Abstract
In Black Women in Reality Television Docusoaps: A New Form of Representation or Depictions as Usual, Adria Y. Goldman and Damion Waymer make a consistent and well-documented argument that “audience members may adopt recurring characters and messages from these docusoaps as they construct ideas about everyday Black women.” Goldman is Assistant Professor of Communication at Gordon State College, and Waymer is Professor of Communication at Purdue University.
Their book is based on two connected studies. The first examined the docusoap using 2011 episodes of The Real Housewives of Atlanta, Basketball Wives, Love & Hip Hop, Bad Girls Club, Khloe & Lamar, and The Real World. Using the 2011 episodes, Goldman and Waymer analyzed differences in portrayals of Black women depending on whether they constituted the majority or the minority of the cast. The results indicate that when Black women are the majority of the cast, positive images of Black women are represented. The images found to be portrayed in this study were the Professional Black Woman, the Good Black Mother, and the High Class Black Woman. However, these positive images were more prominent in cast biographies than in actual television images. The High Class Black Woman was not portrayed in programs with Black women as cast minorities. One negative stereotype, the Sexualized Black Woman, was shown only in the programs with a minority of Black women in the cast.
The second study, done in 2014, focused on the portrayal of Black women in programs in which they are the cast majority. The study included examinations of 15 docusoaps from We TV, Bravo, Oxygen, and VH1. The programs from We TV were Mary Mary, SWV Reunited, Marriage Boot Camp: Reality Stars, and L.A. Hair. The Real Housewives of Atlanta, Kandi’s Wedding, Married to Medicine, and Blood, Sweat, & Heels were Bravo’s contributions to the study. Oxygen was represented with only one show, Bad Girls Club, Chicago. The VH1 programs were Basketball Wives: LA, Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta, Marrying the Game, Hollywood Exes, and La La’s Full Court Life.
The researchers found that in these, as well as in the 2011 programs, the Black women cast members were “labeled as a bitch by herself or another cast member.” This label could be viewed positively, as a term of endearment, or negatively, when a cast member was engaged in conflict. In the shows with Black women as minority cast members, 78% of the portrayals were derogatory. The opposite was proven in the shows with Black women as the cast majority. In this case, 64% of the portrayals using this label were positive or used “bitch” as a term of endearment.
Black women in the 2014 programs were shown as, “Reclaiming Sexuality,” which is also the title of Chapter 4. Sex was not a subject to be whispered about, but was presented most often in a positive light. Only in a limited way was sex negatively addressed in the 2014 programs. In Chapters 5 and 6, respectively, the authors examine the image of Black women as mothers and their physical appearance. Overwhelmingly, the 2014 cast mates were shown as professional women earning their own money or donating their time to charitable causes (Chapter 7).
Chapter 8, devoted to anger and conflict, unfortunately, presented “examples of drama ranging from minor disagreements to physical threats and attempted attacks.” Racial ambiguity is discussed in Chapter 9.
Goldman and Waymer found that in the programs studied, presentations of Black women were not always stereotypical. “Black women were presented as being physically attractive (in ways outside of Eurocentric standards), were shown in healthy relationships with other women, were not always presented as hypersexual animals, and were featured as members of the upper class.” Applying Social Construction of Reality Theory, the authors question whether the target audience for these programs influences the way Black women are portrayed. Goldman and Waymer argue that audience members use the cast members’ actions as a way to interpret and construct their own ideas about Black women. They do not call for a boycott of the programs, despite the themes of the violent or angry Black woman and how the “implications of this theme further exacerbate the problems of mediated depictions in general and Black women’s mediate depictions in docusoaps specifically.” The authors address the involvement of the production team in docusoaps as well. Goldman and Waymer provide a path for others to understand the complications associated with the process of social construction of reality in general, and Black women, specifically. Their book provides a clear, concise research study which could be used as one of the main texts in a Black Studies or Gender Studies course.