Prophetic Voices: From Billie Holiday to Lizzo, Black Female Entertainers and Artistic Resistance
As a white female growing up in Texas, my view of sexuality, gender roles, and race were heavily veiled with Christian fundamentalist ideas about women’s bodies, heteronormativity, purity culture, and white supremacy. Raised in a small “white flight” town outside of Houston, I didn’t have much exposure to black culture, except for when I sneakily peaked around the corner as my brother watched MTV. With pop stars like Janet Jackson, Whitney Houston, and Queen Latifah on the rise, my first introduction to powerful black women were pop musical performances. These women, from a long-continued tradition of embodied performances of resistance, have played a large role in lending a prophetic voice to the power of the feminine.
Since the abolition of slavery and the rise of the blues singer, black women have used the power of the creative to subvert hegemonic notions of sexuality, equality, and race in an industry controlled by and profiting on the white male, capitalist gaze. These women of color are prophetic voices in the midst of the white patriarchal grasp on pop culture in an extremely racialized society, employing their unapologetic blackness as an embodied resistance tactic to challenge racial inequality and the rhetoric around black bodies. These courageous women, from Billie Holiday to Lizzo today, are part of a long succession of women using resistance tactics in their creative performance to strip the patriarchy of its power in popular culture. Although only one aspect of the whole in female resistance to patriarchal domination, transformation of popular culture plays a major role in raising the consciousness of all people, specifically raising other women’s own consciousness of female power and sexuality through radical self-love and the valuation of self, a distinctly prophetic ideation.
Sarah Baartman, known as the “Hottentot Venus”
In Hammonds article, “Toward a Genealogy of Black Female Sexuality: The Problematic of Silence,” she traces the construction of black women’s sexuality from the enslavement, rape, and oppression by the white patriarchy in the seventeenth and eighteenth century to the silenced generation of black women academics in the twentieth century. By the nineteenth century, solidified in the minds of the white westerners was an archetype of the black women: linked with the image of the prostitute, or biblical “Jezebel,” to the Hottentot female. The Hottentot female was a radical departure from the norms of white women and Victorian era conventions, significantly portrayed through the life and objectification of Sarah Baartman (1775-1815), known as the ‘Hottentot Venus.’ Taken to Europe by an English doctor likely through deceitful means, Sarah was ‘displayed’ in the Piccadilly circus ‘freak shows’ in London and Paris. At the crossroads of extreme capitalist exploitation and white supremacy, Sarah was exhibited to white European audiences for her ‘primitive’ genitalia and buttocks. Hammond argues that this was the beginning of “the black female becoming the antithesis of European sexual mores and beauty and relegated to the lowest position on the scale of human development.”[1] Black women were thus seen as the opposite of the pure, sexless, passionless white Victorian women, no more than an immoral, hyper-sexualized, animalistic caricature of humanity. Utilized against black and white women, these opposing stereotypes allowed for the white patriarchy to continue to suppress their white female ‘property,’ as well as justify the enslavement, rape, and sexual abuse of black women.
Bound by the chains of sexual torture, racial oppression, and silencing, women of color in the twentieth century began using the opposite tactic: a politics of silence. Reformers and academics, in a hope to promote an outlook on the black female as analogous to Victorian morality, believed this ‘silence’ would convey the falseness of the stereotypical view of black female bodies. Although Hammond argues that this was altogether unfruitful, she asks the question that remains with me now: “how can black feminists dislodge the negative stereotyping of their sexuality and the attendant denials of citizenship and protection?”[2]
Beyonce the Queen B
Although not representative of all black feminists, musical entertainers from the blues singers of the jazz age to Beyonce, Meghan the Stallion and Lizzo of today have been shaping the images of black women in pop culture through resistance tactics in their music and performance in a grand prophetic reversal. Instead of employing silence and complicity to change the narrative about black bodies, these women have embraced their sexual and racial identities to decolonize the imagination and disrupt a long history of oppression.
Looking at the historical context in which the blues originated following the abolition of slavery, the blues gave a creative voice to the newly gained social and sexual conditions of freedom that black men and women found themselves. For the first time, their personal, sexual relationships were allowed to flourish and sexual partnerships were not based on the decisions of the enslaver. Although black music was created and ‘performed’ during enslavement, the blues “articulated a new valuation of individual emotional needs and desires,”[3] often sung without the collective, but through a lone voice. Theologian James Cone even expresses their importance as secular spirituals:
They are secular in the same sense that they confine their attention solely to the immediate and affirm the bodily expression of black soul, including its sexual manifestations. They are spirituals because they are impelled by the same search for the truth of the black experience.[4]
Sexuality and the body were central themes in the blues, especially for the female blues singer, challenging the place of a women within society while still remaining in control of their own sexuality. The ‘Mother of Blues,” Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, distinctly rejected the idea of marriage and fidelity from a sexual partner in the confines of the patriarchy as well as promoting exceptional self-confidence, independence, and sexuality. In “Young Woman’s Blues,” she writes:
Blues singer Bessie Smith
No time to marry, no time to settle down
I'm a young woman and ain't done runnin' 'round.
I ain't no high yella, I'm a deep killer brown
I ain't gonna marry, ain't gon' settle down
I'm gon' drink good moonshine and run these browns down
See that long lonesome road, Lord, you know it's gotta end
And I'm a good woman and I can get plenty men.[5]
Other blues singers like Bessie Smith also show a hatred of patriarchal ideas when she writes:
So wait awhile, I’ll show you, child, just how to treat a no-good man
Make him stay at home, wash and iron
Tell all the neighbors he done lost his mind[6]
Lastly, these women had no qualms with announcing and claiming black female desire. In “Baby Doll,” Bessie Smith claims this message:
I wanna be somebody's baby doll so I can get my lovin' all the time
I wanna be somebody's baby doll to ease my mind
He can be ugly, he can be black, so long as he can eagle rock and ball the jack.[7]
These empowering black singers weren’t entertaining black people exclusively either. White men and women flocked to hear blues singers, ravenously popular at the time. Their performances fed the hegemonic white gaze and the white executives who ordered it, while black women performers still remained unpaid for their massive renown. Yet even under these circumstances, these singers utilized their unapologetic blackness to center their black identity for the first time in cultures and spaces where they had been neutralized.
Racism in popular entertainment culture, still largely controlled by white male executives in the twenty-first century, continues to be institutionalized within the industry. Viewed through a white patriarchal gaze, society is still utilizing the entertainment industry to objectify the black body “as an entity to be feared, disciplined, and relegated to those marginalized, imprisoned, and segregated spaces that restrict black bodies from disturbing the tranquility of white life, white comfort, white embodiment, and white being.’”[8] From the blues singer, to the hip hop artists of the eighties and nineties, and the pop stars of today, black women have been utilizing artistic resistance through embodied tactics, radical self-love, the subversion of patriarchal expectations, and the normalization of pride in female desire and sexual acts outside of marriage for decades. Artistic resistance is a bold subversion tactic which utilizes the creative aspects of lyrics, embodied actions, fashion, and stage presentation to explore ideas which contradict the hegemonic view of women in society and allow for performances to create sustaining conversations around topics which oppress women. These acts of artistic, embodied resistance promote the practice of “self-validation and self-valuation...acknowledging and affirming the resistive labor of black people.”[9]
Salt-N-Pepa
Artistic resistance offers opportunities for entertainers to create social movements which may raise the consciousness of humanity through popular culture. Tracing this evolution of resistance from the blues singers of the 1920’s and 30’s, we find a thread of defiance as black female rappers and singers consecutively advance tactics of artistic resistance throughout the latter half of the century. Utilizing themes of sexual politics, racism, and sexism, rappers like MC Lyte and Salt-N-Pepa revealed to young black women that they had a public space in which to convey their voice. Pough calls this “bringing wreck,” a phrase which underscores how black women “counter stereotypes and marginalization that impact how they navigate and control their own identities and representations.”[10] In the eighties and nineties, hip hop was the chosen arena in which young black women could spread their message of liberation and empowerment. Coined ‘hip hop feminism,’ these artists showcased the unique lives of young black women and the oppressive institutions, relationships, and beliefs that surrounded their identities. Brittney Cooper and Susana Morris, founders of the Crunk Feminist Collective explain this ‘next generation’ black feminism as such: “We love ourselves even when we get no love. We recognize that we are our own best thing, our own best argument, and patriarchy’s worst nightmare.”[11]
Da Brat
Images of the black female rapper/singer deconstructed dominant ideology of black women through several archetypes: The ‘Queen Mother,’ the ‘fly girl,’ and the ‘sista with attitude/bad girl.’[12] The Queen Mother, represented definitively by rapper Queen Latifah, conveyed that every black woman is a Queen, passed down from a royal African line. The ‘fly girl’ was an example of a black women who wears chic fashion, hairstyles, jewelry, and cosmetics to convey an independent, sexually forward black women, represented in films like Foxy Brown. Lastly, the ‘sista with attitude,’ reclaimed patriarchal verbiage used to shame women, such as ‘bitch’ and ‘hoe,’ to represent an assertive female leader who subverts patriarchal domination, like rapper Da Brat. One entertainer who represents an amalgamation of all three images in the present-day entertainment industry is the singer and rapper Lizzo.
I don’t need a crown to know that I’m a Queen
Lizzo at the BET Awards, 2019.
Lizzo, named Melissa Viviane Jefferson at birth, is a Grammy Award-winning pop star who rose to fame in 2019 with her chart topping single, “Truth Hurts.” She was nominated for eight Grammy Awards in 2020 and won Best Urban Contemporary Album for Cuz I Love You (2019), Best Pop Solo Performance for “Truth Hurts,” and Best Traditional R&B Performance for “Jerome.” Like the blues mothers before her, Lizzo promulgates a message of radical self-love and valuation to convey her unapologetic blackness through lyrics, dress, and other artistic images that defy patriarchal concepts of womanhood. Through the use of twerking, naked selfies, and candid Instagram posts, Lizzo boldly claims the love of all bodies as a resistance tactic to black stereotypes, flipping the script on the white male hegemony by artistically promoting her own black fat body to reclaim its holiness and sexuality and proudly advance the black female perspective in the entertainment industry.
My first experience with the music of Lizzo was through the TV screen. As soon as her single “Truth Hurts,” hit my ears, I felt a distinct presence of female empowerment. So much so that it made me dance in my living room. This is the power of Lizzo. Through her lyrics, it is obvious that Lizzo views herself as a Queen. Following her foremothers, Lizzo reclaims black sexuality, equality within sexual partnerships and positive female desire. Claiming that she, like a man, has “big dick energy,”[14] a euphemism for a person who “possess qualities such as leadership, kindness, positivity towards others, great humor, and a ‘don’t fuck with me’ aura.”[15] Using tropes of black culture that often are employed to marginalize black people, Lizzo reclaims them, proud of tasting like collard greens and having a large buttock.
Big dick energy (Tell 'em)
Tastes like collard greens (Tell 'em)
Big ass patty cake (Tell 'em)
Hey, happy days (Tell 'em)
Bitch, don't label me (Tell 'em)
I'm me, famously (Tell 'em)
Nobody's safe, nobody
You and you and you and
You can be my lover
'Cause love looks better in color
In “Scuse Me,” she prides herself on her appearance, again upholding traditionally ‘derogatory’ cliches of black culture to convey positive sexuality and body image, revering the black body.
Look up in the mirror, oh my God, it's me
So much Prada on me, I'm a Pradagy
I'ma do my thing, no apologies
Coconut and rose in my skin regime
Mirror, mirror on the wall, tell me what you see
It's that, oh my God, it's lookin' heavenly (ooh)
Poppin' Power Rangers, purple, yellow, pink
Throwin' ones, wonder what my mama think
Feelin' like a stripper when I'm lookin' in the mirror
'll be slappin' on that ass, gettin' thicker and thicker
Not only do her lyrics reclaim black sexuality from the gaze of the white male, but her embodied resistance through dance and presence is incalculable as a positive model of artistic resistance. In viral Instagram posts, stories, and Tik-Toks, Lizzo uses the power of social media to convey the holiness and goodness of her black body. Often, Lizzo will twerk for the camera, the lens pointing straight at her buttock as it dances and waves in freedom. Merriam-Webster defines twerking as a “sexually suggestive dance characterized by rapid, repeated hip thrusts and shaking of the buttocks, especially while squatting.”[16] Although the white gaze views twerking as highly sexualized and inappropriate, what western culture has defined as “twerking,” likely was born in West Africa, resembling the Mapouka dance from Côte d’Ivoire. The dance is meant for celebration, praise, and joy, danced in the churches of West Africa as praise to God, a form of worship. Yet, because the entertainment industry is still a thoroughly racist institution, these nuances fall on the deaf ears and blind eyes of the white audience they seek to entertain. Lizzo, by unapologetically claiming the goodness of this dance, provides a safe space for other black women to express themselves joyfully without fear or retribution from the larger society. This is a prime example of embodied, artistic resistance.
As the Mother of Blues taught black women, Lizzo also threads the subversion of patriarchal expectations throughout the lyrics and themes of her video and stage performances. In “Like a Girl,” she wonders what it would be like if a girl was the leader of the nation instead of a man. She takes the phrase “Like a girl,” which is meant to belittle women as weak, and claims it as a strength. She reminds the patriarchy that she doesn’t need a man to live a life in love and freedom, providing for herself like the empowered woman she is. Everything she does, she does like a girl: with strength and femininity.
Woke up feelin' like I just
might run for President
Even if there ain't no precedent,
switchin' up the messaging
I'm about to add a little estrogen
Buy my whip by myself, pay my rent by myself
Only exes that I care about are in my fucking chromosomes
I don't really need you,
I'm Macaulay Culkin, home alone
Bad bitch, diamonds in my collarbone (Yee, yee)
Buy my whip by myself, pay my rent by myself
Find me up in Magic City
bustin' hundreds by the bands
And I throw it (Like a girl)
Go and throw it (Like a girl)
Hangin' out the 750, feelin' bossy in my city
'Cause I run it (Like a girl)
Run it, run it (Like a girl)
I work my femininity
I make these boys get on their knees
Now watch me do it, watch me do it
In “Truth Hurts,” Lizzo asks the question of the patriarchy: why a man great, till they gotta be great?” In her music video, we see Lizzo preparing for a wedding, in a beautiful, lacy negligee.[17] As she walks down the aisle to her own wedding, she tells the story of a women empowered by her own confidence in the face of heartbreak, saying:
You coulda had a bad bitch, non-committal
Help you with your career, just a little
You're supposed to hold me down
But you're holding me back
And that's the sound of me not calling you back
As the video ends, we find Lizzo not marrying the man at the end of the aisle but herself, as she winks to the camera playfully, a cheeky nod that she will not marry as expected of her, but love herself first and foremost.
In her live performance of the same song at the BET Awards[18], Lizzo opens the song at the top of a large, stage-wide white wedding cake. In a reversal of expectations, she rips off her white princess-style bridal gown to reveal her beautiful black body in a white teddy, poking fun at society’s expectations of women. She screams, “Ain’t worried about no ring on this finger,” proudly twerking in the middle of the stage. As she quickly turns back around towards the audience, we suddenly see Lizzo with a flute, an instrument not typically found on the pop stage. Adopting a normally ‘nerdy’ instrument into her music and showing its power, Lizzo plays it as she screams, “Bitch!” brandishing her body proudly. A body that many white men and women would find appalling for its existence, Lizzo advertises, exploding with positive energy, black girl magic, and love.
Lastly, Lizzo practices the power of radical self-love to empower other women to accept and be proud of their bodies, no matter their size or color. In “The Body is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self Love,” Sonya Taylor defines self-love as “an internal process offering external transformation.” She claims that this world is a world for all bodies, writing, “I want to change the world by convincing you to love every facet of yourself, radically and unapologetically, even the parts you don’t like.”[19] This is the self-love movement that Lizzo propagates in her social media, song lyrics, and “racy” photos and videos: the love of a black fat body.
Asked by reporters why this message is so important to her, she says that she never saw women like her represented in the entertainment industry, making her feel like she was not worthy of that kind of success. She states, ““I didn’t have, growing up, a lot of people to look up to in the media, as far as people that looked like me, that were beautiful and called beautiful constantly in the media. Every black woman I saw was really light skinned, straight blonde hair. I would say ‘that’s beautiful, I want to look like that.’” I would look in the mirror and I was so far from that I would just want to be somebody else.” [20] Now she is a beacon of light to all women who have been told to hate their bodies by the standards set by capitalism and the white patriarchy. By aiming to normalize fat black bodies, she fights for the acceptance and love of all bodies. In an interview with Teen Vogue she asserts: “I can’t wake up one day and not be black. I can’t wake up one day and not be a woman. I can’t wake up one day and not be fat… I always had those three things against me in this world, and because I fight for myself, I have to fight for everyone else.”[21] For Lizzo, being ‘body positive’ is much more than white women showing off their bellies, it is a spiritual experience that begins with the self. Vividly portrayed in her song “Soulmate,” she writes about how she loves her body and herself like a lover.
She never tell me to exercise
We always get extra fries
And you know the sex is fire
And I gotta testify
I get flowers every Sunday
I’ma marry me one day.
True love ain’t something
you can buy yourself
True love finally happens when you by yourself
So if you by yourself, then go and buy yourself
Another round from the bottle on the highest shelf[22]
Describing her performances as “church with a twerk,” her live shows convey the spirituality that cultivates and sustains Lizzo’s positive energy about her life and body. Her voice is prophetic because it takes the traditional negative view of the black female body through the white lens, from the beginning of the enslavement and rape of black women, and cracks it like an egg. Although prophecy is often seen in pop culture as fortune telling, in biblical studies, prophets use vivid imagery and poetic imaginings to subvert the expectations of the ruling class against the vulnerable and marginalized, in this case, white supremacist and capitalist ideas of black female bodies. Although many people would not associate sexuality and bodily resistance as a prophetic act, reclaiming truths that were stolen by the dominating system and bringing them to the consciousness of the masses is primarily the work of a prophet. Lizzo’s artistic resistance and the sisters and mothers before her are prophetic voices in the midst of centuries of oppression and marginalization.
Jesus’ new commandment asks people to follow this new law: love of self, love of neighbor, and love of God, for you can only love your neighbor and God if you first know how to love yourself.[23] Through these prophetic voices, black women are amplifying this message by reclaiming their embodied self as a moral good for all people, in turn allowing the white hegemony to love and appreciate the power of the black female body and its energy.
Destroying the patriarchy cannot be a singular act, for resistance comes in many forms. Yet, artistic resistance is a powerful prophetic voice in the fight for racial and gender equality and a hopeful demonstration which can change the hearts and minds of the dominant class through normalization and subversion. Lizzo and the women who courageously resisted before her represent a line of prophetic voices which will continue to uplift a message of love and equality in a space which has silenced their voice since the beginning of enslavement of those very bodies. Through the power of self-love, positive sexuality, and female independence, black women entertainers are a crucial piece in the promotion of intersectional feminist ideologies throughout American society.
Bibliography
Allen, Shaonta’; Miles, Brittney. “Unapologetic Blackness in Action: Embodied Resistance and Social Movement Scenes in Black Celebrity Activism.” Humanity & Society; Thousand Oaks Vol. 44, Iss. 4, (Nov 2020): 375-402.
Butler, Bethonie. “How Lizzo went from Underground Phenom to Rising Pop Star.” The Washington Post, April 24, 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2019/04/24/how-lizzo-went-underground-phenom-rising-pop-star/
Davis, Angela Y. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1998.
Davis, Gabriella. “The Beyonce Effect: The Millennial Face of Modern Feminism.” The New York Experience, BYU School of Communications, 2017.
Halliday, Aria S; Payne, Ashley N. “Introduction: Savage and Savvy: Mapping Contemporary Hip Hop Feminism.” The Journal of Hip Hop Studies; Chicago Vol. 7, Iss. 1, (Summer 2020): 8-18, 116.
Hammonds, Evelynn M. “Toward a Genealogy of Black Female Sexuality: The Problematic of Silence.” Janet Price and Margrit Shildrick, eds. Feminist Theory and the Body. United Kingdom: Edinburgh University Press, 1999.
Keyes, Cheryl L. "Empowering Self, Making Choices, Creating Spaces: Black Female Identity via Rap Music Performance." Journal of American Folklore 113, no. 449 (2000): 255-269.
Lizzo. Cuz I Love You. Atlantic Recording Corporation of the United States, 2019, Accessed May 9, 2020.
https://open.spotify.com/album/2KJjOBX280F3hZZE1xO33O?si=uj6mLJ51Sf2nkKwPzb77HQ
Lizzo. Coconut Oil. Atlantic Recording Corporation of the United States, 2016, Accessed May 9, 2020. https://open.spotify.com/album/5RVuRq4HKlj8LkapG1Tcrv?si=-wuRG5ITSuWbMWqtOL6L3g
Parkinson, Justin. “The Significance of Sarah Baartman.” BBC News Magazine. (January 7, 2016): https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35240987
Staples, Jeanine M. “How #BlackGirlMagic Cultivates Supreme Love to Heal and Save Souls That Can Heal and Save the World: An Introduction to Endarkened Feminist Epistemlogical and Ontological Evolutions of Self Through a Critique of Beyoncé's Lemonade.” Taboo; New York Vol. 16, Iss. 2, (Fall 2017): 29-49.
Taylor, Renee Sonya. The Body is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self Love. Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2018.
The Vast World of Dance. “Twerking- A Brief History.” Accessed May 10, 2021. https://sites.psu.edu/mnshermanpassion/2017/03/17/twerking-a-brief-history/
Urban Dictionary. “Big Dick Energy.” Accessed May 10, 2021.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Big%20Dick%20Energy
YouTube. “Lizzo - Truth Hurts (Official Video).” Accessed May 10, 2021.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P00HMxdsVZI
YouTube. “Lizzo Proves She’s 100% That Bitch in ‘Truth Hurts’ Performance! | BET Awards 2019.” Accessed May 10, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcVOMUrBpF4
[1] Hammonds, Evelynn M. “Toward a Genealogy of Black Female Sexuality: The Problematic of Silence,” 95.
[2] Hammonds, 101.
[3] Davis, Angela Y. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday, 25.
[4] Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, 28.
[5] Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, 37.
[6] Davis, 38.
[7] Davis, 44.
[8] Allen, Shaonta’; Miles, Brittney. “Unapologetic Blackness in Action: Embodied Resistance and Social Movement Scenes in Black Celebrity Activism,” 376.
[9] Allen, Shaonta’; Miles, Brittney, 378.
[10] Halliday, Aria S; Payne, Ashley N. “Introduction: Savage and Savvy: Mapping Contemporary Hip Hop Feminism,” 10.
[11] Halliday, Aria S; Payne, Ashley N. “Introduction: Savage and Savvy: Mapping Contemporary Hip Hop Feminism,” 12.
[12] Keyes, Cheryl L. "Empowering Self, Making Choices, Creating Spaces: Black Female Identity via Rap Music Performance."
[13] Lizzo, “Scuse Me,” Coconut Oil.
[14] Lizzo, “Better in Color,” Cuz I Love You.
[15] Urban Dictionary. “Big Dick Energy.”
[16] The Vast World of Dance. “Twerking- A Brief History.”
[17] YouTube. “Lizzo - Truth Hurts (Official Video).”
[18] YouTube. “Lizzo Proves She’s 100% That Bitch in ‘Truth Hurts’ Performance! | BET Awards 2019.”
[19] Taylor, Renee Sonya. The Body is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self Love, 81.
[20] Butler, Bethonie. “How Lizzo went from Underground Phenom to Rising Pop Star,” The Washington Post.
[21] Butler, Bethonie. “How Lizzo went from Underground Phenom to Rising Pop Star,” The Washington Post.
[22] Lizzo. “Soulmate,” Cuz I Love You.
[23] Mark 12:31, NRSV.
