Images of Us and how we really see ourselves

There are various images portrayed in the media, from the asexual black mammy Aunt Jemima types, hip hop girls to the hip hop porn girls. So where does the real women fit in all this stereotype. The top image is of Dove soap, they ran a campaign of real women, no touching up and they got members of the public to be in their campaign, although people welcomed it, however many did not like it, is it because they are so use to airbrush females, with no flaws. Jennifer Hudson is a lovely woman of our times, she is curvaceous and she is like an everyday woman, she is comfortable with her size and she looks lovely, nice smile, glossy hair. The famous Video vixen, with her ample bottom, usually found hip hop videos, not all but the more sexual ones. Teena Taylor is a hip hop artist, she is pretty, a teenager and she models also, she writes her own material. Hattie McDaniel, the most famous maid, the ultimate black mammy and Aunt Jemima, she is fat, asexual and she is non-threatening, well she would be, because she is too busy looking after Miss Southern Belle, Scarlett O'Hara. Buffy the body, would be found in King magazine and other male magazines, as Sir Mix-a-lot said from his song 'Baby got back'. He was celebrating the black female bottom, while Cosmo magazine was trying to tell us that we were just fat, he was saying that is the shape of black women. From the Africa, South America, West Indies, women with their ample in their bottoms are living perfectly normal lives, they are married have children, some get divorced and get married again. Grannie is her eigthies, still looking hot with her ample bottom . I was born and brought up in England, United Kingdom. My parents came from Guyana, South America. As soon as I became a teenager and my breasts and bottom grew. I was told that my breasts were too big and so was my bottom, and my mother would tell me, I have the body of my ancestors and we are from good stock, also it is amazing how African features, full lips, our nose, our skin, our breasts, we were characterised as being whores, while the other girls, who were mostly white were virgins, which was not true of course, most of the girls at my school were no longer virgins by the time, they were fourteen. They knew about French kissing by the time, they were twelve. The two middle pictures are of two African women, an ordinary woman and the Ethiopian/Israeli model Esti Mamo, the last pictures is of Esther Baxter, who was a video vixen, changed to clothes modeling and now, she has given up modelling and she is gone back to college. She is was married, but her husband could not deal with the attention, she was getting, so they got divorced. There are two images that the media love, of black women is the mammy and the whore. Have you know noticed in all the main stream films, black women can only be play best friends to the lead character, although she may be slim, still she again is the black mammy, she is asexual. Although African American/African/Caribbean media are taking back their images of how they want to see us, their women, other companies like BET have been highly criticized from the showing black women as video vixens, again the whore, slappers, sluts. We know that all women in all races have prostitutes. Even black people themselves seem to get caught up in the illusion, that if a black woman is educated, listens to classical music, visits art galleries, reads speaks correct English, is is acting white, somehow being ignorant, loud, listening to Snoop Dog, 50 Cent, dancing in a dance hall style, speaking badly, she is acting black. I went to see a friend a few years ago and I remarked about the amount of books, she had and she told me that I was the first person, who showed any interest in her books, because a black young man told her that because she has a lot of books in her house, she would only date white guys, which is certainly not true. We forget that we have African american and black writers, poets, scientists, doctors, lawyer, preachers, businessman and women, architects, fashion designers, Rabbis, there is a African American female Rabbi in training in Israel right now. Where did we get this notion that marriage is for 'white people'. Marriage is for everybody. Why does 50 cent, Nelly, Snoop Dog, get more publicity, as compared to Jill Scott, who is a brilliant songwriter and singer, why are we so focused on R Kelly and everyone knows what he was like. We criticize Beyonce and Rhianna, saying that they are fake, or maybe Beyonce has more credibility because she is know married to Jay-Z. Black women seem to be under attack from the enemies within and the outside world. We don't get the protection that other women get. Our so-called leaders are a big let down, they do not protect us. So what do we do? We form alliances with people who care about us, and others who don't, we distance ourselves from them. We are here to make a change, but not to save people. We make changes in our own lives and others around either will change themselves or we have to move on without them. Everyone is responsible for his or own stewardship.