Black Women in Contemporary Media: Representations, Effects, and Social Commentary

Abstract

Research examining Black women’s portrayals on television have often found that Black women are portrayed stereotypically, as Jezebels, Sapphires, and Strong Black Women (Collins, 2000). However, very few studies have examined the current portrayals of Black women on television. I aimed to examine how Black women are portrayed on scripted TV programs today and to investigate how those portrayals contribute to Black youths' perceptions of Black women. I conducted three studies to examine these issues. The first study was a content analysis of 12 scripted TV programs that feature Black women as lead or secondary characters (e.g., Scandal, Insecure, Being Mary Jane). With this study, I aimed to get a wholistic view of the Black women portrayed on scripted programs by examining portrayals of Black mothering, Black women’s friendships, and Black women’s stress in addition to the traditional categories used for coding Black women (e.g., skin tone, occupation). Results showed that Black women were often dark skinned, thin, mothers, unmarried, in white collar jobs, bossy, and sexualized. The second study was a survey of approximately 600 Black adolescents that assessed whether their regular consumption of the 12 programs from Study 1 related to their beliefs about Black women (i.e., Black women as Jezebels, Sapphires, and Strong Black Women). Additionally, I compared the beliefs of those who watched more of the 12 programs to those who watched more programs without central Black women characters. Furthermore, I investigated the impact of exposure to programs with high and low levels of certain characterizations of Black women (i.e., Black women as Jezebels, Sapphires, and Strong Black Women) on adolescents’ beliefs about Black women. Results showed that watching more of the 12 programs was not predictive of endorsement of stereotypical beliefs about Black women. Watching more programs without Black women as lead characters was also not predictive of endorsement of stereotypical beliefs about Black women. However, watching programs without prominent Black women leads was predictive of endorsing Eurocentric beauty ideals. Furthermore, frequent exposure to programs with High Jezebel content was predictive of endorsement of the Jezebel stereotype for boys. In my third study, I assessed whether adolescents used social media while watching TV programs to discuss Black women characters. A Social TV scale was created to assess how frequently participants commented on various aspects of a TV character (e.g., clothes, behaviors, relationships) via social media. Here, I was interested in learning whether Social TV had an effect on adolescents' beliefs about Black women. Results showed that Social TV did have an effect for Black boys but not for Black girls, in that boys who made more social media commentary about characters on TV programs were more likely to endorse the ideas of Black women being Jezebels and Sapphires. However, girls who made more social media commentary about characters were more likely to endorse Eurocentric beauty ideals. Together, these findings highlight that while portrayals of Black women may be less stereotypical today, Black adolescents, particularly Black boys, are still susceptible to stereotypical thoughts about Black women via the media. Suggestions for future research are provided.