"We are entitled to our anger."
“We are entitled to our anger.” |
That’s a line from the rapper and businesswoman Megan Thee Stallion’s Op-Ed today. She’s angry because Black women are “disrespected and disregarded” even as politicians depend on their votes; because they’re judged for wearing what they want to wear and saying what they need to say; because they’ve grown up being told they’re “too dark, too thin, too thick, too much of a bitch” — “too much or not enough”; because America still doesn’t get how much it needs their anger to set things right. |
She writes that a man shot her. The bullets hit her in the feet as she walked away from him. That would be a metaphor — for a woman’s agency, for a man’s anger, for America’s failure to protect Black women — if it wasn’t her real life. |
Her Op-Ed comes in the form of an essay (edited by my Op-Ed colleague Jenée Desmond-Harris) and an accompanying video (edited by my video colleague Asaf Kastner). One of the coolest things about it is hearing Megan’s voice in both formats. |
In the essay she writes about the experience and what she learned from it — that “too many men treat all women as objects, which helps them to justify inflicting abuse against us when we choose to exercise our own free will.” |
Her clothes, she writes, are a manifestation of that free will: “I choose what I wear, not because I am trying to appeal to men, but because I am showing pride in my appearance, and a positive body image is central to who I am as a woman and a performer.” She continues, “When women choose to capitalize on our sexuality, to reclaim our own power, like I have, we are vilified and disrespected.” |
She makes the same argument in the video, where her words, along with lines from Malcolm X, are set against images of Black women loving, fighting, dancing and owning their power. |
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