Elements of hair by treva

Feminist Studies

ARTICLES

“One Time for My Girls”: African-American Girlhood, Empowerment, and Popular Visual Culture

Treva B. Lindsey

Published online: 8 May 2012 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

Abstract In this essay I examine how popular/public culture depicts African-American girlhood and adolescence. Primarily using a hip hop generation feminist theoretical framework, I discuss both the limitations and progressive possibilities of popular visual culture in representing African-American girlhood and adolescence. The essay moves from a discussion of a video that highlights the disempowering possibilities of mass, digital, and social media for black girls and adolescents to a discussion of two videos propelled by a black girl-centered discourse of empowerment. Each of the videos discussed offers insight into the lived experiences of African-American girls from historical, aesthetic, and expressive perspectives. I use visual media text analysis, hip hop generation feminist theory, and social and cultural theory to discuss how these videos contribute to the formation of a contemporary discourse of empowerment for black girls and adolescents. Ultimately, I assert the importance of popular/public culture for empowering black girls and adolescents, while acknowledging extant limitations and obstacles in mass, digital, and social media.

Keywords African-American . Girlhood . Empowerment . Hip hop feminist . Popular visual culture

Popular, digital, and social media are primary sites for engaging with social and cultural norms and racial, gender, sexual, and class ideologies. For marginalized communities, in particular, representation in mass media can both reify and challenge stereotypes of their respective communities. Politics of representation often play a significant role for individuals and communities seeking equality and inclusion. In US-based mass media, a history of derogatory and dehumanizing representations of African-Americans exists (bell hooks 1999). According to bell hooks (1999), very little progress has been made in mass media towards debunking damaging stereotypes

J Afr Am St (2013) 17:22–34 DOI 10.1007/s12111-012-9217-2

T. B. Lindsey (*) University of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia, MO 65203, USA e-mail: lindseytr@missouri.edu

of African-Americans of all gender identities. bell hooks’ focus on racial, gender, and sexual representation from a black feminist standpoint pivots around the African- American adult experience. Adulthood is central to her analysis and, more broadly, to many discussions about an “African-American experience.” She interprets represen- tations of African-Americans as a community without honing in on the particularity of damaging stereotypes that circulate about black children. Although similarities exist between stereotypes of black children and adults, it is important to acknowledge differing stereotypes as well as age-inscribed responses to harmful representations.

How would analysis of representation shift if the focus were on African-American children and adolescents? What are the core and subtle differences and similarities between the politics of representation for African-American adults and for African- American children and adolescents? Do representations of African-American children and adolescents require different theoretical frameworks to uncover the particularities of their experiences with representational politics in mass media? African-American girls are largely absent from mainstream popular visual culture, whereas African-American women are overrepresented in popular mediums as hypersexualized objects of desire, postmodern mammies, or “sistas with attitudes.” These stereotypes inscribe the lives of African-American girls. The relative invisibility of black girls speaks volumes about their place within popular visual culture. A few black female child/adolescent driven shows gained commercial success in the twenty-first century. Raven Symone’s That’s So Raven and Keke Palmer’s True Jackson, VP depict black girl adolescence without explicitly pandering to or addressing racial and gender stereotypes of African-Americans. These shows, although propelled by young, black female stars, rely upon an implied de-racialization of their protagonists. These black girl characters can empower black girls and adolescents through their visibility, but do not necessarily provide racially specific models or narratives of empowered African-American girlhood.

Empowerment is integral to the self-schemas of black girls and adolescents. Depic- tions of African-American girls and adolescents that circulate in popular culture can both disempower and empower. Self-empowerment can be defined as being both knowl- edgeable of and able to act in healthful, safe, and self-determined ways that affirm one’s humanity. When considering black girls and adolescents, however, empowerment must be framed to specifically address black girlhood and adolescence. Very little humanistic, black feminist scholarship specifically explores the unique site of black girlhood and adolescence. Kyra Gaunt’s The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double Dutch to Hip-Hop (2006) is one of the few examples of scholarship that approaches black girls, black girlhood, and empowerment from a humanities-based, black feminist perspective. Gaunt explores black girlhood and their tools of empow- erment as an ethnomusicologist. Black feminism provides a point of departure for exploring the possibilities of empowered black girlhood and adolescence, but hip hop generation feminism may offer a unique set of tools for addressing the particularities of contemporary black girlhood and adolescence.

Hip Hop Generation Feminism: A Theoretical Framework

For thinking through contemporary black girlhood and adolescence, I offer hip hop generation feminism as a conceptual and theoretical framework for exploring

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empowerment of black girls and adolescents through mass, digital, and social media. Hip hop generation feminism or hip hop feminism, as an articulated standpoint arises from Joan Morgan’sWhen Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip Hop Feminist Breaks It Down (2000). Morgan (2000) thoroughly discusses her relationship with hip hop and its gender and sexual politics from a perspective grounded in the social, political, economic, and cultural realities of marginalized women in the late twentieth century. Her work also identifies hip hop as an expressive multigenerational culture. Currently, hip hop’s audience spans from those coming of age during the post-Civil Rights era to those born in the post-9/11 era. In 2011, the Crunk Feminist Collective digitally published a “Hip Hop Generation Feminist Manifesto.” Adding “genera- tion” to their feminist moniker, this collective acknowledged that although hip hop generation feminists,

Appreciate the culture and the music, we do not have a blind allegiance to it (hip hop), nor is our feminism solely or in many cases even primarily defined by Hip Hop. Hip Hop links us to a set of generational concerns, and to a community of women, locally, nationally, and globally (Crunk Feminist Collective 2011).

This set of generational concerns is foundational to contextualizing contemporary images of black girls and adolescents circulating within mass media.

Similar to black feminists, hip hop generation feminists often approach the expe- riences and representations of black females by focusing on adults. Hip hop gener- ation feminist analyses tend to emphasize empowerment of adults. For example, hip hop feminism uses a sex-positive analysis when grappling with the role of sexual pleasure and sexual expressivity in empowering adult women and trans-people. This analysis shifts in application to children and adolescents. Although similarly sex positive, it must account for different age-specific issues of consent, maturity, re- sponsibility, and agency. Hip hop generation feminists utilize what hip hop feminist Joan Morgan identified as a “fuckin’ with the grays” framework (Morgan 2000). This framework provides critical tools for grappling with female sexual desire within the complicated spaces of hypermasculinity, misogyny, and heteropatriarchy. This anal- ysis challenges the policing of black women’s sexual identities that often emerges when black women publicly engage in explicit sexual behavior. Black politics of respectability within a US context, although grounded in late nineteenth century and twentieth century African-American women’s activism and discourse continues to inscribe both the lives of black women and the responses to the circulation of (hyper) sexualized images of black women (Harris-Perry 2011; Henderson 2010; Hobson 2005; Jones 2007; White 2001).

Hip hop generation feminism recognizes the specificity of experiences of the hip hop generation, while attempting to navigate the complicated but interwoven terrains of racism, classism, patriarchy, sexism, ableism misogyny, homophobia, and a pol- itics of pleasure and sexual erotics. It also promotes empowerment. From a hip hop generation perspective, what constitutes empowered black girlhood and adolescence? More specifically, what are the possibilities for this empowered black girlhood to exist within public/popular cultures that continue to perpetuate damaging and con- trolling images of black womanhood? These images often disempower and dehu- manize African-American females, regardless of age. Because popular culture, particularly social and digital media culture offers unprecedented access to images

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of black girls, adolescents, and women, it becomes a dynamic site for thinking through how particular narratives and scripts about black females circulate. I consider the possibility of public/popular culture space being liberatory and empowering for black girls. Despite the limitations of the trafficking of images of black girls that contribute to a continued complicity with the exploitation and denigration of young, black females, public/popular culture can and has offered spaces for empowering black girls.

The Limitations: A Brief Case Study in Disempowerment

In October 2011, a video was released of a black adolescent female having oral sex with a black adolescent male. The taped, consensual sex act was placed on the internet and immediately became available on a number of websites. Over the course of the week in which the video was released, the female adolescent’s name became a top trending topic on Twitter, child pornography freely circulated, and a barrage of commentary assaulting the humanity of the young female and her “invisible” parents commenced. Few in the world of social and digital media commentary addressed the adolescent boy in the video or the reality that people watching and sending the video were spectators and traffickers of child pornography. Tweets, blog postings, and other social media commentary disparaged the female adolescent with words such as slut, whore, hypersexual, and stupid. Within the confines of a week, this female teenager became central to extant conversations about the oversexualization of children and teenagers.

In most of the social media responses to the filmed sexual act, the adolescent girl was multiply situated as a helpless victim, an example of black female hypersexuality, a transgressive and morally misguided teenager, and as a teenager lacking proper parental guidance and supervision. Although concerns about her safety, her health, her pleasure, and her agency arose, she, like many other black women and girls whose images circulate within mass media, fueled discussions about hypersexuality and black womanhood. Despite her status as an adolescent, the racialized, gender stereotype of the hypersexual black woman became central to her framing within digital and social media. A victim of child pornography and speculatively of sexual coercion (it has been stated that she may have performed the sexual act as a means to reinstate her relationship with her former, intimate partner), questions about sexual violence and coercion remained on the margins of dialogue (Ade-Brown 2011). There is an array of potentially negative outcomes associated with sexually coercive experiences of black girls: lower self-esteem, decreased mental health, and engage- ment in higher risk sexual behaviors (authors).

Histories of the sexual exploitation of black women and of the depiction of black women as hypersexual beings continue to structure responses to popular culture representations of black women engaging in sex acts. If the girl on the video were an adult, I could use a hip hop generation feminist analysis to discuss a politics of empowerment that encompasses an adult female deriving pleasure from embracing a sexual self-schema that includes engaging in oral sex and exhibitionism. I could also shed light upon issues of consent and coercion that can inscribe the sexual lives of black women, but would make sexual agency and transgression from established racial, cultural, sexual, and gender norms central to close readings of consensual,

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adult activities. This analysis in its entirety, however, cannot be applied to a girl or teenager. Children and adolescents are not adults, and an analysis of the female adolescent’s actions must be situated within an analytic framework of black girl and adolescent empowerment. Centering on black girls and adolescents shifts the analysis to a discussion of consent, coercion, self-esteem, empowerment, and the role of popular culture in the lives of black girls and adolescents. The adolescent girl in this video was disempowered through popular visual and digital culture. Despite the reality of disempowering possibilities associated with mass circulation of images of black girls and adolescents, popular visual mediums such as social and digital media and television can afford black girls and adolescents with empowering narratives and images of themselves.

Using two particular black girl-centered popular culture moments that occurred exactly a year prior to the massive circulation of the video of the young woman performing oral sex, I introduce a black girl-centered discourse of empowerment within popular culture. On Tuesday, October 12, 2010, the long-running children’s program Sesame Street premiered a special musical segment featuring an unnamed African-American girl puppet entitled “I Love My Hair.” The video showcased a black girl puppet singing about the natural beauty and versatility of her hair. The short segment appeared to specifically target black girls through the primary character and the lyrical content. On Monday, October 18, 2010, Willow Smith, child recording artist and daughter of popular actors Will and Jada Pinkett-Smith, released a video for her debut single, “Whip My Hair.” The song encouraged the celebration of an array of hairstyles and celebrated individuality and expressivity. As of October 2011, these videos garnered over 65 million combined views on YouTube.

Through close readings of these moving visuals, I offer key elements to the formation of a hip hop generation feminist discourse of empowerment for black girls including healthful expressivity, media literacy, self-affirming social networks, and the tools and resources to develop self-schema that affirm the uniqueness of black girlhood. Employing these key elements, I briefly turn my critical lens back to the hypercirculation of the pornographic video of the female adolescent to further complicate my discussion of this discourse of empowerment. Grounded in hip hop generation feminist theory, praxis, and interests, I seek to approach these moving images of black girls from a critical perspective that recognizes the necessity of examining black girlhood on its own terms and arguably, with its own tools.

“I Love My Hair”

For over 40 years, Sesame Street has served as a leading children’s program with a far-reaching global audience. Currently broadcast in over 140 countries, each version of the show attempts to incorporate culturally specific references, sequences, and characters. Although originated in the USA, Sesame Street, in its numerous country- specific incarnations, implicitly speaks to childhood as simultaneously culturally specific and universal. By developing characters and sequences that address nation- specific issues to using a relatively comparable format regardless of the viewing audience, Sesame Street builds upon its stated commitment to educating children about diversity, while celebrating both commonalities and differences among people.

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From an HIV-positive puppet named Kami on the South African and Kenyan versions of Sesame Street to the African-American human family, the Robin- sons on the US version, Sesame Street has served as one of the few television shows featuring both leading and supporting characters of African descent. Subtly touching upon the reality of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa and upon the prevalence of stereotypes about African-American families, this children’s show introduced its audience to lived experiences of people of African descent. Although arguably not groundbreaking in its content or approach, Sesame Street provides a unique platform for African-American children to see themselves represented in popular culture.

In October 2010, a special segment aired on the US version of Sesame Street. The segment, created and written by the show’s head writer Jim Mazzarino, featured a brown puppet (presumably African-American) singing an original song titled, “I Love My Hair.” With lyrics professing love for her hair and the wide array of styling possibilities for “African-American hair,” the song, as Mazzarino noted, responded to a growing lack of self-esteem in his adopted, Ethiopian daughter caused by her desire to have long, straight blonde hair (Davis and Hopper 2010). Although Mazzarino produced the segment to affirm the beauty of his own daughter, the song touched upon several extant narratives that pivoted around black girls’ and women’s relation- ship to Eurocentric and white hegemonic beauty standards. Mazzarino’s lyrics do not challenge these hegemonic beauty standards, but do encourage black girls to embrace their hair in spite of prevailing racialized and gendered norms of beauty.

Black hair, as both an industry and as a discourse, has a long and contentious history within the African diaspora, and specifically within black communities that encounter white/Eurocentric beauty standards as aesthetic ideals (Banks 2000; Byrd and Tharps 2001; Rooks 1996). What becomes particularly salient in both historical and contemporary black hair discourses is the processes black females utilize to achieve these hegemonic beauty ideals. Those who choose to maintain the “natural” state of their hair often confront the possibility of being ostracized and marginalized from prevailing standards of beauty that uphold long, straight hair as a universal ideal and of being stereotyped as militant and aggressive. Natural hair is a racially and gender-specific term that most commonly refers black women’s hair that has not been altered through chemical and or other products and processes (Rooks 1996). These products and processes include: perms, relaxers, texturizers, hair-straightening treat- ments, and flat and curling irons. Those who opt for products and processes that straighten their hair can face accusations of racial inauthenticity, of reinforcing white cultural hegemony, and of trying to culturally assimilate through aesthetic practices (Byrd and Tharps 2001; Lake 2003). Debates among and about black women regarding their hair offer a rich site for examining how cultural ideals and historically rooted standards affect the lives of individuals and communities.

Despite the ongoing discussions within and about black females’ hair, popular culture, both nationally and globally, continues to propagate a cultural ideal of long, straight hair. The majority of the most notable black female popular culture stars of the twenty-first century reflect this cultural ideal. From Beyoncé to Ciara to Oprah Winfrey, straight black hair has become both a default and active ideal of black beauty within mass media. This message becomes particularly poignant for black girls and adolescents, who often aspire to mimicking their favorite popular culture

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stars. The straight hair ideal for black girls and adolescents is equally present in shows targeting youth audiences. Disney and Nickelodeon stars, Raven Symone and Keke Palmer, respectively, primarily showcase straight hairstyles. Consequently, black girls and adolescents who imbibe both adult- and youth-oriented popular culture that features black females will typically only view black women and girls with long, straight hair. The predominance of these images of black women’s and girls’ hair coupled with popular images of non-black girls and women’s long, straight hair delivers a powerful message for young black girls: long, straight hair is essential to being beautiful.

“I Love My Hair” focused upon black girls embracing their “natural” hair. From books to blogs to salons, black women’s hair is often a focal point for discussions about black beauty. More recently, a growing number of voices weighing in on discussions about black hair emphasize the beauty and health of black hair in its “natural” state. The emergence of black hair businesses that specialize in products and processes for natural hair textures of black women has been central to an increasing number of black women deciding to “go natural” or refusing to undergo processes that alter the natural textures of their hair (Jacobs-Huey 2006; Prince 2009). Although mass media outlets such as advertising continue to primarily promote texture-altering products and processes, digital and social media have created a platform for “natural” hair manufacturers and stylists to build a stronger consumer base. Despite the growing number of natural hair-affirming outlets in digital and social media, adver- tisements for black girl-specific hair products typically promote relaxers and other texture-altering products and processes. “Kiddie Perms” are the primary products targeted at black girls. These relaxers produce the same effects as “adult perms,” which are to temporarily straighten more tightly coiled, kinky, or curly hair textures. The most prevalent of the “kiddie perm” genre is Just For Me. Its commercials feature the voices and faces of black girls and its packaging includes images of black girls. Just For Me commercials provide examples of the importance of the content and messaging of advertisements featuring and targeting black girls. While these commercials use black girls, it also represents a version of black girlhood that must conform to particular ideals of beauty and normalcy.

The “I Love My Hair” segment disrupted the “black girl hair” landscape by lauding the beauty of black girls’ hair without trumpeting the necessity of texture alteration. Following in the footsteps of black feminist scholar bell hooks, who in 1999 authored the children’s book, Happy to be Nappy, this Sesame Street segment affirmed the beauty, freedom, and empowering possibilities of natural “black girl hair” (bell hooks 1999). The African-American girl puppet proudly singing about the versatility of her hair provides an affirming discourse about girls with nappy, kinky, and tightly curled/coiled hair textures. Additionally, the song addresses the creativity of black girls by touching upon the variety of “natural” hair styles black girls can and do exhibit. Within a two minute segment, this musical video incorporates two of the key elements of a discourse of empowerment for black girls: healthful expressivity and the representation of a self-schema that affirms the unique- ness of black girlhood.

Although full autonomy is not a primary or age-appropriate element of a black girlhood discourse of empowerment, the formation of a sense of self-determination and relative autonomy is significant in the development of black girls and

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adolescents. In the lyrics of the song, the African-American girl puppet proclaims that she does not “need a trip to the beauty shop” to have her hair styled (Mazzarino 2010). The black beauty salon is a fixture in many black communities, and having one’s hair styled is often viewed as a rite of passage for black girls and adolescents (Gill 2010). The proclamation by the girl puppet in the video, however, subverts this tradition by lauding her lack of dependence on a beauty salon for validation or production of her unique beauty. Not all black girls in beauty salons are altering their natural hair, however relaxers and “press and curls” are the most common processes being performed on black girls’ hair in beauty salons.

By situating herself outside of black beauty salon culture, the puppet also presents herself as an authorial figure with regards to her hair. She does not need or desire a salon because she believes in her abilities to healthily maintain and style her own hair. The puppet becomes a mistress of her own “hair destiny,” and consequently estab- lishes herself as an autonomous subject, as it pertains to her hair. The self-affirmation displayed by the puppet stems from both the celebration of her hair as well as her ability to maintain and style her hair in creative and innovative ways. Furthermore, she asserts her need to share her love of her hair. This sharing allows her to connect with real, black girls confronting images and rhetoric that explicitly and implicitly devalue black girls’ “natural hair” and privilege straight hair as the ideal for female beauty. The potential connection between the puppet and black girls watching the segment facilitates the development of a mass media-based community/social network that affirms the uniqueness and beauty of black girls.

Although a white male wrote the song and thus provides the creative space for the establishment of this affirming network, spaces created for and about black girls are integral to black girl empowerment. Black girl empowerment within public/popular culture stems from the creation and centralization of black girl-centered spaces in mass media. It is important that black girls serve as authors and producers of the mass media-circulated content; however, affirming and humanizing representations of black girls and black girlhood can also provide sites of empowerment for black girls engaging with public/popular culture. The circulation of representations of empow- ered black girls can inspire them to both see themselves as valuable and as potential producers of content that foregrounds their experiences as black girls.

I Whip My Hair Back and Forth

In the week following the first airing of the “I Love My Hair” segment, another video featuring a black girl became a viral sensation—Willow Smith’s “Whip My Hair.” Prior to the video’s release, the song played in heavy rotation on urban and pop format radio stations. The popularity of the song created a high level of anticipation for the official release of the video. Preempting the release of the official video were several videos posted to YouTube featuring girls, predominantly girls of color, performing to the song. One of these videos, which featured several young girls of diverse racial backgrounds but had an African-American girl as the lead or stand-in for Willow Smith, garnered millions of views and thousands of comments applauding the abilities and beauty of the young dancers (Ware and Kae 2010). The song proved inspirational for girls and sparked the creation of a distinct creative moment that

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pivoted around the musical and kinetic expressivity of black girlhood. Gaunt (2006) examines the everyday music culture of African-American girls and argues that black girls subvert extant power relations of race and gender through the counterpublic of the everyday popular sphere. Because the subversion of these relations is often rendered invisible or insignificant in popular culture, it is important to explore the moments in which the expressivity of African-American girls becomes explicitly central to popular culture and mass media.

With the official release of the video, fans and critics of the “girls’ anthem” acquired a sonic/visual text with which to engage African-American girl expressivity. Visually vibrant and colorfully captivating, the music video offered numerous images of girls and adults resisting conformity. The opening sequence depicted Willow Smith walking into a drab cafeteria with a boombox filled with her song and paint for “coloring” the space. Through whipping her hair, she literally paints the room and its occupants in an array of colors. Her disruption of the space allows for the cafeteria occupants to become enlivened. The hair whipping becomes a metaphor and a weapon for challenging conformity and established conventions. More specifically, Willow Smith, as a black girl, situates herself as an empowered figure that can disrupt, subvert, and incite.

Unlike the “I Love My Hair” segment, “Whip My Hair” does not directly target black girls. Smith is surrounded by a multiracial and multiethnic cast who become empowered to embrace their individuality and self-expressivity through her demand- ing that people “Whip your hair back and forth.” The message of the song and the video are therefore deracialized and posited as universal and cross-racial. Further- more, “Whip My Hair” features girls and young adolescents. By encompassing “pre- tweens” in her representation of youth, Smith depicts an aspect of adolescent devel- opment, autonomy, and self-definition. In an interview on the Ellen Degeneres Show, Smith explained that her song articulates that, “I’m me, I’m doin’ what I wanna do” (Dionne 2010). Although Smith did not write the song, her ability to articulate what the song means to her and how she wants it to resonate with her audience aligns her song and video with a discourse of black girlhood and adolescent empowerment. The inclusivity and diversity extant in the video does not detract from the fact that the protagonist/lead singer and performer of the song and video is a black girl. Her status as the central figure provides a space for other young black girls and adolescents to identify with both Smith and the message she believes the song conveys.

The idea of “I’m me, I’m doin’ what I wanna do,” is not particularly groundbreak- ing. The desire to do what one wants to do can be viewed as selfish, childish, or immature. However, when thinking through a standpoint in which a black girl demands the space to be herself and to express herself on her own terms, Smith’s declaration of being herself without rigid norms or ideals of selfhood resonates as rhetoric of black girl empowerment. Within a hip hop generation feminist framework, her words suggest that Smith is attempting to articulate a way to affirm her humanity on her own terms. Her usage of hip hop generation words and phrases such as “turn my swag on,” “haters,” “my grind,” and “shake them off” situate Smith within a generationally distinct public/popular culture space. While on the surface, her decla- ration may appear anti-authoritarian, a critical read of her understanding of her song and video reveals her desire for a space to resist conforming to established ideals and

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norms for girlhood, which is at the theoretical core of hip hop generation feminism as it pertains to adults (Morgan 2000). For her empowered standpoint, Smith embraces non-normativity and individuality. Smith’s defiance of ideals becomes apparent through her avant-garde natural hairstyles, her unconventional fashion choices, and her celebration of individualized expressivity.

A (in)visible text in the music video for “Whip My Hair” is the presence and performance of trans-woman and Vogue culture icon, Leyomi Mizrahi. Playing the role of a teacher, Mizrahi offers her queer of color body and her Vogue-inspired movements to her students. Her presence is subversive on several levels. Most viewers may be unfamiliar with Mizrahi, her trans-identity, or the queer of color club culture from which her movement originates. By presenting Mizrahi as the teacher of the students whom Smith encourages to “be themselves,” a space of empowerment is subtly created for youth to think through their identities and to consider the possibil- ities transcending established boundaries. Mizrahi literally and figuratively subverts gender norms through rejecting her gender assignment and embracing a gender identity and expression that permits her to assert her humanity. Whereas Smith offers girls a space to think through individuality and expressivity, Mizrahi provides a visible example of self-determination and of a self-authored identity schema.

Mizrahi’s presence in the music video further validates Smith’s anthem as space of empowerment stemming from self-affirmation, particularly for selves often margin- alized and devalued within the context of popular culture and the public sphere more broadly. Fulfilling the role of “teacher,” Mizrahi presents possibility for the youth in the video as well as the video’s spectators. Her illegibility may limit the potential impact of her presence; nevertheless, she affords spectators with an opportunity to heighten their media literacy and to challenge a rigid gender binary. Smith’s video makes available the opportunity to discuss a progressive model for gender and sexual identities that is premised upon the validation and valuation of self-authored identities and expressions. Similar to Mizrahi resisting her gender assignment, the video for and lyrics of “Whip My Hair” draw attention to resisting identity assignment based on prevailing norms. The moving visual text also offers its audience an opportunity to imagine a space that validates the significance of individuals choosing to express and identify themselves on their own terms.

Bridging the Gap Between Loving and Whipping My Hair

From a generalizing standpoint, the common thread between these black girl songs is hair. The dual release of these moving visuals within a week of one another, however, signaled a presence of a distinct and significant cultural moment that placed black girls at the center of popular culture. Although literally encouraging black girls to love their hair, “I Love My Hair’s” affirmation of the unique physical beauty of black girls resonates as a cogent anthem for young girls struggling with questions about the meaning of beauty and if they feel comfortable and confident to identify as beautiful. Amidst the barrage of images of black girls and women with long, straight hairstyles, “I Love My Hair” offers black girls an alternative discourse for processing the meaning of beauty. “I Love My Hair” can become a tool in their arsenal for self- affirmation and expressivity.

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This musical segment supplies a text for building media literacy among black girls encountering a relative abundance and scarcity of particular images of black women and girls. In Popular Culture, New Media, and Digital Literacy in Early Childhood (Marsh 2005), scholars discuss the importance of media literacy in early childhood and young adolescent development. Children engage with media texts on their own terms, and consequently, the insertion of a text that deviates from common repre- sentations of a particular group broadens the scope of children’s experiential inter- actions with mass media. More specifically for black girls, the brief move from the margins to the center could inspire black girls to think about other ways their unique identities can and should be affirmed. Both black feminism and hip hop generation feminism emphasize the importance of moving black bodies, and particularly black female bodies from the margins to the center of representation and theory (Crunk Feminist Collective 2011; bell hooks 2000; Morgan 2000). “I Love My Hair” is a gateway to consider the numerous ways in which black girls can and should be represented in popular culture. It is also suggestive of the arguably greater potential that exists in black girls both creating and being the primary subjects of mass media representations of themselves.

“Whip My Hair,” although not solely focused on black girls’ hair, contributes to this short-lived popular discourse in which the creativity and beauty of black girls thrived. Smith’s song openly promotes that young people should not be concerned about the negativity of others and urges her audience to “keep their heads up” and to “keep fighting,” even when they feel like “giving up.” Embedded within this song is a call for perseverance, tenacity, and confidence. “Whip My Hair” calls for audacity in the face of adversity. While the song may not be a viable, primary force for instilling confidence or tenacity in black girls, its popularity indicates that black girls, and young people more broadly, seek popular culture texts that impart affirming mes- sages. Although she appeals to young girls, the more explicitly defiant aspects of the video and the song encompass a broader female-based audience comprised of girls, adolescents, and adults.

Critically considering the numerous representations and forums of representation to which young people of the twenty-first century will be exposed, the significance of developing a cadre of texts in popular culture that foreground children’s creativity and expressivity cannot be undervalued. Both “I Love My Hair” and “Whip My Hair” are a part of this burgeoning group of media texts. Their emphases (both implied and overt) on black female youth acknowledge the particularity and universality of black girlhood and adolescence. By exploring the politics of hair and the politics of individuality and expressivity, these videos enter into a discourse of black girlhood empowerment. Hip hop generation feminism provides a critical lens for understanding this discourse.

Conclusion

Unlike the child pornographic tape that circulated in October 2011, the videos for “I Love My Hair” and “Whip My Hair” emerge as examples of the empowering possibilities of mass and social media for black girls. These mediums facilitate an “imagined community” of black girls that are seeking to define and articulate themselves (Andersen 2006). Twenty-first century digital and social media culture

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can fulfill multiple and often contradictory purposes. The popularity of internet-based child pornography coupled with an inglorious history of sexual exploitation of girls presents a potentially dangerous media context for black girls. The ease with which images and information circulate in mass media can entail negative and dire con- sequences for black girls and adolescents being exploited or being discussed within a digital universe that continues to rely upon harmful and dehumanizing racial, gender, and sexual stereotypes of black girls and women.

Debunking these stereotypes and the development of a cogent and cohesive discourse of black girl empowerment requires an intervention led by and on behalf of black girls and black girlhood. Creating a counterpublic, popular culture space for dismantling stereotypes and challenging established ideals and norms is one of many ways this discourse is created and propelled. In a discussion of a black counterpublic, Richard Iton (2010) illuminates the political importance of black popular culture. Extending this understanding of black popular culture to black girls, I replace “political” importance with “empowering possibilities.” As subjects, black girls and adolescents do not have traditional political power such as voting or holding political office. Similar to other disenfranchised communities, however, black girls can use popular/public culture to depict their lived experiences and to challenge stereotypes that negatively affect their lives. Being visible, being heard, and being fully actual- ized through representations are equally important to the empowerment of black youth as it is to black adults. Media texts featuring, focusing on, and targeting black girls create a space in which empowerment can emerge.

Combating media texts that dehumanize and devalue black girls necessitates an arsenal of media texts that derive from a discourse of empowerment that includes healthful expressivity, media literacy, self-affirming social networks, and the tools and resources to develop self-schema that affirm the uniqueness of black girlhood. The formation of organizations, groups, and collectives that promote media literacy among black girls and adolescents, that train black girls to create and produce content focused on their lived experiences and that provide a space for black girls to forge a sense of community is a necessary step in establishing a black girlhood-centered discourse of empowerment. Hip hop generation feminists have addressed and must continue to address the specific needs of black girls. Popular culture is one the primary sites of critical engagement for hip hop generation feminists. It is also a formative site for girl and female adolescent development. By focusing on some of the potential outcomes for representations of black girlhood and adolescence in mass, digital, and social media from a hip hop generation feminist standpoint, the value of public/popular culture for black girls and adolescents becomes particularly salient.

The adolescent who was filmed during a sexual act was a victim of one of the most dangerous crimes of twenty-first century, child pornography. The digital and social media era relies upon mass circulation of infinite images and does not always account for the damaging effects these images have on children and adults. The video of this adolescent and the subsequent mass media response exemplify the disempowering possibilities of public/popular culture. Her victimization, however, provides a rich opportunity to dialogue with black girls about racial, gender, and sexual stereotypes, black girls’ emergent sexual self-schemas, the positive and negative possibilities of social and mass media, and the importance of embracing a discourse of empower- ment. Pairing a discussion of that girl’s victimization with examples of empowering

J Afr Am St (2013) 17:22–34 33

public/popular cultural texts epitomizes how hip hop generation feminists and society more broadly must continue to think about the range of possibilities, both positive and negative, popular/public culture affords black girls and adolescents.

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34 J Afr Am St (2013) 17:22–34

http://globalgrind.com/news/leave-amber-cole-alone-social-media-victimizing-our-young-people
http://crunkfeministcollective.wordpress.com/
http://www.popeater.com/2010/11/02/willow-smith-ellen-degeneres-show-whip-my-hair/
http://www.popeater.com/2010/11/02/willow-smith-ellen-degeneres-show-whip-my-hair/
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/sesame-street-writer-inspired-daughter-creates-love-hair/story?id=11908940
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/sesame-street-writer-inspired-daughter-creates-love-hair/story?id=11908940
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/sesame-street-writer-inspired-daughter-creates-love-hair/story?id=11908940
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enpFde5rgmw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enpFde5rgmw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5L1TrqhUJ4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5L1TrqhUJ4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5L1TrqhUJ4
“One Time for My Girls”: African-American Girlhood, Empowerment, and Popular Visual Culture
Abstract
Hip Hop Generation Feminism: A Theoretical Framework
The Limitations: A Brief Case Study in Disempowerment
“I Love My Hair”
I Whip My Hair Back and Forth
Bridging the Gap Between Loving and Whipping My Hair
Conclusion
References