Who do you think you are?

I was always an “anti social media” girl until I recently decided to open up an Instagram. Everyone I know was shocked that I had signed up for it, because I never had MySpace, Facebook, or Twitter and I was not interested in using any of these outlets. This is mainly because the term “social media” did not sit well with me. I felt that social media was being used to dumb people down and lessen human interaction. I would get very annoyed when I was with people and their heads were down in their phones posting and liking and stalking. I took this very personal because there I was, an actual human being but it wasn’t good enough. People just wanted to “interact” with their phones. 

I love watching television or I sometimes “binge watch” on Netflix. My two current loves are Scandal and Orange Is The New Black. I am really looking forward to Shonda Rhimes’ new series How To Get Away With Murder. Other than scripted shows, I watch videos on YouTube. For a long time YouTube was my go to for media because it seemed more selective. If I wanted to laugh, and then watch poetry slams, and then watch inspirational talks, and then watch pit bulls not attacking babies I could do it all in one night instead of having a lineup fed to me on television.

My friend and I have a channel on YouTube that we started about a year ago. I never considered YouTube to be social media but now I know that it is. On my YouTube channel I talk about makeup, I give event reviews and I cover other miscellaneous topics. The main focus of my channel is to discuss the issues that black women have with their natural hair and how essentially the issue is not solely about hair.

I use my channel as a platform to offer my opinion on the matter and to hopefully start a conversation surrounding images of black woman. Most importantly, my goal is to instill confidence in other black women. I believe that there is a hierarchy for beauty standards and that black women are at the lowest level of that hierarchy. I feel that the media has a lot to do with maintaining this standard. Magazines, music, film and television are making small shifts, as I do see different types of black women being represented as images of beauty, but for the most part I think that it will be a while before things change on a grander scale.

On an unconscious level I used to feel that the media didn’t affect me but now I know that it does, especially as a woman. Images of what a beautiful woman is and images of the lifestyle that women are supposed to have are all around me whether I notice it or not. I do not like the images of black women that I see in the media. Black women are often portrayed as violent, non-loving, hypersexual, uneducated, catty, unlikable and unapproachable. I have to actively seek positive images of black women on my own. The places that I find these images are not very popular and that is the problem;positive and healthy images of women do not sell.

I think that now the media can be whatever an individual wants it to be. One can go on to any social media outlet and search for what they want that caters to their personality. I think that shared mass media is good because it allows us to find others that we can relate to and to also see how other people think regarding various topics.