The New Afro in a Postfeminist Media Culture

Abstract

This chapter argues that the discourse on postfeminist media culture has not sufficiently addressed the racialized boundaries of embodiment that surround acts of choosing. Using the cases of Rachel Dolezal, the born-white woman who was “outed” in the media as not black (despite a curly, loose Afro) and Beyonce’s “Formation” music video, where the singer appears wearing several blonde hairstyles (an aesthetic of whiteness), this chapter explores the slipperiness of racial identity in contemporary media culture. What are the racial and gender politics of Dolezel and Beyonce’s bodily choices? The chapter argues that unlike the old Afro, as depicted by and through radical black activism, the new Afro in contemporary media culture appears as a race-neutral choice for white women. If Beyonce, a black woman, can play in whiteness, as identified by blonde hair but Dolezal, a born-white woman cannot live in blackness, what do both cases reveal in terms of the porosity and rigidity of spatial/racial lines in America? This chapter also explains why the new Afro challenges the privileging of white feminine subjectivity in postfeminist media culture.