Why Can't Black Women Be The Love Interest?

 The Notebook,  Dirty Dancing, 13 Going on 30, Titanic, etc. all of these movies are said to be the most popular romance films. The one thing that all of these films have in common, all of the women and the women’s love interests are caucasian. Hollywood has a lack of films where black women are the love interest. Whilst researching I came across a video titled “Why Can’t Black Women Be The Love Interest “by Amanda Maryana. The twenty-minute video spends every second discussing a topic that no one ever acknowledges, the lack of black women as love interests in television and film. She begins the video by giving the “short” answer to her question, the reason we don’t see black women as love interests is due to racism and white supremacy. Racism from directors, writers, casting agents, Hollywood as a whole is what is holding black women back from being embraced, loved, desired, and appreciated in Romance films. What inspired Amanda to create this video was the lack of women of color in the popular television film Modern Love which is based on true love stories. The show consists of several men of color but no women of color as love interests. A quote that stuck out to me from her was “they exclude women of color from being portrayed as a desirable love interest” they being Hollywood. The lack of black women as love interests in television and film sends the message to other black women that we are undesirable and unwanted. The video also discussed how statistics have shown that black women are marrying less frequently, having stable marriages, and divorcing more commonly. The Jezebel stereotype for black women dates back to slavery where slave owners would oversexualize black women. Amanda stated that over the years feminism has been “racialized and synonymous with white women” this reminded me of a quote by Sojourner Truth in her famous speech “Aint I A Woman?” in this speech she expressed “Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any busy place! Ainy I a woman?" (Truth 2). This quote was her expressing how a man in the audience said that women should be helped into carriages and lifted over ditches and treated like women, however when the man stated that he had white women in mind. Black women never receive that same love and affection in the real world and in television and film because we are given the bare minimum and told to accept it. Black women are shown time and time again that they don’t deserve to fall in love and be courted like the women in films they continue to see. It's almost as if Hollywood is rubbing the fact that black women are neglected and unloved in our faces. Femininity has become more and more materialistic over the years. Maintenance for black women is much higher than white women, it has been shown in popular films that the beauty standard was for middle and upper class women putting it out of reach for many women of color that are in poverty and can’t afford the beauty standard that continues to change. The video also stated that femininity equals desirability. It is very rare that we see a woman of darker skin as a love interest unless a woman that looks like her has written the character. Beverly Tatum states in The Complexity of Identity: Who Am I? “"Other people are mirror in which we see ourselves" (Tatum 1). 

Amanda also mentioned several quotes from an article written by Nicole Seck. One quote stated, “Black/ African women have historically silenced their sexuality as a way of securing a chaste image of themselves, so as to counteract negative stereotypes and representations of them This silencing has resulted in the refusal of Black/African women to speak out against sexual abuse as well as sexual exploitation” (Seck 2013). This quote is truly saddening but true, it reminds me of a key term from Paulo Friere’s Pedagogy of The Oppressed the term fear of freedom. People that have fear of freedom are described as having “the fear of recognizing one’s authentic existence” (Friere). Women of color have a fear of recognizing their authenticity because it is not accepted and appreciated. Nicole Seck also stated that “Black/African women are led to believe that their bodies are worthless except when related to sex, while white womens' bodies are constantly celebrated" (Seck 2013). Black women are hypersexualized and not looked at as wives or love interests. A change needs to be made in Romance films immediately. 

Works Cited 

Amanda Maryana. “Why Can’t Black Women Be The Love Interest?”, Youtube. 14 February 2021

Truth, Sojourner.  “Aint I A Woman?” (1851)

Tatum, Beverly. “The Complexity of Identity: Who Am I?” (2000)

Friere, Paulo.  “Pedagogy of The Oppressed” (1968)