The Black Woman That Media Built: Content Creation, Interpretation, and the Making of the Black Female Self
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The Black Woman that Media Built: Content Creation, Interpretation, and the Making of the Black Female Self by Timeka Nicol Tounsel A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Communication) in the University of Michigan 2015 Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Robin R. Means Coleman, Chair Assistant Professor Shazia Iftkhar Professor Gerald P. Scannell Associate Professor Megan L. Sweeney © Timeka Nicol Tounsel 2015 For the women who shared their testimonies, and to those who dare to listen ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS So many times throughout this project I came to the end of myself. Without the people and institutions who stepped in to offer support during those times this dissertation would not have been completed. I would not have known the beauty of producing a project of the heart without the constant encouragement, guidance, and mentorship of my advisor Robin Means Coleman. Many thanks to the faculty, staff, and students who pitched in as editors, writing partners, cheerleaders, confidants, and sources of inspiration during the past five years, especially Brandi Hughes, Xiomara Santamarina, and Janice Hamlet. Thank you to the Communication Studies Department and the Black Humanities Collective who make Michigan a great place to do research. Many thanks to Megan Sweeney and Shazia Iftkhar who reminded me of the importance of asserting my voice in my research, to Paddy Scannell who supported the project throughout the long journey of refinement, to Tasha Brown, Kyera Singleton and Katrina Ellis who provided the sisterly support that every scholar needs, to Katherine Weathers who gave me a happy place on campus to retreat to, and to Janis Mayes who helped me see myself as a scholar. The financial support I received from Rackham Graduate School, the Communication Studies Department, the Institute for Research on Women and Gender—Community of Scholars, the African Studies Center, and the Commission on the Status of Women (AEJMC) helped me complete this project without worrying about money or a warm place to work. Thank you to New Beginnings Cathedral, Bethel AME (New Genesis), and Canton Christian Fellowship for reminding me that nothing is impossible with God. A million thanks to the study participants who shared their stories, their homes, and their time with me—your generosity has quite literally changed my life. Thank you to my family and friends for your unconditional love, your prayers, and your support, especially Mom and Dad. iii To Chris, thank you for believing that I am superwoman, but for letting me be human anyway. Your love makes all of this worth it. To God be the glory. iv Table of Contents Dedication ii Acknowledgements iii List of Figures vi List of Appendices vii Abstract viii Introduction: Scripting Black Womanhood 1 Chapter 1. Bearing Witness: Studying Black Women as Media Citizens 23 2. Nimble Readings: The Situated Literacies of Black Female Media Citizens 58 3. Inscribing Black Women in ‘White Space’: 106 Marketing, Prototypes, and Commercial Media 4. Public Gestures, Interior Blessings: Black Womanhood in the Digital Age 135 Conclusion 170 Appendices 178 v List of Figures Figure 2.1 Single Professional Women 58 2.2 Clair Huxtable 81 2.3 Mary Jane on Twitter 89 3.1 Colorism in Advertising 117 vi List of Appendices Appendix A Definition of Key Terms 179 B IRB Approval Letter 181 C Informed Consent Form 184 D Interview Guide 186 E Participant Information Form 189 F Participant Summaries 190 G Media Glossary 191 vii Abstract This study is a qualitative, womanist inquiry into the ways that black women engage media texts through their interpretive work and through content creation. The study explores the media landscape, the interconnected domain of commercial and non-commercial media texts, as both a place where black women perform the self and a place where the black female self takes shape. Interpreting mediated scripts of black womanhood is also a profound practice where black women co-construct what it means to be a black woman. Hence, this study is concerned with the interactive processes of meaning making—that is, understanding representations of black womanhood—and identity formation, or understanding and defining black womanhood at large. The media texts considered in this study include television, film, radio, print and online platforms. Black women’s interpretations of media and their social experiences, especially with other black women, constitute a matrix of influence that black women draw from as they define and negotiate performances of the black female self. This study attends to that matrix as a circuit of culture: media, sociocultural value systems such as religion, and interaction with an interpretive community of other black women. The study is based on interview data from 30 black women: 15 are professional content creators, 15 are audience members. Taken together, the study offers expanded insights for defining complex media engagement practices among audiences. Specifically, the data speak to the ways in which black women have become experts at making do—manipulating a problematic media landscape to satisfy yearnings for role models, and for a space to testify to their own personal understandings of black womanhood. Through their testimonies study participants demonstrate the need to consider web-based content creation as a form of meaningful identity management that is enhanced, and not sullied, by the interactive capacities of an audience. viii Introduction Scripting Black Womanhood An intriguing pattern in U.S. news media regarding professional black women emerged in the years from 2008-14—there were a lot of them. These women held titles like attorney, teacher, writer, and engineer; they were attractive and compelling on screen and in print. The reason they had become the center of multiple headlines, however, was not because of what they had achieved, but because of what they lacked. In 2006, the U.S. Census Bureau released data from its American Community Survey showing that 45 percent of black women in the country had never been married.1 The trend was said to be most prevalent among black women who were also professionals with college degrees and careers, a combination that some suggested caused them to delay marriage and motherhood. It was Hannah Brueckner, a sociology professor and researcher at Yale University, who linked the census data to attainment of post-secondary education, and she declared in 2009 that professional black women’s achievements had “come…at the cost of marriage and family” (Yale University 2009). Thus black women found themselves, yet again, at the center of a crisis concerning the black family, and like so many times before, it was all their fault. Public discourse explains the problem of black female achievement as two-fold: (1) it supersedes black male progress, and (2) it allows black women access to power and authority not traditionally associated with femininity. Such attitudes can be traced back to Daniel Patrick 1 The census data only captures black women of a specific age group, 25-28. When considering the percentage of black women who have never been married up to the age of 55, the numbers decrease dramatically to 13 percent. See Stanley 2011. 1 Moynihan’s 1965 report on African American families which attributed social and economic impoverishment in black communities to female-headed households, increased female-over-male achievement, and “reversed roles of husband and wife” (Moynihan). Black women are allowed to be successful, but not so successful that they alter their tastes and preferences regarding romantic partnerships, that they reimagine a life outside of the confines of heterosexual marriage and motherhood, or that they indulge desires without regard for how they impact the rest of the black community. The rhythm of racial uplift has always required that black women move to the beat of a patriarchal drum. When black women seem to have lost the beat, media content emerges to amplify the rhythm—and to muffle any deviant tunes. Table 1 News Coverage of Black Female Singledoom2 TITLE OUTLET DATE Marriage Eludes High-Achieving Black Women NBCNews.com Aug. 2009 Single, Black, Female—And Plenty of Company ABC Nightline Dec. 2009 Why Can’t a Successful Black Woman Find a Man? ABC Nightline April 2010 Single Moms Raising Girls to Remain Single? Cnn.com May 2010 High-Achieving Black Women and Marriage: Not Choosing Psychology June 2010 or Not Chosen? Today Black Women See Fewer Black Men at the Altar NYTimes.com June 2010 An Update From the Frontlines of Romance LATimes.com June 2010 Sex and the Single Black Woman: How the Mass The Economist April 2010 Incarceration of Black men Hurts Black Women Does the Black Church Keep Black Women Single? Cnn.com Aug. 2010 Unmarried Black Women: Down or Out? The Economist Oct. 2011 Black, Female and Single NYTimes.com Dec. 2011 2 Table 1.1 represents a random sampling of titles from news coverage of unmarried black women from 2009 to 2014. 2 No Scrubs? The Dilemma of Modern African American NYPost.com Nov. 2014 Women Comedians, little known actors, and filmmakers emerged as some of the self-appointed experts who would offer black women guidance out of the so-called darkness of single-doom, and into the light of traditional black family units. Media personality Steve Harvey, who began his media career as a stand-up comedian, was one of the figures correcting black women; first in the Strawberry Letter segment of his nationally-syndicated radio show, and later in a book and film franchise and a nationally-syndicated talk show. Harvey used his brash sense of humor and the experience gained through three marriages to counsel black women. ABC News and The Oprah Winfrey Show are a couple of the outlets that offered Harvey additional platforms to broadcast his instructions.