The Brown Girl World

About Roni

Roni Kolidakis is a former health care reporter who worked with a large subscription news outlet in Washington, D.C. covering the Food and Drug Administration, as well as pharmaceutical legislation on Capitol Hill. She currently works for a division of Lucas Film in San Francisco, CA.

Hollywood and the Brown Girl

By Roni Kolidakis

Although there is quite possibly nothing more fabulous than being a Brown Girl, sometimes we want to shed our skins and just "be." Be accepted for our many layers, not just what the world thinks it sees when we walk onto the scene. We want the world to see us; not just the color of our skin, but what we bring as human beings.

An interview with Academy Award nominee Taraji P. Henson (she played Queenie in the recent Hollywood hit, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) got me thinking when the actress told Monarch Magazine that she wanted to be The Black Meryl Streep. Henson said what she most admires about Streep is that she can completely immerse herself into a character and make it believable and, to reach her goal, Henson said she's willing to take on any role - from playing the stereotypical prostitute to portraying a successful corporate executive. I wonder: Is it really possible to reach the ranks of Streep as a Black actress?

Brown Girls are generally shut out from epic roles simply because of race so isn't it still a bit far fetched to think that the acting abilities of a minority actress could transcend prejudice to sufficiently allow the audience to suspend their beliefs and see past her color? Maybe. But every time a Brown Girl gets a role that was not written for a person of color, it's a small victory for not only the big screen but for each of us in the real world too. When a woman's color can add depth to the story without actually having to be the story, it is a celebration for us all. Halle Berry as a "Bond" girl, Lucy Liu as an angel in Charlie's Angels, and Taraji as a loving mother to Brad Pitt in a blockbuster flick.

It's important that the film industry start showing Brown Girls in our many various forms so that society as a whole can see us as individuals and not just as colorful characters in an otherwise White world. We've all heard the saying, "art imitates life", but the renowned 19th century author Oscar Wilde once said that "Life imitates art far more than art imitates life." In the case of public perception of minorities, this concept could not be more true. Society often looks to the media to tell them what is and what is not acceptable and if the Brown Girl is held within strict parameters on screen, she will continue to be treated as such in the real world as well.

If Hollywood continues to see the Black or even Latin female as the sassy, ever vocal sidekick, that is how the world will view her. We are not all snapping our fingers and rolling our necks a la' Queen Latifah in Bringing Down the House and yet our depictions on film are overly saturated with these types of imagery. In fact, portrayals like Latifah's are so pervasive that the term BBF (Black Best Friend) has been coined. An article in the LA Times, "Hollywood Loves BBFs 4-Ever," states BBFs are "played by an African American actress whose character's principal function is to support the heroine, often with sass, attitude and a keen insight into relationships and life... BBFs are experts in the ways of the world, using that knowledge to comfort, warn or scold their [White] BFF."

This perception of the Black female is one shared by many in society and is the result of years and years of being bombarded with media images of what the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University calls the "Sapphire Caricature": the portrayal of Black women on film and in television as rude, loud, malicious, stubborn, and overbearing where they are generally seen as tart-tongued and emasculating, one hand on a hip, the other pointing and jabbing violently while rhythmically rocking their heads." This makes others' perception my reality because it becomes the labyrinth through which I have to navigate daily in order to get the world to see me. It becomes the lens through which we view actresses such as Henson where it's easier for us to accept her as the baby's mama in Baby Boy than a character befitting of Streep in Lions for Lambs.

Of course this does not stop with the Black female. Asian women are typically cast in roles as passive, submissive wallflowers who are often times desired as exotic concubines by their White male counterparts. Latinas are also typecast in that some of the most prevalent images of Latina women on film are as domestic workers or voluptuous sexy vixens. And while there are a handful of actresses, such as Jennifer Lopez, Sandra Oh and Lucy Liu who have been given the opportunity to step outside of these boxes, their ability to do has certainly not been the norm.

These misrepresentations onscreen are harmful to minority women because they solidify false perceptions of these ethnic groups off screen. They also limit the possibility of the audience ever being able to truly understand not only the cultural differences but the genuine similarities between Brown Girls and the rest of the world.

One can only hope that there will come a day when Hollywood will dull the color lines and start casting great actresses in transcendent roles, regardless of race. And if we are making our way in that direction, it is a slow progression on an uphill grade. But when we do get there, Henson won't have to be The Black Meryl Streep, she can just be Taraji P. Henson.