Let Black girls be girls.
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It's Friday, and we're closing this week with a heavier topic.
We've spent the past few weeks discussing various cultural tropes and stereotypes, and how our society uses them to perpetuate systemic oppression against marginalized groups. Today's article centers on trending news about a film poster, which might sound trivial. But this conversation – and how swiftly our community is responding – speaks volumes to how specific stereotypes against marginalized youth rob them of their childhood.
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TAKE ACTION
Read three stories on how adultification bias affects Black girls collected by the Georgetown Law Initiative on Gender Justice & Opportunity
Pay attention to how the systems in your community – including schools, policing, local media, etc – support or harm Black youth
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, you can call the National Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline at 800-656-HOPE (4673) or visit online.rainn.org.
GET EDUCATED
Yesterday, controversy brewed around Cuties, a French-language film that centers an 11-year-old Senegalese Muslim immigrant navigating girlhood in middle school who joins a dance team. The film is set to be released on Netflix in September, so the platform started promoting it earlier this week. But instead of using the film’s original release poster, Netflix chose a highly sexualized photo. They also decided to center the film’s description on the lead character’s “fascination” with “twerking” (screenshot for reference). This is quite different than how the film was presented at Sundance, where it took home the World Cinema Dramatic Directing Award (Sundance).
Left: The Cuties French film poster that depicts four girls, from a distance, walking down the street wearing bras and underwear over their casual clothing and carrying shopping bags. Right: The Cuties film poster created by Netflix that shows four girls in revealing dance clothing. Three girls, all girls of color, are in sexually suggestive poses.
This marketing decision prompted outrage, with many people accusing Netflix of promoting child pornography (Vulture). Criticism over sexualizing young women isn’t new, especially in the dance industry (NYTimes). But many note that this particularly hypersexualizes young girls of color. And in the midst of a national reckoning on racial justice, it feels especially insidious that Netflix would choose a cover that strips the characters of the youthful rebellion in the original poster.
The hypersexualization of Black women stems from a broader term called “adultification,” how society perceives the maturity and responsibility of marginalized youth. Both have roots in slavery. Black boys and girls were imagined as chattel and were often put to work as young as two and three years old (Georgetown). In particular, black girls were usually depicted as promiscuous, even predatory when it came to sex. This stereotype, often referred to as the “Jezebel” stereotype, was a way to rationalize the sexual assault of enslaved Black women by their captor (Ferris). This was reinforced by how frequently Black women were pregnant, forced to reproduce by their captors, and displayed without clothing during the slavery transactions (Ferris). Since then, the sexualization of Black women and girls, along with other girls of color, has been reinforced in the media and marketing until present day.
As a result, Black girls are perceived to be more mature and responsible for how others see them, even as society consistently strips them of their autonomy. Black girls are disciplined and reprimanded more than their white peers, particularly in school. Generally, Black girls are more likely to be suspended, physically reprimanded by the police, and sent to juvenile detention than white students (Anti-Racism Daily). This happens particularly with dress code: Black students, especially curvier students, are more likely to be disciplined than other girls for wearing the same type of clothing because their bodies are often sexualized by teachers and school authority figures (National Women’s Law Center). More anecdotal examples in the Washington Post.
And this hypersexualization has a devastating impact. One in four Black girls will be sexually abused before the age of 18, and one in five Black women are survivors of rape (American Psychological Association). The notions that Black girls are "fast" and "asking for it" help encourage and discredit the true harm they experience each and everyday (Bustle). Because of significant campaigns like the #MeToo movement and documentaries like Surviving R. Kelly and On The Record, more conversations are growing around the importance of protecting Black women.
“Only by recognizing the phenomenon of adultification can we overcome the perception that 'innocence, like freedom, is a privilege'.”
Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black Girls’ Childhood, via Georgetown
Netflix offered an apology and changed both the promo image and the description, but the damage is done. Nearly 400,000 people have signed one of two petitions advocating for Netflix to remove the upcoming film from their platform. The film has garnered dozens of negative reviews on popular movie review sites.
Since the film isn’t available for Netflix users until September, very few of these critics have actually seen it. But reviews from those that have made one thing clear: Cuties doesn’t promote hypersexualization of Black girls. It condemns it. The film navigates this conversation all on its own by painting a compelling and cautionary tale on how social media and middle school social cliques influence the path to womanhood. More urgently, it emphasizes that it’s up to the grownups in the room – including parents, guardians, and broader society – to protect Black girls from it (Shadow and Act).
And through all of this, we’ve minimized the voice behind the film itself. Cuties was made by Maïmouna Doucouré, a French screenwriter and filmmaker of Senegalese origin. This is her feature film directorial debut, and she brings a new perspective and story to a film circuit historically dominated by white men. In an interview from January 2020, Doucouré shares that she drew from experiences from her upbringing and spent over a year researching to craft an accurate narrative of the girls’ experiences in her community (Screen Daily). Since the backlash, Doucouré’s social media profiles have gone silent. It disheartens me that an insensitive marketing choice threatens our community’s exposure to films like these that are still rare: a coming-of-age film about a young Black girl created by a Black woman.
We need a new narrative that lets Black girls be girls. And in some ways, the backlash to Netflix’s marketing decisions proves that we are prepared to use our voices to create change. Hopefully, as we continue to rally against injustices, we don’t erase the voices we need so desperately.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Netflix opted for a hypersexualized image and description for an upcoming movie on an 11-year-old Black girl and her dance team, rousing calls of criticism
This instance represents a long history of media and society hypersexualizing Black girls
The backlash may silence a diverse voice in film, silencing voices from people that represent communities harmed
It is up to us to protect the right for Black girls to be Black girls
RELATED ISSUES
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7/31/2020 | Keep fighting for Breonna Taylor.
7/17/2020 | Analyze representation in media.
7/16/2020 | Respect AAVE.
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