Abstract
ABSTRACT This research explores how popular media content promotes hybridized black authenticity – consisting of controlling images, expectations, and ideals – through aspirational lifestyle advice for black women. Through a content analysis of Essence, we examine tensions between meanings of authenticity (true self) and black authenticity (social constructions of being legitimately black). We find integrations of race-specific expectations with culturally dominant “raceless” ideals, so that hybridized black authenticity extends intersectional authenticity standards through themes of pursuing the true self, embracing natural beauty, and regulating black lady professional respectability. Advice promotes individualized responses of self-responsibility and surveillance to systemic issues while acknowledging racialized and gendered tensions.
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