Make it Nasty: Twerking and the Myth of Black Women's Hypersexuality

• In Event: 519 - Section on Race, Class and Gender Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 03. Images, Emotions, and the Symbolic

Abstract

This paper explores the relationships between media representation; racial and gendered hierarchy; black women's bodies; and black female identity in the U.S. via representations of twerking. In it, I define the newly popular dance form twerking, trace its origins, and explore implications of its current representations for black women and their bodies. This work expands on the work of black feminist scholars like Patricia Hill Collins, who argued that black women are constrained by limited, negative "controlling images" (e.g. the sexually aggressive and excessive jezebel) which uphold the racial, gendered, and class hierarchy (Collins 2000). And in doing so, it adds to existing explorations of the impact of race, gender, and class on media representations as well as black women's bodies, experiences, and identities. I investigate the ways in which “controlling images” of black women as licentious inform audiences’ perceptions of the newly popular dance form of twerking as innately sexual. Using content analysis and preliminary interview data, I assert that twerking is hypersexualized because of its association with black women.

Author

• Niamba Baskerville, Northwestern University