Sharon's Muse.... Let's chat over coffee while I ponder some things
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Sharon's Muse.... Let's chat over coffee while I ponder some things |
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Name::Sharon Cullars
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Tuesday, August 30, 2005  Another IR storyline goes to hell...I am not a big fan of soaps and haven’t kept up with them basically because I’m at work during the day. In recent weeks though, I discovered through a message board that One Life to Live had been featuring an unlikely front-burner romance between a black woman (Evangeline) and white man (John) for almost a year. Now this pairing has been done before on various daytime and some primetime shows, to little or mediocre effect. I was barely interested but found a site with clips detailing the highlights of this romance from the beginning. And folks, I ain’t never, ever. OK, I have, but… That first love scene between these two very attractive characters shot the mercury out of my thermometer. Needless to say, I immediately became hooked and searched out the backstory of these two. Once caught up, I faithfully read recaps, searched board messages to find out where and how the relationship was progressing. And what was pleasing to me was that the pairing seemed more than sexual. He professed to her that she was the only woman for him “…yesterday, today and tomorrow…” If a gorgeous man said that to you, what would you think? I was wary though. I had been pulled in before by a OLTL storyline, this one between a biracial woman named Keri and the Hispanic bad boy, Antonio. Again, I discovered the relationship via bulletin postings and searched out their story. What I saw was gratifying in that the BW was being pursued with ardor that didn’t feature the telltale signs of jungle fever. Antonio seemed genuinely affectionate and appreciative of this lovely black woman. And then the storyline went to all levels of purgatory: Antonio slept with Keri’s white mama, got the mama pregnant and somehow Keri wound up carrying the baby for her uterine-disabled mama not knowing its paternity. Won’t go into the full storyline, but by the time Keri found out about her cheating lover, she also discovered that the baby she was carrying was actually hers and Antonio’s, as the first embryo hadn’t taken hold. (Don’t ask me who thinks up these storylines; needless to say, you’ll never see such drivel featured in my novels). To make matters worse, after Keri had his baby, disappeared from sight, then reappeared, Antonio had by that time become enamoured of the town’s blonde heiress, driving Keri literally mad with grief. She began a stalkarama before finally killing herself. After that convoluted storyline, I thought I was through with any IR storyline no matter what show b/c I feared that any black woman featured would somehow become an object of pity or disdain. Well, it’s happened again. Not that Evangeline is going mad; she’s holding up well. But of course, the man who claimed she was his for now and forever has found succor in the arms of a red-head (half-sister of the original blonde heiress featured in prior storyline – twins, BTW, but don’t ask me about that extremely tortuous plot of two daddies, one mama and one pregnancy). Recently, a columnist at Salon, Debra Dickerson, lamented the lack of black women’s “fuckability” (her word, not mine) in the media and in life, in general. She claimed that we are seen as work horses and mammies, and if seen as sexual at all, that it is in the realm of a hoochie mama and hooker, but never truly as beautiful, desirable, and sexy women. Now I didn’t agree totally with everything she purported, but I can agree that we’ve had to fight through the years to own our own sexuality. Going back to the romance between Evangeline and John, it was bad enough the twist the relationship took. But what was more insulting, truly demeaning, was that the relationship that lasted almost an entire year was summed up by another character as just one long “booty call.” Yes, this attractive, sexy, intelligent (she’s a defense attorney, he’s a cop) woman had with these two words become nothing more than a bounce on the “chocolate mattress.” Maybe that’s why I write what I do. Because the market is bereft of books and movies featuring us as desirable women who just happen to be black and who are deserving of the love, the affection, and yes, damnit, the RESPECT, that any woman deserves. So, Ms. Dickerson, OLTL has proven our “fuckability” - but at the cost of our esteem.
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