Glum About Glee's Representation of Black Women

Apparently, I stumbled onto an episode of 'Glee'. As a Black woman, I am always looking for 4 things when I watch a TV show or movie. 1) How are black people being represented? 2) How are black women being represented? 3) How are dark-skinned black people being represented? 4) How are their relationships being represented? Of course, these questions run together but needless to say, my radar is always on. Black people have always been in mass media. My radar focuses on ‘how’ are they in mass media. I am an African-American and even though I have lived on this earth for just over a quarter century, I will never get used to being poorly represented in the mass media. My observations are always phrased as rhetorical questions.


Enter Mercedes and Cameo from ‘Glee’.
Why are Mercedes (the main black girl) and Cameo (the student in the substitute’s flashback) both big?
Why are big black girls always dark-skinned? When’s the last time you saw a big light-skinned black woman on the small or large screen?
Why are they both unattractive? Why are big women of any race only mildly attractive, unless on America’s next top model? Tocarra and Whitney Thompson are beautiful.
Why does Mercedes’ hair look like she did it herself and not by a paid professional?
Why is she angry (and leading the revolution) to bring back the tator tots that were banned?
Why is Cameo the only student cursing at the teacher and knocking her school marmish substitute teacher in the face?
Why are black women ALWAYS stigmatized as asexual and/or mean?
Notice, the black guy was cute ( I liked that they had him interested in her). Mercedes, not so much. I saw a cast picture of them later that evening and Mercedes looked a bit smaller (and prettier) than what she looked like on the show. She looked like a slob in the show. What’s up with that?

In Grey’s Anatomy the black female surgeon was dubbed Hitler and never gave her black husband any attention. The black male surgeon, played by the publicly dismissed Isaiah Washington, was gorgeous and fawning over an Asian woman who would have been half his age, had major daddy issues, and was NOT by any means his equal physically.


And people wonder why black women are so angry. Give me one reason why they should be otherwise? If your group was always negatively caricatured, how warm and fuzzy would you feel?