My sister and I both freaked out when we saw her.
On a whim, we had gone down the doll aisle at Target. We had passed the Barbies that all had the same face with straight hair on different skin colors. I admired the Bratz with their large lips and removal feet, the Moxie Girlz who looked like off-brand Bratz, and the Monster High dolls that were creative renditions of old frights. They were so colorful that I saw why they were called fashion dolls. They were dolls I played with and would have played with if I was 7 again.
We reached the other dolls, the baby doll section as it were. With a gasp of pure glee at her awesomeness, I picked her up. Her hair was curly — not curly like the flat-ironed curls you see on other dolls that claim to have curly hair. No, this baby’s black hair was naturally curly. It was an afro, people, with a spiral curl pattern — a 3C/4A sort of deal. Her outfit looked like the Queen of Sophistication, Mrs. Michelle Obama, had styled it herself. Her skin was a natural shade of brown, not too dark and certainly not too light. Her features were clearly black ones, not some white-washed version of them. She was beautiful. Everyone around looked at us like we were crazy, but we didn’t care. The doll was too perfect to be silent.
Next time you go into Target or Walmart or Toys ‘R Us or anywhere that sells dolls, I challenge you to look for a doll who is realistically black with natural hair who looks normal. Or, better yet, go to their websites and just stroll through the dolls. With challenges like the Running Man challenge or the Water Bottle challenge, this is one anyone can do. Let’s call it #TheRealBlackDollChallenge.
This was the challenge my mother used to face every gift-giving holiday. Every birthday or Christmas, my mother went to countless stores around our large city in order to find me and my sister the dolls that we wanted. My mother only bought black dolls because “we should only play with dolls that look like us.” It was an admirable idea to make sure me and my sister valued the beauty in our race, but it was a hard idea to follow through on. If you didn’t get to the store fast enough or if you went to a store that didn’t have a huge variety of dolls in the first place, the black dolls were often absent. The lack of representation on the shelves bled elsewhere.
I waited, expected, and hoped for black female characters on television. As a little girl, I practically worshipped the TV on Saturday mornings. I would get up at unholy hours just to watch cartoons and anime that only came on during that time. I was captivated by the storylines of the show, but I hungered for characters that looked like me and acted like me. For a long time, "Static Shock" was the closest I came as it portrayed a young black teen with superpowers who was smart and who’s best friend was white. It was the greatest thing on television to me, but it still didn’t completely fill the void for me. I imagined what it would be like if he was a girl with long natural hair. I drew her and created my own storyline about her. I made my own story. I would go on to imagine, draw, and write so many more based on other cartoons that I watched in order to satisfy my hunger. Still, I longed for shows that had characters and stories that made it so I didn’t have to do this to fill the void. But, every time I watched a show hoping for a character to satisfy my itch, I was disappointed. I learned to settle. I sat through a lot of black — or, tan skinned if there were no obvious black ones — female characters who were only stereotypes or tokens, who had potential to be something more but were written to be flat nothings. There were some shows that lacked black characters at all. Nothing lived up to my expectations. I never saw myself in anything I watched. I felt as invisible as the black female characters I never saw.
I turned to books and movies and received no solace or comfort. The young adult books that I adored had similar problems to the shows that I watched, but I felt they were worse. The main characters were always white girls who were shy or angsty or often lacked any personality at all. Their worlds were great and magical, but there weren’t any black people. If there were, they were villains or side characters who weren’t relevant to the story. Movies were even worse. The stories I enjoyed the most lacked black people or any person of color at all. Everything I watched or read was full of stereotypes, tokens, or absent of black people. It began to wear on me. I began to feel like black people weren’t in the type of stories I read, the ones filled with magic, beauty, mystery, and adventure. As a teenager, I started to write stories with only white people in them because that is what I saw and read. I denied my blackness because I didn’t see how valuable or important it was. I didn’t see how it could be special in a world that denied my existence and purpose.
Everyone wants representation. When people don’t get it, they become angry and hungry for it. They start to use their voices to fill their starved cravings for attention and to make their presence felt.
This can be seen in the controversies around "The Wiz" and "Hamilton"? Remember how many white people were outraged that the productions had all POC or all black casts? Remember how they didn’t understand how importantly invaluable these works were for the communities that were included in them? People — especially white people, it seems — long to be noticed and have their lives and stories made relatable. Even though white people are dominate representation in the media, they long to always be represented in some sense.
Well, it works both ways.
Poor representation is worse than lack of representation. For black people, we are always either a token or a stereotype or both. We are either slaves, freedom-fighters, thugs, baby mommas, Mammies, athletes, sexual conquests, or powerful educated women without emotional depth. We are either angry, bitter, sassy, ignorant, helpless, or strong with no weaknesses. We are always something from a Tyler Perry movie. We can’t be normal or happy. We can’t be anything that we want to be. We can’t have anything that is our own. To some, we can’t even be alive. Poor representation presents images of people that is often wrong or inaccurate. When you only see black people as being oppressed or victims or stereotypes or as nonexistent, seeing people like the Obama family or understanding the plights of #BlackLivesMatter activists is a surprising sight. It shouldn’t be that way.
For me, I didn’t become proud of my own blackness until the stories of Travyon Martin, Freddie Gray, and Eric Garner came to light. I was in my sophomore year of college when the fear that some had about my blackness became my source of pride. I began my natural hair journey that year. I focused on artwork made by black artists and tried to only purchase works from them. The more I found myself in literature, film, television, and throughout the internet, I found the beauty and strength in my race. I saw us as important, special and something to fight for. Oddly, the more I feared what people thought of my blackness, the more I fell in love with my blackness and became confident in my melanin.
In "Hamilton," the final song is called, “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story?” It’s fitting considering Lin-Manuel Miranda read a book about Alexander Hamilton, saw himself within the story, and wrote it as his and Hamilton’s story only with black characters. Miranda’s "Hamilton" is one of the most inspiring stories I have ever witnessed or read about. I’m obsessed with it because it is a product of what I used to do as a kid, what started me writing, what continues to inspire me now. It is based around a simple idea and a new challenge that I want to begin: What if this character was black? What if this character was another minority? What if this character had a normal life, something that is traditionally white and not a role filled by blacks? What if this character had an afro that blew in the wind and flawless melanin that was just unapologetically beautiful? What if this character and their story could touch a child and make them think, “Hey. That’s me!” What if it all makes them feel like they belong and matter? What if?
My sister and I bought that doll that same night. She sits as a testament of what we both craved during our childhood. To be represented. To be seen. To exist.
That same night, I made a personal pledge while I held that doll close to my heart on our drive home. I promised to write the characters I wish I had when I was growing up. I promised to write black characters who were happy, played video games, loved cats, enjoyed anime, had a father who didn’t give any fucks, had a girlfriend one week and a boyfriend the next because she was pansexual, and who was just like me in every other way. I promised to write black characters who had magical powers or were supernatural beings or were placed in paranormal situations because that’s what I love.
A professor once told me that writing about magic and race was too much, that the sort of writing I wanted to do had never been done and wouldn’t work. He told me to choose between magic or race. But, I had spent my entire life choosing. In the real world where I live, I don’t get to choose between being black or being queer. I don’t get to choose between someone discriminating against me because of my race or my gender. Why should I have to do the same in my stories? Life is full of love and magic just like it’s full of hatred and ignorance. Why should I have to pick and choose between what to portray in my stories, yet white people have the luxury do whatever they want? I decided to prove him wrong in every way I could through my pledge because I will never forget that little black girl who felt like she didn’t exist.
To quote "Hamilton" once more, “I am the one thing in life I can control. I am inimitable. I am an original.” I am unique, an endangered species, but I know I am not alone in my fight. I write stories that I knew I would enjoy reading back then and now. I write stories that save me during my darkest points and that will hopefully save others. I write to show how sorry I’m not when it comes to my blackness. I write because it is what I love. I love myself as much as I love the versions of myself that I put in my stories. I write like I’m running out of time, saying what I believe, like I need it to survive every second I’m alive, and just nonstop — Sorry, I lied. But, "Hamilton" is just awesome.
I exist. I am black, female, queer, and I am as magical as can be. And, I exist. I am a writer and an activist. And, I exist. I love anime and video games. I am weird and quirky and silly. And. I. Exist. It’s about time we had the representation to show it.
