In a critical review of Lemonade in 2016, bell hooks wrote, “Even though Beyoncé and her creative collaborators daringly offer multidimensional images of black female life, much of the album stays within a conventional stereotypical framework, where the black woman is always a victim.” It was reassuring to read hooks’s take on Lemonade in “Moving Beyond…
The RealHuman Test – Evaluating images of African women in film
Here’s a test by which I judge whether a film is liberating for African women. I call it the RealHuman Test (RHT) and like the Bechdel Test, which it is inspired by, the RHT has three requirements. 1. In films about humanitarian issues, the protagonist is not simply a prop to raise awareness on an…
A badass case of Beyoncitis
It starts with cunnilingus. Not the “Beyoncé ” album (which starts with “Pretty Hurts”) but this review. After all, when a megastar like Beyoncé dedicates a song to oral stimulation of the clitoris in a world where the opposite is more common, an emphasis is only appropriate. OK, “Lick my skittles, it’s the sweetest in…