For all the romantic films out there, why does it seem that only white women are falling in love on screen? Hollywood is a highly flawed industry, in too many ways to begin to even count. Specifically, the way women, especially women of color, are portrayed in media is often so flawed/annoying you wonder who the hell thought it was a good idea in the first place. For such a long time in Hollywood, and to a large extent still happening today, women were typecast in one-dimensional roles such as “Ice Queen”, “Spicy Latina”, “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” and so on. Not only do these roles lack dimension or even a proper character arc, a lot of these roles are based on racial stereotypes; like “Spicy Latina”, “Angry Black Woman”, “Dragon Lady” and more. With all the political events that happened in 2020 and are going on into 2021, we are discussing issues like diversity in media, in business, politics and other industries more than ever.
Within a few months of so many companies touting the much over-rated black square on their Instagram page, studies show that many of these companies were already diminishing their posts about or featuring WOC/POC. This is a clear example of performative activism and a sign that we’re still a long way from true progress.
With some of the shows/movies that are appearing now or will be premiering soon, there’s a weird imbalance that keeps popping up. Only White women are falling in love or have a leading role. While studies are showing that women, finally, are getting to star in leading roles more often and with better character development, the majority of those roles go to White women. Especially when it comes to the female character being an object of interest.
Examples include Amazon Prime’s Modern Love where all the female love interested are White and, more recently, Netflix’s Bridgerton. Unless the show specifically stars a non-white woman (Scandal, Insecure, etc.) and or is produced by one (Shona Rhimes, Issa Rae, etc.), we don’t get to see non-White women, especially those with a deeper complexion, fall in love.
Right now it feels like we have more Black and other POC focused projects coming out than ever, but for the people who think this alone shows improvement we need to recognize the diversity numbers for the dozens of new projects Hollywood comes out with every year. It may feel like “a lot” because of how hard Hollywood is trying to show their “wokeness” right now, but as we’re all coming to realize a lot of what we see is not really what it appears.
As a fair-skinned White woman in America, there are plenty of examples of women with my complexion falling in love on screen. I’m f$%king over it. I want to see women and people on the non-binary spectrum who look like my co-workers, my friends and my colleagues fall in love. One production I’m highly looking forward to (at the time this article is written the production is not yet titled) is being produced by Alicia Keys for Netflix. It is a classic rom-com formula of a love triangle featuring actors Christiani Pitts, Karen Obilom, and Alexander Hodge. I’m looking forward to the day when everybody can finally see people who look like them fall in love on screen.
By Christine Philip
Image: by Merie W. Wallace/HBO
