modern {black} love
amazon’s modern love series had me all the way in my feels. not because of the storylines or the acting. not because a mainstay new york times column was made into visual consumption. not because they told sweet stories about a new york times version of love that is modern. modern love had me all in my feels because in NOT one of the eight episodes did they choose to cast a black woman or an indigenous woman or a woman of color as a lead love interest in these love stories of the modern era.
as a dark skinned black woman who was once a dark skinned black girl in a time without proclamations of black girl magic i’ve always noticed the absence of me in all things the world equates with love and beauty. i remember {like so many little dark skinned girls in 1985} when whitney houston was on mtv in all her dark skinned glory singing “how will i know” because i sat mesmerized in front of that screen heart stopped mouth open hoping that video would play every hour on the hour so i could catch it again and again and again. so that i could see the tiniest version of myself on that screen over and over and over again in hopes it would weave together a more full image on any screen of me; of this “pretty for a dark skinned girl” wondering how will i know that i am love?
me being in my feels about modern love brings me to me being all the fuck the way in my feels about queen and slim. holy shit! i was that little dark skinned black girl all over again when queen sat at that black owned diner dressed in all white, box braids done to perfection and as dark as the fuckin universe across from slim, hair a glorious crown, face a bearded dream and as dark as the fuckin universe on that big screen.
i was that little dark skinned black girl all over again when queen walked into that bedroom with her low cut natural against the most perfect dark skinned face and sat next to slim with his perfectly dark freshly shaven chocolate visage punctuated by eyes as sad and as deep as our past. both of them looking like all the ancestors wildest dreams crystallized in one black AF vision on that big screen in harlem.
i was all the fuck the way in my feels because this love story in modern times was told (mostly) from the eyes of blackness.
so, love it or hate it …
i’ll take being a black man’s legacy over a neglectful modern love every day.
i’ll take black love scenes as glorious as the sun is bright over whitewashed modern love every day.
i’ll take the pain and triumph and sheer will of being a black woman loved by a black man over predictable modern love stories that can’t and won’t see my beauty every day.
i am all the fuck the way in my feels about queen and slim because i am a dark skinned black woman in a world that doesn’t know how to love me because loving me means revealing scars and wounds and anti-blackness that very few can sit with yet are forced to when watching this story of a modern love.
i am all the fuck the way in my feels about queen and slim because for 132 minutes i felt seen and loved and angry AF and beautiful and known and as dark as the fuckin universe because i have come to know that i am indeed an entire beautiful dark skinned fuckin universe and you can take it or leave it but what you not gonna do is deny it.
* i can’t get over the ending. i just knew it was gonna end something like that but it didn’t have to or maybe it did cause that’s perhaps the only way popular culture can love/consume a dark skinned woman and the dark skinned man that loves her.
