Buy Black: How Black Women Transformed US Pop Culture (Feminist Media Studies)

Buy Black examines the role American Black women play in Black consumption in the US and worldwide, with a focus on their pivotal role in packaging Black feminine identity since the 1960s. Through an exploration of the dolls, princesses, and rags-to-riches stories that represent Black girlhood and womanhood in everything from haircare to Nicki Minaj's hip-hop, Aria S. Halliday spotlights how the products created by Black women have furthered Black women's position as the moral compass and arbiter of Black racial progress. Far-ranging and bold, Buy Black reveals what attitudes inform a contemporary Black sensibility based in representation and consumerism. It also traces the parameters of Black symbolic power, mapping the sites where intraracial ideals of blackness, womanhood, beauty, play, and sexuality meet and mix in consumer and popular culture. |List of Figures vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction: The Making of Black Womanhood 1 1. Theorizing Black Women's Cultural Influence through Consumption 17 2. From Riots to Style: The History of Black Barbie 47 3. From Bootstraps to Glass Slippers: Black Women's Uplift in Disney's Princess Canon 79 4. A Black Barbie's Moment: Nicki Minaj and the Struggle for Cultural Dominance 111 Coda: The Stakes of Twenty-First-Century Black Creativity 143 Notes 153 Bibliography 165 Index 181| "A compelling analysis of the role American Black women have played in consumerism and popular culture, focusing on the 1960s to now. " — Business Insider "Important and accessible, Dr. Halliday's latest book expertly examines Black women as cultural producers and consumers and their subsequent, undeniable influence on popular culture. " — Ms. Magazine " Buy Black offers an important and well-argued consideration of the Black women cultural producers who, in an effort to subvert a misogynoiristic system, sometimes traffic in the very stereotypical practices they wish to upend. Halliday's concept of 'embodied objectification' helps to make clear our own investments in consumer capitalism and prompts us to be more circumspect about our participation as a means to some ultimately unsatisfying end."—Moya Bailey, author of Misogynoir Transformed: Black Women's Digital Resistance | Aria S. Halliday is an assistant professor in the Department of Gender and Women's Studies and Program in African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky. Buy Black examines the role American Black women play in Black consumption in the US and worldwide, with a focus on their pivotal role in packaging Black feminine identity since the 1960s. Through an exploration of the dolls, princesses, and rags-to-riches stories that represent Black girlhood and womanhood in everything from haircare to Nicki Minaj's hip-hop, Aria S. Halliday spotlights how the products created by Black women have furthered Black women's position as the moral compass and arbiter of Black racial progress. Far-ranging and bold, Buy Black reveals what attitudes inform a contemporary Black sensibility based in representation and consumerism. It also traces the parameters of Black symbolic power, mapping the sites where intraracial ideals of blackness, womanhood, beauty, play, and sexuality meet and mix in consumer and popular culture. |List of Figures vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction: The Making of Black Womanhood 1 1. Theorizing Black Women's Cultural Influence through Consumption 17 2. From Riots to Style: The History of Black Barbie 47 3. From Bootstraps to Glass Slippers: Black Women's Uplift in Disney's Princess Canon 79 4. A Black Barbie's Moment: Nicki Minaj and the Struggle for Cultural Dominance 111 Coda: The Stakes of Twenty-First-Century Black Creativity 143 Notes 153 Bibliography 165 Index 181|"The book's clear, accessible prose and pop culture subject matter will appeal to both lay readers and scholars who want to explore Black joy, creativity, and entrepreneurship in American culture. . . . Recommended." — Choice "A compelling analysis of the role American Black women have played in consumerism and popular culture, focusing on the 1960s to now. " — Business Insider "Important and accessible, Dr. Halliday's latest book expertly examines Black women as cultural producers and consumers and their subsequent, undeniable influence on popular culture. " — Ms. Magazine | Aria S. Halliday is an assistant professor in the Department of Gender and Women's Studies and Program in African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky. "Negotiating the line between "sell out" and "for us, by us," Buy Black explores how Black women cultural producers' further Black women's historical position as the moral compass and arbiter of Black racial progress in the United States. Black women cultural producers' aesthetic choices communicate that even though capitalist discourses dictate that anything is sellable in our society, there are some symbols of beauty, femininity, and sexuality that sell better than others because of how they occupy the set of already recognizable and, at times, relatable representations of blackness. While they compete in the consumer market for the attention and loyalty of Black consumer dollars, their capitulation to white corporate interests and audiences requires propagating historical tensions regarding Black consumer citizenship and multicultural inclusion. Each chapter contextualizes the role that Black women in the United States play in the global project of Black consumption, questioning which dolls, which princesses, which rags-to-riches narratives, and which characteristics represent the repertoire of Black girlhood. Through themes of self-making and objectification in dolls, princesses, and hip-hop, Buy Black maps the imagined space of "America" and the cultural attitudes that produced a twenty-first-century Black American sensibility based in representation and consumerism. Buy Black teaches all of us the parameters of Black symbolic power by mapping the confluence of intraracial ideals of blackness, womanhood, beauty, play, and sexuality in popular culture"-- Provided by publisher Buy Black examines the role American Black women play inBlack consumption in the US and worldwide, with a focus on theirpivotal role in packaging Black feminine identity since the 1960s.Through an exploration of the dolls, princesses, and rags-to-richesstories that represent Black girlhood and womanhood in everythingfrom haircare to Nicki Minaj's hip-hop, Aria S. Halliday spotlightshow the products created by Black women have furthered Blackwomen's position as the moral compass and arbiter of Black racialprogress.

Far-ranging and bold, Buy Black reveals what attitudesinform a contemporary Black sensibility based in representation andconsumerism. It also traces the parameters of Black symbolic power,mapping the sites where intraracial ideals of blackness, womanhood,beauty, play, and sexuality meet and mix in consumer and popularculture.