo" represents more than just a reassertion of her het­ erosexuality; it is a reinstatement of institutional heteronormativity.

Unlike her wanton single-lady sisters, J pres­ ents a reserved, inexperienced, and, yes, incredibly awkward approach to sex and sexuality. ABG works

(Mis)Playing Bl ackness

against the prevailing image of Black women per­ petrated by reality television as not just unlucky in love but unlovable because of their bellicosity and aggression. In a domain where Black womanhood is characterized as physically and verbally hostile ... , J embodies a kind ofself-antagonism. The wars she wages are staged in the psychic battleground of her exceedingly active imagination, not in physical fisticuffs with others. While she is not the pugna­ cious drama queen we are accustomed to seeing, J enacts the prevailing single-lady construct through her "bad bitch" pantomime. In what J identifies as her "ratchet alter ego," the brazen, lascivious, MC ying to her meek, sexually awkward, nine-to-fiver yang, she conjures a flashy single-lady sisters-on­ television persona. 20

The Black female ratchet is rampant in con­ temporary American pop culture, particularly in the arenas of hip-hop and reality television. An amalgamated offspring of the jezebel, matri­ arch, mammy, and welfare mother figures, she is a modern "controlling image," to evoke Patricia Hill Collins's terminology, of black female sexuality.21 Like the mechanical device it is named after, the term "ratchet"-also defined as "a situation or pro­ cess that is perceived to be deteriorating or chang­ ing steadily in a series of irreversible steps"-is an equivocal tool used to debase black women.22

The foundation of this evolving stereotype, which evokes shame, pride, fear, laughter, and desire, is rooted in a history that denigrates and patholo­ gizes black women's eroticism. Ifthe ratchet is both revered and reviled in contemporary American pop culture and represents, the ambivalent figu­ ration of black female sexuality, J's enactment of ratchetness is also deeply ambiguous. Unlike the purportedly authentic televisual ratchet perfor­ mances she mimics from reality shows, J's ratchet soliloquies, as mostly privatized, highly drama­ tized alter-egos, illuminate the performed nature of such a stereotype. Private in the show yet open for public consumption, J's ratchet outbursts per­ petuate, nonetheless, a recital of the stereotype that remains problematic, even beyond its reliance on black female sexual pathology as comedic fodder. In many episodes, she enacts this alternate ratchet persona, often using hip-hop as her medium to

1 64 SEXUALITY

communicat her malaprop thought and desires. Through thi ratch t p rsonalit , Ra With tereotype while imultan u I re ist ing the poli ti of respectabilit that an ript P rfi r­ man of Black fi mal . ualit . In th a n 2 trailer, J raps · 1 m not M ketball wif. : but has h aped •th Bl ck girl urs •?

ontinuing to gain curren yin p pular cul ture nd cholarl arena , •th Black girl ur e• was

dubbed th t rm for thi highly problematic Black ingl lady ph nomenon in 2009 when ABC News ighdiM journalist Lin y Davis interviewed four

ingle profi ional Black women in Atlanta about being ingle in their th irties. One of the partici­ pant id, "We have a sayi ng called the 'black girl curse.' A lot of our white friends are married by 25,

happily married with kids by 27, and we're like, What's the deal with the BGs?'-and that's black girls: 23 By problematic I am referring to the ways this trend has been discursively deliberated and theorized. Davis's interviewees offered an etiol­ ogy of this so-called cu rse that, on the one hand, blames Black women for having standards that are •too high" and un reasonable or for having unre­ alistic expectations for a life partner; on the other hand, it suggests th at the pool of el igible Black male bachelors is small ("slim pickings") in ways that exonerate Black women. In either case, Black women are considered accountable for their own single status. Books such as Jimi Izrael's The Denzel

Principle: Why Black Women Can't Find Good Men

(2009) and Eric Culpeper's The Black Girl Curse

(2009) have blazed the trail of Black women's cuJpability, suggesting that Black women are on a futile search for a mythical Black m an and need to lower thei r utopian standards to secure a "good" brother. Such rhetoric refashions the prevailing oppressive notions of Black women as account­ able for the failure of the heteronormative Black family unit that was cemented into our national co nsciousness in March 1965 with the publication o f Senator Patrick Moyn ihan's contentious report The Negro Family: The Case for National Action. The "Black girl curse," much like the Moynihan Report, perpetuates the idea that the "tangle of pathology" that Black women find themselves ensnared in is

inevitably of their own making.24

whal are the Hike single Black la . th world to do? Black male "comect· dies1an. . or r I tionship guru Steve Harvey," whom N· turlleq

1 Ii ited to evaluate this "serious di!emm ~htline s ' a, su o, that Bia kwom n need to "compromise"· th ggesi.s to stop trying to find Black men who · ey llee.i

. rnatch " own ducat1on level, corporate status, anct in their Ralph Richard Banks, the author of Is Ma c_otl)e_is W hite People? (2011), asserts that, accordin rriage for statistics, Black women are reluctant to d g to recel\t

. ~%- their race and should do so; and, indeed th ts1de

' echter J does just that. Black women are the I arac. east l'k

racial group to do this. Only 5.5 percent of I e\y Black women in the United States have hrn.arried of different races.26 While J's relationship U~ballds

th beau White J reinforces the heteronormat:~ her date of mainstream television's represent . tnan.

at1on Black romance, we may read her interracial r of

ornan as contesting the order of Black-on-Black love ce endorsed by the single ladies we see on telev~~en Still J's relationship illustrates the always ISJon.

l. . l " 1 d. ,, a readypo 1t1ca , a ways extraor mary nature of Bi and-white interracial intimacy in American cul ack.

h. . K . M c d . d ture.As 1stonan evm um1or remm s us "Be . . • cause

of History-slavery, racism, gender relations s . . . , exuaJ repression, power pohtICs-sex across the color line always represents more than just sex."27 It also com. pounds the problem of!,'s racial sexual authenticity. Her comments such as, What do white people listen to when they have sex? Taylor Swift? Michael Bolton.7

Eminem?" communicate the vexed nature of enact- ments ofcross-racial intimacy on the show. Couched in a signature ABG brand of racially charged humor, these statements reveal profound anxieties about race, racial difference, and racial anxiety while mining (for comedic currency) the tensions not be­ tween Black and white but rather surrounding race that is at once performed and essential. Such state­ ments speak to the show's investment in contesting, albeit sardonically, assumptions of essentialized racial authenticity, both Black and white.. . .

Sisters in Cyberspace? ABC is a dynamic example of Black women's use of new m·edia to rewrite dominant codes of Black female sexuality. It is also part of the contempo·

l. · In rary landscape of Black female cybersexua 1utes.

this section, I explore how the Internet facilitates alternative performances of racialized sexuali­ ties and how ~ybe~pace catalyzes technologically inspired reart1culat1ons of popular Black female sdllality in Black web series and pornography.2s Since the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century, pornography has maintained a critical relationship with technology. It has pio­ neered and used ever-evolving visual technologies to reinvent itself. Pornographers have consistently been among the first to exploit new publishing and visual reproduction technologies. I engage and consider pornography here not only because of such technological manipulation but also because of the ways it has enabled and empowered Black women, long before the web series, to command their own sexualities. In mapping the landscape of black female cybersexualities through web pornog­ raphy, we can better understand the critical field of black female cybersexualities as an arena for show­ casing novel, nonhegemonic paradigms of Black female sexualities.

In her conception of the Internet as a criti­ cal medium in rewriting codes of Black wom­ anhood, Rae resembles many of today's Black female pornographers who use it as a mode of self-representation to create images that counter prevailing representations of marginalized Black female sexuality and maintain control over the projection of these images. The web series, Rae as­ serts, "is going to be the opportunity for people of color, not just African Americans but others... . I think that this is the space for niche communities to find content and for niche creators to find their audiences."29 According to Rae, unlike Hollywood, the fact that the Internet lacks gatekeepers means that it offers "way more opportunities" to people of color.30 This "frontier" "allows you to express your­ self more creatively and more freely" and provides an audience for this expression. . . . Recognizing the autonomy and audience potential of the Web, Rae is among a new generation of contemporary Black female media producers who use new media to create alternative schemas of Black female sexu­ ality and desire.

For example, Black lesbian filmmaker

Shine Louise Houston uses digital technology,

(Mis)Playing Blackness 165

particularly cyberspace, as her primary architec­ tonic instrument to transform queer pornography. Resisting mainstream representations of so-called normative Black female sexuality in porn, she as­ serts that "there is power in creating images, and for a woman of color and a queer to take that power. . .. I don't find it exploitative; I think it's necessary."31 Houston's "hardcore indie feminist dyke porn" exhibits stunning cinematography, incredibly diverse performers, and fresh diegeses, critically queering renditions of Black female sexu­ ality, while presenting paradigms of pleasure out­ side the dominant, heteronormative portrayals of Black womanhood in porn.32 Like Rae, Houston's production was motivated by the need for alterna­ tive images of black womanhood: "There needs to be more voices. I believe in my politics. Ifyou don't like it, do what I did. I didn't like what was going on in the porn industry in terms of representation of gay, lesbian, queer, and trans folk, so I made my own stuff."33 • • . Rae's use of the Internet as a plat­ form for reinventing Black female sexuality occurs in a similar context wherein cyberspace serves as a laboratory for the projection of new paradigms of Black female sexuality . ...

... The Internet is increasingly becoming an ex­ tension of our physical selves, a sphere where we project, present, and represent our material bodies; and as fantasies ofcyber-disembodiment, transcen­ dent identities, and postraciality dwindle, questions of authenticity reanimate in new ways. ABG reveals a profound investment in the question of authen­ ticity: J's Blackness mediates her awkwardness, she misplays the "real" single ladies who dominate the televisual landscape, and she pursues interracial romance. . .. Like most fans, I harbor mixed feel­ ings about the show's rumored transition from the Internet to cable television. Part of me feels that it is a type of selling out and another part of me fears the kind ofwatering down that Rae herself initially expressed about the show's content-its autonomy, radicalism, and innovation-as a result ofbeing on the Web. 34 Nevertheless, I look forward to more di­ verse representations of Black womanhood in the televisual landscape-something that will provide some stiff competition to the current trope ofsingle ladies in the media.