by Jaimee A. Swift

Ever since I can remember, I have been in a fight against my weight.

When I was eight years old, I went to Justice with my mom to buy back-to-school clothes. She picked a white shirt with a bedazzled flower accent and light blue jeans for me to try on. I went into the dressing room, excited about my new clothes, but the jeans wouldn’t even go up past my thighs. The shirt was too snug. I remember walking out the dressing room feeling so disappointed with myself as I watched other girls posing in front of the mirror, their new clothes fitting them with ease.

by Ashleigh Shackelford

Earlier this month, Amandla Stenberg took over Teen Vogue to share her power and vulnerability in navigating a world that fails to represent the fullness of Black women. In Amandla’s powerful and necessary message about media and representation on the magazine’s Snapchat, she revealed for the first time to the world that she identifies as a Black bisexual woman.

Amandla wrapped up her powerful announcement with some inspiring words for a Black feminist future by saying, “This is just the beginning.”

Amandla is #BlackGirlMagic and her voice is an important one in the discourse around the representation of Black women and the representation of intersectional feminism. I do not contest that Amandla is a game changer. But I do have concerns about who we are lifting up as trailblazers of intersectional feminism during the era of #BlackGirlMagic.


In the sea of praise Amandla received for coming out as a Black bisexual woman, I started thinking about other pioneers in the movement for better and more diverse Black Girl representation. When we look at Lianne La Havas, Solange Knowles, Ava DuVernay, Zendaya Coleman, Willow Smith, FKA Twigs, and Zoe Kravitz, we are looking at artistic, carefree Black women who are redefining the limitations of Black womanhood. But as thin, light-skinned Black women, they also reaffirm a certain type of respectability and palatability.

Hood femmes, ratchets, and thotties are not represented by these women. Darker skin and bigger bodies are not represented within these women. It seems as though being woke, thin, and having lighter skin affords you a platform to speak on the issues important to Black women today—and praise for doing so.

But what about the rest of us?

While I celebrate Amandla’s powerful coming out and the acclaim she has received on multiple media outlets, I wonder about the Black women and femmes who will never get the same kind of space or praise of their queerness. I think about the many queer Black women and femmes who are conscious and understanding of their oppression enough to name it, but will never be put in the limelight of mainstream media. I think about all the queer Black femmes who must navigate the intersections of their identities with no platform to speak on the violence and experiences they live through. I also think about how speech—specifically African American Vernacular English—is a barrier to accessibility and respectability for the spectrum of representation that we are so desperately lacking.

In analyzing examples of ratchet feminism and hood politicking, the women of the Love & Hip Hop franchise come to mind. Especially those who have explicitly stated they’re attracted to and/or engage in relationships with other women—their queer identity is often erased. Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta’s Joseline Hernandez openly stated that she is bisexual. But there was barely any media coverage around her vulnerability and strength in living her truth because her platform was limited through the gaze of black femme ratchetry and hypersexualization. Joseline is not only seen through the limitation of hoe-ness, but her body type (bigger breasts, bigger butt, but still socially acceptable thick) does not read as an alternative Black girl to the gaze of white supremacy because of the oversexualization of her body. Her light skin and beauty allows for her to have the limited platform she has now, but if she was darker or had different features, her trajectory would be very different.

Another example is Sassy on Black Ink Crew, who is an out brown-skin Black lesbian, yet she is not seen as a role model within the current representation of #BlackGirlMagic, though she has stated in interviews that she wants to be a role model for other queer Black femmes/women.

The reason why Amandla and Black women/femmes like her are able to maintain this status as a radical alternative Black girl (or in Solange’s words, the “non-comforming Black girl”), is because they are seen as being palatable to white supremacy. However, being palatable to white supremacist gaze is a violent reality. Media studies and popular culture studies through a Black feminist lens show us that often white media platforms determine who to anoint as a leader or who to give the spotlight to. When these white media platforms determine this, their decision simultaneously feeds into the capitalistic motives of white supremacy and into the viewer’s ideas of white supremacy’s hierarchy of worthiness. If we’re consistently seeing light skin, thin “alternative” Black girls being thrusted into the spotlight as the primary revolutionaries in creating change in an anti-Black, misogynistic world, then we’re receiving the message that only by being closer to white in presentation and performance is how we can see “change” happen.


Much like the often ignored limitations within the Carefree Black Girl Movement, there are major shortcomings when it comes to the representation and visibility of magical Black girls and femmes.

What about the bisexual trap queens, the queer hood femmes, or the sexually fluid thotties?

Hoodness, poorness, fatness, and nigga-ness are not represented in our mainstream #BlackGirlMagic movements. This is expanded through other forms of oppression as well, such as colorism, respectability politics, beauty politics, sizism, ability, and transphobia. It’s time we lift the limitation around our ideas of Black girl representation and Black girl magic in our aims to challenge the stigmas of being a Black woman or femme. In claiming our identity as a source of confidence and empowerment, we have to recognize that what/who we praise as radical and ground-breaking is politicized too. We have to understand that light skin, white gaze palatability, and thinness are privileges in representation. We can praise Amandla for her #BlackGirlMagic and still question where the rest of the Black femme representation is at.

Photo: Ben Toms / Teen Vogue

Ashleigh Shackelford is a radical queer Black fat femme based in Richmond, VA. Ashleigh is a cultural producer, body positivity advocate, pop culture enthusiast, and a run-on sentence repeat offender. They are a community organizer at Black Action Now and the director of Free Figure Revolution. Find more posts at: BlackFatFemme.com.

by Marcela Howell

As the President concluded his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, the message was clear if unconventional. He set low expectations for success in working with a GOP-led Congress but also issued a call to the American people to take our future into our own hands, calling on us to fulfill our civic duty by voting, engaging in public service, and even protesting. Looking ahead to a year full of peril and opportunity for Black women's health, I can say that Black women are already heeding this call. We must, and will, define for ourselves what liberation looks like and demand accountability from the politicians who stand in our way.

For the past forty years, the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently supported the constitutional right of women to have abortions. So, as I look ahead to March, when the Court will review the law (HB 2) that has shut down more than half of the clinics in Texas, the image that comes to my mind is one of dominoes standing back to back across a map of the United States. With this new case, Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole, will those dominoes start to fall?

According to recent analysis, in the last five years politicians who want abortion to be completely illegal have quietly passed 288 new laws that make it harder and harder for women to access abortion care (57 in 2015 alone). The reach of these laws has expanded across vast regions of the U.S., forcing doctors to lie to women, requiring women to make multiple appointments and delay care, and shutting down clinics. These requirements are neither medically necessary, nor beneficial to women’s health.

However, the Supreme Court that will be decided this year goes far beyond one state’s abortion laws. In deciding Whole Woman’s Health, the Supreme Court has the opportunity to uphold every woman’s right to end a pregnancy with dignity by deeming unconstitutional not just the Texas law, but similar laws in other states.

Politicians and pundits on both sides of the debate have remarked on how much is at stake in this case: in Texas, in abortion case law, for women writ large. But there’s been comparatively little in-depth discussion about what this case means for Black women across the country. What it means for our families, our communities, and our futures.

Restrictions on abortion should matter to each and every one of us, but the truth is they don’t harm us all equally. Even after the landmark Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, which celebrates its 43rd anniversary on January 22nd, the ability to end a pregnancy has depended largely on what state a woman lives in, how much money she makes, whether she is over 18, how easy or difficult it is for her to find a provider and the additional barriers, cultural and personal, she faces in making and keeping an appointment.
For women enrolled in Medicaid, exercising the constitutional right granted in Roe has been difficult for nearly four decades, ever since the Hyde Amendment, denying abortion insurance coverage to low-income women, was first passed. While 15 states now provide coverage for abortion using state funds, low-income women, primarily women of color, immigrant women and young women in the remaining 35 states and Washington, D.C. are left struggling to make ends meet.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, in 2000, 13 states were considered “hostile” to abortion rights. These included the usual suspects: “red” states like Texas, North Dakota, South Carolina, and Kentucky. Flash forward to 2014, and 27 states were considered hostile to abortion rights, with 18 now considered “extremely hostile.” No longer are these states scattered throughout the map. Now the hostile territory blankets the South, reaching in an unbroken swath from Virginia to Florida, across to Texas, and everywhere in between.

So where does the Supreme Court case figure in? It could play a key role in reducing the “hostile territory” for Black women seeking abortion. States with laws on the books that might be affected by a decision regarding the ambulatory surgical center (ASC) and admitting privileges requirements challenged in Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole include Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

These twenty states alone are home to 12.5 million Black women--a majority of Black women in the U.S. The Hyde Amendment restrictions already create “insurmountable barriers” for women struggling to make ends meet. And we know that denying a woman already struggling access to abortion can push her further into poverty.

When clinics in these same states are forced to close, Black women, already facing barriers to quality, affordable health care, may be left with nowhere to turn. Others will save and struggle to travel hundreds of miles to a clinic in another state, which could overwhelm the remaining clinics, and make it harder for women living there to get an appointment on time.

Of course, this is far from the first time we’ve faced hostile policies in the places we call home. Many of these same states have a history of denying healthcare, fair employment, educational opportunities, and voting rights to Black women, violations of our civil rights that continue to this day. Living in “hostile territory” is not new to Black women, but neither is it acceptable.

But here is what some of the politicians passing these laws forget: the South may be embattled by anti-choice politicians, but it is also the birthplace of Dorothy Height, Amelia Boynton Robinson, and Daisy Lee Gatson Bates. Those same hostile states are where we are organizing in churches, beauty salons, and around the kitchen table. And those same states are also home to Black women voters, who are prepared to hold politicians accountable. And we overwhelmingly believe that abortion should be covered by health insurance (76 percent) and support the right of women to have access to affordable abortion care in our own communities (71 percent).

In a few short months, the Supreme Court will decide whether we regain the progress promised by the sweat and toil of our mothers and grandmothers, or slide back. And a few months after that, voters will have an opportunity to chart the future of our nation. Those who oppose Black reproductive autonomy have set their game pieces across the map. It is my fervent hope and prayer that these dominoes of oppression will begin to topple, helping to make way for a brighter future for Black women and girls, the future we’ve been fighting for generations, a future long-awaited, and even longer overdue.

Photo: Shutterstock

Marcela Howell is the Executive Director for In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda. Ms. Howell is a nationally-recognized policy and communications expert who has worked on a range of domestic and international issues, including: health care reform, CEDAW ratification, and a well-woman health standard. A long-time activist on reproductive health and rights issues, she has worked in government at the local, state, and federal levels. Her efforts to expand the women's movement in California led to her serving in a number of leadership positions within the movement, including being elected to two terms as chair of the Women's Caucus of the California Democratic Party, serving on the board of directors of NARAL, Women's Campaign Fund, and the California Women's Vote Project. As a political consultant in California for over ten years, Ms. Howell specialized in helping women run for elected office. Ms. Howell is the author of Walk in My Shoes: A Black Activist’s Guide to Surviving the Women's Movement.

by Breeshia Turner

By now, many of us have heard the news of Daniel Holtzcalw's conviction for sex crimes committed against 13 African-American women during his employment as Oklahoma City police officer. The videos of his tears have been liked and shared around the Internet, as people rejoice over what we have come to understand as "justice well served." Amidst the suffering and mourning for Black lives lost and brutalized across the nation, we can finally celebrate having "won" one. At last, we can sit back and revel in our oppressor's suffering.

by Moiyattu Banya

One evening I struggled to put together my lecture for the following day’s class, and I couldn’t figure out why I was so conflicted. My teaching was supposed to focus on women’s health and reproductive rights, but I struggled with what my key points and messaging should be. I reflected on why it was so hard to get the words to come out right on the PowerPoint slides. Every other lecture had been easy, but this one on sexual health and reproductive rights in the United States came with struggle. I simply couldn’t get the words out. I stopped, took a break and asked myself what main points I wanted my students to walk away with.

by Agunda Okeyo 

I am a huge admirer of Robert F. Kennedy. In learning American history as a youth, I was struck my RFK’s profound humanist transformation from a righteously conservative politician (dare I say, racist) to a truly revolutionary equal-rights activist. Undoubtedly the death of his brother and the racial complexity of the time motivated this change--and likely cost him his life. In an unprecedented visit to apartheid South Africa in 1966 he said the following to a rapt audience at the University of Cape Town, South Africa:

by Janette Robinson Flint

I am deeply hurt, enraged, and gravely concerned by the onslaught of violence against Black women and girls. The latest offense happened on Monday, July 13th, when Sandra Bland, a 28 year-old woman who was pulled over for a minor traffic violation, was found dead in her Texas jail cell. The following day, 18 year-old Kindra Chapman was also found dead in an Alabama jail cell. In June, a police officer tackled and handcuffed a 14-year-old girl in a bikini at pool party in McKinney, Texas. In June, nine people—six of whom were Black women—were murdered at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Cynthia Hurd, Rev. Sharonda Singleton, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lance, Myra Thompson, Hon. Rev. Clementa Pinckney, Tywanza Sanders, Rev. Daniel Simmons Sr., and Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor lost their lives because of the deep-seated anti-Black hatred cultivated against African Americans in this country. And this is only in the last few months. There are scores of Black women who did not get a hashtag. There were no marches or protests for them. Their deaths have gone unnoticed by most of the nation and grieved by only the ones who knew them.

by Evan Seymour

Last weekend, Kylie Jenner posted a picture on Instagram of herself wearing cornrows, a move which sparked all sorts of angry comments and insults from some of her followers. The most high-profile of Jenner’s critics was Hunger Games star Amandla Stenberg. This is not the first time the actress has been vocal on social media about the appropriation of black culture, but it was the first time she was specific with her calling-out of the practice, honing in on a single individual. Stenberg's comment read: "when u appropriate black features and culture but fail to use ur position of power to help black Americans by directing attention towards ur wigs instead of police brutality or racism #whitegirlsdoitbetter."

by C. Imani Williams

The Twitter hashtag #HowItFeelsToBeABlackGirl, created by Jada Mosley, garnered over 21,000 tweets on its first day, and its still going. Mosely's vision for the hashtag came after she viewed a documentary on LGBTQ individuals for a college psychology course. The conversation manifested into a space for Black women and girls to discuss how we grapple with the complexities of our lives and navigate the impacts of current events—such as the tragedy and senseless loss of life in Charleston; the continuous acts of interpersonal and institutional violence perpetrated against black women; and the time we spent as community watching the unraveling of Rachel Dolezal's co-opting and appropriation of black women and culture.

by Arielle Newton

I’m not writing about Rachel Dolezal. There’s no need for her—and her lies, cultural theft, violence, and overall fuckery—to take up any more space.

by Veronica Agard

Middle school is a pretty rough time for most of us. We’re just beginning to experience puberty—the hormones, our menstrual cycles, and maybe our first real crush. To add to that pressure, if you were in middle school within the past ten years or so, a good chunk of the highs and lows of your middle school experience likely played out on social media. But what happens when you are bullied or targeted and there’s no way to track down who’s behind it?

by C. Imani Williams


Black women’s lives matter. Our lives matter, even when the violent crimes committed against us go unpunished. Violence against Black women is not new. Our plight is discussed in some circles, but often ignored in many others. This leaves women feeling unprotected and vulnerable.

by Nina Daoud


As a 16 year old, first-generation college applicant who also happened to be first-generation American and the eldest of four siblings, the last thing I wanted to do was apply to colleges in faraway places in the middle of nowhere. In my eyes, institutions like Dartmouth, Middlebury, and Swarthmore reeked of privilege and unfamiliarity—and I wanted no part of it. I told my counselor I wanted to apply early decision to SUNY Buffalo, and that I had made my decision.

by Ariel C. Williams


For the women who’ve been kidnapped, abused, or killed due to gender-based violence: We speak to honor you.

Statistics show that every nine seconds in the U.S., a woman is assaulted or beaten. Even more horrifying, more than three women are murdered by their partners every day in the U.S. More times than not, children of victims are present when their mothers are abused and stand a greater chance at abusing others or becoming victims themselves in adulthood. Carrying the memories of watching their mothers being verbally, mentally, emotionally and physically abused is a heavy toll that no child should have to endure, yet it happens every day in this country.

The common fallacy about misogyny is that it is reserved for men. Many people believe that one can’t be a woman and still possess misogynistic biases. Sadly, this opinion is unfounded especially in the case of Black women. Far too often, our foremothers suffer from internalized misogynoir and respectability even though they themselves have overcome the obstacles of being Black women in predominantly White spaces. In times like these, when popular culture not only condones but excuses sexual abuse of women, we have to work to counter these narratives while seeking community with our foremothers.

by Brittany Dawson

I was crowned the title “awkward Black girl” in the seventh grade.

Other than my parent’s collection, I didn’t personally own magazines popular within the African American community, like JET Magazine or Essence. Harry Potter books consumed all the space in my locker where others thought Chris Brown posters should’ve been.

by Nneka M. Okona


Black women have been committed to the well-being, prosperity, and advancement of communities all throughout history. For many of us, this has been currently realized by the Black women who are at the forefront of the #BlackLivesMatter movement which continues to unfold across the country. But still, there are millions of other Black women organizing to create, ensure, and protect opportunities for their sisters. From public policy, education, social justice, economic development, and health and wellness, many organizations founded by and for Black women—whether national or local in scope—have erected spaces to carry out that work. Here are just a few of these organizations that you should know about. Visit their websites to find out more about their work, as well as research how you can become involved or donate to keep to their efforts for their continued success and sustainability.

Last week, President Obama gave a powerful State of the Union address, with a strong populist message addressing diverse issues: climate change, minimum wage increases, paid sick and family leave, pro-family workplace policies, support for veterans, debt-free college, decreasing student loan debt, health care reform, immigration reform, and the need to pushback against the erosion of voting rights of African American’s and people of color. He also became the first President to mention lesbian, transgender, and bisexual people at a State of the Union.

by Ariel C. Williams 

Last week, I read an opinion piece posted on For Harriet, critiquing Black women’s backlash to VH1’s new show, Sorority Sisters. I found the title, “So Now You're Mad?: A Response to ‘Sorority Sisters’ from a Sorority Sister” to be taunting, and I found the piece to be riddled with problematic generalizations.