People HATE Tall Black Women?? | Unpacking the Stereotypes and Complex Layers of This Identity

Before we dive in, I want to give a big shout out to Whitney Allison for sponsoring today's episode Tall Girlies. We all know the struggle finding clothes that actually fit and look good on us is hard enough, so when it comes to something as essential as building a capsule wardrobe, it can feel frustrating and nearly impossible. But Whitney Allison is here to change that. They design timeless capsule collections made just for us, with high quality pieces that are built to last and mix perfectly with anything in your closet, so no more compromising on style or fit. And with the holiday season coming up, now's the time to check out their vegan leather collection Fourfall at Whitney Allison dot com so you can dress how you're meant to dress. You'll find their website and socials linked in the description, and thank you again to Whitney Allison for sponsoring today's episode. Good morning, everybody. You are currently listening to a Tall Girls podcast hosted by a tall girl named India. I hope everyone who is tuning in today's doing super fantastic. Before I get into this episode, I do want to say make sure following me on my socials at a Tall Girls podcast on Instagram, TikTok and pincher so that you could stay up today on all of the latest podcast episodes and catch a glimpse of my everyday life. Also, feel free to leave me review and let me know how tall you are. I'm genuinely curious, and I also have a monthly newsletter make sure you subscribe to that. Everything is going to be linked in the description. Tis this season, y'all to go broke? Now that Halloween is officially past us, we are basically getting into the heights, getting into the peak of holiday season, especially with Christmas coming up along with other holidays including Hanukkah and Kwanza. But let's not forget about Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is very important too, so please stop skipping over her. But honestly, this is a great time to be in New York City, or honestly, probably in any major city. I don't know what other major cities are doing, but I know in New York City it's it's the time. It's the time. It's the holiday markets are being set up, like the one in Bryant Park and soon in Union Square, and I can already hear them calling my name. They're saying, India, give us all your money, and we can't do that. We're gonna resist temptation this year. Okay, We're gonna make a budget and we're gonna stick to it. So if you're budgeting and making sure you're not overspending this holiday season, you're not alone. We're all in this together and we're gonna succeed this year. Now, for today's topic, we are going to be talking about being tall and being black, especially dark skinned as a woman. This topic has actually been brought up to me, brought to my attention a couple times through dms and even comments on YouTube or even on Instagram under some of my reels, and I was planning to talk about this like maybe next month or next year in twenty twenty five, but I don't know. I took these requests as a sign to just do it now. So a couple quick disclaimers before I get deep into this topic. Number one, I am black, identify as black. I'm also genetically black. I mean I am mixed. However, I am most in touch with my black side. I am specifically Caribbean, and you know, I do understand the struggles of being black, especially being a black woman. I have experienced that myself, especially in high school, going to a school where it was predominantly Asian and white. However, I do acknowledge that colorism exists. If you have not physically seen me before, if you haven't followed me on my socials are not looking at the video version of this. I am a light skin, I have light skin, I have light eyes, So I am aware that there are times where people treat me differently than someone who is darker than me, and I acknowledge that, and quite frankly, I find that very disgusting. And this is also a good time to talk about what colorism is. Will really just define it so you know for sure, colorism is discrimination on skin tone. It's a form of prejudice against individuals with a dark skin tone, typically among people of the same ethnic and racial group. So I just wanted to put that out there that I am aware that colorism does exist. Also, another disclaimer. In this episode, I will be talking about stereotypes. I'm going to be talking about black stereotypes, the history and origins of that, and how that affects the stereotypes that are presented today of black women. And I'm also going to be talking about stereotypes, so tall people as well, but in the stereotypes of black women. I just wanted to let you know that I will be talking a bit about slavery, and I know that this can be a sensitive topic for some people, especially going deep into how black women were treated during slavery, So I just wanted to put that out there if I mean, I'm not going to go too too deep into it, but there are certain parts that have to be acknowledged when talking about black women's stereotypes. So if that is something that you are not comfortable with, I would recommend just not into this episode. So just wanted to put all of that out there before I get deep into it. Being tall and black is not for the week. People give so much hate to tall, dark skinned girls. These are some of the comments and messages that I've received over the past few days, and now it's the time to address them. But first I want to know do you agree. First, I want to go into depth about the stereotypes of black women. There are several of these, and they mainly started in the days of slavery, where black women were dehumanized and treated as property. They were seen as and portrayed as only suited for hard labor, as resilient to pain, as beasts, and lacking true femininity. So one of the stereotypes that emerged was the Jezebel stereotype, and I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly, but in this stereotype, black women were painted as hypersexual and promiscuous, when in reality it was just a way to justify sexual abuse. Even after slavery was abolished, the portrayal of black women the image of black women did not improve, especially with the Jim Crow era. Another stereotype that emerged, especially because of slavery was the mammy stereotype, which yes started in slavery times and it became more prominent where black women were portrayed as loyal, nurturing, and subservient for white families and had no individuality or personal agency and was seen as unattractive. And around eighteen sixty five the mid eighteen sixties, I believe to the mid nineteen sixties we see the rise of the sapphire stereotype, where black women are loud, domineering, aggressive, combative, which is primarily associated with men, or just seen as very masculine traits. I will say that I am not really well versed in this. I mean I did. I can say that I learned a little bit about this in my history classes when I was in eighth grade and in high school. However, I don't think that they were explained well enough in my at least in where I was getting an education from. So I will say I'm not really well versed in this. This is kind of like a crash course. Some of what I remember from them also some research that I have done for this episode, but I would like to include some video clips with creators who can explain it better than I can. And of course, if I got anything wrong or I misconstrued anything, feel free to reach out to me, send me a DM comment below anything so that because I don't want to be incorrect by any means, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, But I'm going to include some video clips of creators who can explain this better. Wealth These stereotypes are based in massage noir. The concept itself can actually be traced back to slavery. As I mentioned in another series. During slavery, black women were presented as being overtly promiscuous to justify their ripe. And enslavement. After slavery, black women were portrayed as asexual, fat, and undesirable to make them seem less threatening to white relationship. Then, in the nineteen twenties, the angry black woman trope began as a way to criticize black men as being lazy and incompetent. Today, the stereotype of the strong black woman may seem positive, but it still robs black women of their full humanity and positions them as being able to face all kinds of difficulty on their own without any support. What all of these stereotypes do is to humanize Black women and influence how people not only perceive them, but how they treat them as well. More often than not, they're used as weapons to denegrate and undermine Black women. The three common stereotypes of black women that we still see portrayed in the media to this day. First is a Jezebel stereotype, and Jezebel was typically portrayed as a Black woman who was overly sexualized who used her looks to get what she wanted. Her power was within her seductiveness, and she used that power to get whatever she wanted, which made her seem unruly Sula from the novel Sulah is a good example of the Jezebel stereotype. Next is the Mammi stereotype, and Mammy was typically portrayed as an overweight Black woman who was the caregiver of the white family Do you love her job? And in order to keep people from thinking that her white slave master would want her sexually, she was often depicted to be unattractive. Many from The Help is a good example of the Mammi stereotype, and also I Really Love Octavia Spencer. And last is a sapphire stereotype who was the dominant black woman who never took crap from anybody and always stuck up for herself. Sofia from the Color Purple is an excellent example of the sapphire stereotype, and the sapphire stereotype is modernly seen as the sassy black woman. All of these stereotypes give off false representations of black women, and. As this last creator said, these stereotypes still do exist to this day, where especially in the media, black women are portrayed as loud, aggressive, quote unquote, ghetto, angry, hyper sexual, baby mamas, and even poor and uneducated. All of this is honestly, very very sad. I mean, I will say that there are improvements to this day, but this portrayal is honestly still prominent, and this honestly affects how people person and in turn, how we have to live our lives, how we have to act in our day to days so that people don't see us as to see us as these stereotypes that are brought up in the media. I'm going to include a clip of another creator who talks a little bit about this. Being a black woman means you need to be extra nized to be perceived as sufficiently pleasant. What I mean by this is that your lived experience looks like constantly considering everyone else's feelings in order to make everyone else feel comfortable, because the baseline of how they view you is one that is negative. So this means you never get to turn off and just be how you are. You never get to express your facial expressions the way you actually want to. You never get to speak in a tone of voice that is comfortable to you. If you do any of those things in a realm that is comfortable to you and doesn't consider the optics to everybody else, your risk getting ostracized, getting criticized, and often getting harmed in return. It often means feeling like a case animal that is viewed almost like a wild like what is she going to do? What is she going to say? As opposed to being viewed as a multifaceted emotional being. It is very devastating to live in this body sometimes because of those things, And often I have ignored them because to me, I just don't want to deal with the emotional weight of the way that race plays a factor in my existence. But some days it is hard to ignore. And one of those days was today, and I just thought I would come on here to reflect this to other people who don't have the same lived experience, that it is actually really really hard. And if you know a black woman, hug them, give them grace, and see them as a human being. Okay, by now that we understand a little bit more about the stereotypes of black women, now we can dive a little bit into the stereotypes of tall women. So I actually did an episode on this on tall girls stereotypes. So I'm not going to go to too crazy into it. Gonna do like a little bit of a summary of a crash course of that episode. If you want to tune into that to actually know more about each of these stereotypes and depth, I will make sure that I will include it somewhere. I'll put a link to it in a description. Some of these stereotypes include being intimidating because height is seen as an imposing feature, masculine because height is associated with masculinity, authoritative and athletic again because of our visibility and presence, and the fact that height is seen as a physical advantage in many sports, and even amazon or Amazonian because some people see height being tall as a woman as an exotic trait. And something I actually did not mention in the Tall Gorl Stereotypes episode is that these stereotypes of tall women dated back to like the mid Evil and Renaissance eras, and even the Victorian period. We're being sure it was tied to delicateness, femininity, purity, and modesty. It's interesting to see how the stereotypes of the past affect how tall women and black women are seen today. But what happens when the two are combined together, aka being a tall black especially a tall darker skinned woman. I'm sure you can understand that this can be a very intense, very unique experience because of all the stereotypes that are associated with being a tall woman and a black woman separately. When the two are combined, a tall black woman is often seen as intimidating, aggressive, masculine, not worthy of emotional support and physical protection, exotic, and the list goes on and on, and that's not okay, And sometimes you really do have to wonder to yourself, why is this like this? And the biggest biggest thing, I mean, obviously there's a lot of factors, but the biggest, biggest thing is the media. The media plays such a big role in how people perceive themselves and other people, Like I don't think people understand how the media can impact our subconscious, how it can heavily impact our subconscious, and how that impacts our actions that we may or may not be aware of. These are all perpetuating these stereotypes. And I mean, obviously it's not the actual media itself. It is the people behind the screen that are putting these things together that are at fault. But that's a discussion for another day. But it's so important to at least bring some type of awareness to this because the complex layers of being a tall Black women are definitely overlooked. It's important to unpack these stereotypes and highlight the unique challenges that tall black women face, getting called names, people giving them weird looks, people assuming that some of these women who are biological women and want to identify as a woman are trands, discrimination in social settings and even the workplace. All of it is just so tiring. We are tired. Hey, it's editing India here. I just wanted to come on here really quickly and just kind of seal the deal, glue it all together, if that makes any type of sense. But ultimately, what I'm trying to say is that the combination of being tall and being black is very intense because you're basically taking the stereotypes from each of these categories. You're taking the stereotypes of being a black woman, and you're taking the stereotypes of being a tall woman, and you're basically just kind of combining those into one person. So those stereotypes, those traits that are associated with those categories ultimately are doubled and even tripled when they're all in one person, if that makes sense. So what I'm trying to say is that these stereotypes are doubled down in a tall black woman because of the stereotype that are associated with being tall, being a tall woman, and being a black woman separately. I hope that made sense, but ultimately that's what I'm trying to say. It's just like extra extra, like extra aggressive, extra loud, extra intimidating, intimidating squared loud squared if you know what, if you're picking up when I'm trying to put down, but basically, when you're tall and black, when those two things are combined as a woman, those stereotypes are just highlighted even more. All Right, I'm gonna let you all get back into the episode. And this definitely calls for more representation in the media. And no, I am not talking about the lonely, aggressive, loud, quote unquote ghetto black women. I'm also talking about positive traits like successful, educated, happy, and fulfilled in her life. And yes, I know that there are definitely a lot of unique struggles with being a black woman, and it's great that it's highlighted in the media and stuff, but it's also good to show that, yeah, even though there are struggles and challenges in bad times, we can also prevail, we can also succeed and not be seen as or labeled as some of these bad stereotypes that literally date back to the days of slavery. And truthfully, I am so glad that there are black women, tall women, tall black women who are now showing up on social media, showing up online and embracing their features, embracing their beauty, their femininity, their uniqueness, and honestly just making the online space a safer one and a more inclusive one for tall individuals, for black individuals, for tall black individuals. And if you know any creators, make sure you comment some of them below. And it's also great to see that they're challenging these stereotypes as well, because we really need to bring more awareness to the fact that, yeah, what's painted on the screens of TV, what's painted in a lot of these popular social media videos and stuff, is not necessarily the case for every single person. And if you are a tall and black, tall and darker skinned women, you are beautiful, you are capable, you are intelligent, and don't let anyone, especially someone who doesn't even look like you, tell you otherwise. Love y'all, what are some of your experiences as a tall black woman let me know in the comments. The first step to fixing any issue is bringing awareness to it, so if you're comfortable, feel free to share them. And I'm going to end this episode here. Thank you so so much for tuning in. I really appreciate it, and I appreciate you as always. Feel free to hit me up on my socials, feel free to comment, feel free to send me an email even, and let me know what you thought about this episode. I really tried my best with this. I try my best with my research and just making sure that you know I'm saying in a way that makes sense. Honestly, this is the first time I'm ever in my whole three years of having this podcast, this is my first time ever really talking about a topic like this, a topic as serious as this. So I'm curious to know what you guys also have to say about this, and if you want me to do another episode of this going more in depth about certain things, also, feel free to let me know, and of course make sure you follow me on my social subscribe to the newsletter, and I honestly hope that you enjoy the start of your holiday season. And we're gonna have a falla la la la good time. That was really bad, so I'm gonna go now. I'll get you guys in the next one. Good night and goodbye.