Take a Deep Breath

Having my son changed everything.

For the hundredth time, I felt the pressing urgency to confront all the things I had tucked away into the crevices of my body. But this time, I couldn’t ignore them. Having my son forced me to examine the kind of woman I want to show up as in the world, if not for me, then definitely for him. And so, on this hundred-and-first time, I had to do something about my feelings. And what better way than to write?

The Politics of Being

The world is political. Our existence is political. And that’s something that has never escaped me. I am conscious of myself as a Black woman in England. I am acutely aware of all the stereotypes I could fall into, the perceptions created of women who look like me in the media. And so, in a sort of quiet resistance, I have tried my hardest not to yield to those expectations.

At times, it has been overwhelming. At times, overbearing. And at times, just plain exhausting.

I’ve been through the “fuck it” years—the era of rebellion when you stop caring about what anyone has to say and do whatever you damn well please because life is a one-time offer, and all that. But even during those years, the virtue I bestowed upon myself to merely exist, to be as frivolous as one can be, was never truly successful.

I am Black.

I am either ghetto or conservative. I can’t be both. I am either the booty-shaking, twerking queen as per every music video director’s vantage point, or I am striving for academic excellence on my way to a Russell Group university (which is where I ended up). I am either entertaining the company of “wotless eediats” or looking for Mr Serious. But I can’t do both.

I have always envied how women of other races are afforded the opportunity to recreate themselves time and time again. I have known white and East Asian women who lived their twenties in reckless abandon and walked away untainted by their past—which is as it should be.

But I know, as a Black woman, that opportunity isn’t really afforded to me. And this isn’t about Western culture holding me to a higher standard. Absolutely not. It’s more insidious than that. Even as a young woman (as young as sixteen or seventeen) I was aware of it, though I didn’t quite have the language to articulate it.

We don’t exist in a vacuum. We exist within centuries of perceptions about who we are, already cemented in the minds of others. When you meet someone from a different culture for the first time, you already hold perceptions of them based on history, media, and what you’ve been taught. None of us are blank canvases for each other. Our racial, cultural, and socioeconomic standing already transmits information about us—without our permission, disregarding the truth or fabrication of that information.

In those years when I wanted to live frivolously, to dilly-dally like some of my East Asian and Caucasian female friends, I knew, just as many of my Black female friends also knew, that for us, there is a price for such recklessness. There already exists a body of archetypes that determine our standing and worth in society. It isn’t as clear-cut as the Madonna/Whore trope. There are so many. A collection of ideas about what I am supposed to be, how I could be perceived, and how the way I move through the world positions me in the eyes of those from other cultures—but, sadly, also in the eyes of those within my own racial and cultural group.

Centuries of the dehumanisation of Black women have birthed ideas that seeped into the mainstream, forming the foundation of popular culture and predetermining where I, and women who look like me, stand in the social landscape. The paradox of being both hypervisible—scrutinised and commodified—yet expected to remain invisible, unheard, and grateful for whatever space is given. Black women like me exist in a double bind: our presence both demanded and dismissed, our bodies admired while our voices are ignored. We are watched but not seen, fetishised yet not valued, acknowledged only on terms that serve others. How do you escape when the world has already decided who you are allowed to be?

The Tropes:

• The Jezebel – The hypersexual seductress, always "up for it."

• The Mammy – The loyal caregiver, strong but never the main character.

• The Sapphire – The angry Black woman, aggressive and combative.

• The Strong Black Woman – Expected to carry everything, to feel nothing.

• The Welfare Queen – Lazy, manipulative, living off the system.

• The Hood Rat / Ghetto Fabulous – Loud, unrefined, materialistic.

• The Magical Negro – The wise, mystical helper, never the protagonist.

• The Matriarch – Cold, overbearing, leading a "broken home."

We may not know them by these labels, but we know them, because the media relentlessly perpetuates these narratives. It shapes how the world sees us before we even understand them ourselves. I wasn’t familiar with the names of these tropes as a teenager, but I felt them.

What frustrated me, but what I couldn’t quite escape, was why the Black girl in every show was loud, rude, and sassy. Why the dark-skinned girls were never the love interest. Why they were good enough to be side characters, often offering comic relief, but were never really in the spotlight. Or simply “normal,” like me and my friends. We had the odd shows we could escape into that humanized us—mostly American sitcoms like Moesha, One on One, and Eve, but they were few and far between.

This, of course, had real-life consequences. People I met from different cultures had already framed me in their minds.

“I bet you can dance.”

 “I know you can twerk.”

They already knew what I could do, what I would be down to do—before I even knew myself.

In school, many of the friends we had from other cultures assumed we, Black girls, could all cuss. It was what they saw us do on TV, so, in a strange sort of way, we contorted ourselves, both knowingly and unknowingly, to fit the narrative.

At that fragile age, when you’re still attempting to formulate some kind of identity, it’s easy to slip into one that’s already been laid out for you.

But the saving grace was that among my Black female friends, we saw each other. We knew who could do what. We knew who could really cuss, whose older sister or aunt had taught them to whine. And we knew that most of us lacked the wit to engage in verbal combat. We were neither sassy nor quick with it. We had to plan—writing out scripts in our heads for difficult situations, rehearsing comebacks that would vanish under pressure.

And yet, despite knowing ourselves, the weight of these perceptions still pressed upon us. It makes you want to scream.

But even our rage and exhaustion are political.

You impose ideas on me that I can’t shift, and I’m not even allowed to be upset about it. So I walk around forever on edge. Always too aware of myself. Too aware of the multitude of ways my desire for frivolity could place me as the Jezebel. How my attempt to defend myself from that positioning could place me as the hoodrat—my working-class start in life sealing that fate. How my rage could cast me as the angry Black woman. So I’m careful. Always.

And when men who look like me, look at me, they see the weight of all they’ve been told I could be. So they run.

Straight towards those whose frivolity is welcomed. The ones cast as the focal point of beauty in all our sitcoms. The placid ones. The respected ones. The girls allowed the full embrace of their humanity. The ones who, at any moment, could divest from their frivolous past and reemerge—untouched. Untainted.

But for Black girls, the world isn’t so forgiving.

So despite all the knowledge you amass, all the ways you learn to survive, all the ways you understand yourself—despite embracing your identity and rejecting the one they tried to force upon you—there are still moments, too many moments, when you walk into spaces where you are seen only through the prism of these tropes. And in those moments, you brace yourself. Like an Olympic diver before the plunge, you suck in that deep breath. How many moments of our lives have been lived like this?

But this time, before I dive, I think of my son, and for him, I’m willing to say:

Fuck it all to hell.

Exhale.