Somewhere amid the basketball wives throwing bottles, acclaimed actresses portraying downtrodden maids, and the usual suspects gracing the covers of black lifestyle magazines lies the ambiguous representation of black women in the media. And while household names like Essence, Jet, Heart & Soul, and Ebony have worked for decades to counter questionable images with positive alternatives, Facebook pages have allowed for the immediate creation of new communities that empower black women with images and words in a mere click.
Facebook destinations like Orijin Culture provide black women with sumptuous fashion shots reflecting themselves that are far more glamorous than those found in average glossies. Healthy Black Women and Girls, with over 111,ooo likes, promotes images of Black women participating in sport, exercise, and healthful living, while also helping page participants achieve their own health goals.
Then there are much smaller niche communities, such as DarkSkinned Women <3, that address pressing issues such as color discrimination in an immediate and ongoing way that mainstream publications cannot match.
“The darker the berry, the sweeter the juice!,” said one female user on DarkSkinned Women <3 when complementing a beautiful image of a woman with deep brown skin. DarkSkinned Women <3, like many popular community pages that appeal to African-American women, posts content consisting mostly of stunning imagery that reinforces self-esteem. It seems like a simple formula, but it’s making a big impact.
Could more black women be turning to relatively small Facebook groups, like Model TV Africa, for style and life advice as opposed to traditional media?
“I believe that spaces on the Internet where black women gather in cyberspace are indeed competing with traditional lifestyle magazines,” Noliwe Rooks, author of 2004’s Ladies’ Pages: African American Women’s Magazines and the Culture That Made Them, told theGrio.
An associate professor of Africana Studies at Cornell University, Rooks has found that black women across generations are increasingly logging into their accounts in order to get the support, advice, nurturing and sense of community that was once fulfilled by magazines.
The creators of these hubs of black camaraderie noticed this opportunity to target African-Americans in an innovative way — and seized it. “I saw this new generation of social media sites as a way to reach people we’ve never been able to reach before,” Kumi Rauf, founder of I Love Being Black (ILBB), told theGrio.
While not specifically targeting women, ILBB is an interesting case study of where this social media development may go. With 6,122,061 likes to be exact as of publication time, I Love Being Black is the largest black-owned Facebook page in the world. Placed in a larger context, ILLB’s audience has more than twice the number of likes as the Facebook pages of BET, TV One, Essence, Tom Joyner, Black Voices, Black Enterprise, Ebony, and Jet combined. This astronomical audience was gained in a mere four years since it launched in 2008. On any given day, ILBB showcases a plethora of affirming photographs and images, all of which feature a diverse array of locations and people from the African diaspora.
“We try to keep our news posts either positive or informative,” said Rauf. “This works well for us because it’s like a breath of fresh air to see this type of content in the news concerning black people.”
Yet, more impressive than the audience size is the audience engagement that specialized pages like ILBB, Vintage Black Glamour, Black Women with Real Black Hair and Black Women “Do” Workout! have been able to generate per post, in comparison to more reputable media brands. A page with less than 20,000 likes can often see up to ten percent of its base comment or like every post, which is considered to be a very high rate of social media engagement by professionals in the social media business.
“It’s not about the number of how many people like you,” socio-economic digital analyst, author and commentator Lauren DeLisa Coleman told theGrio about these pages’ influence. Coleman studies the impact of digital platforms as they intersect with cultural behavior and commercial endeavors. “These niche outlets have a different measure of success.”
Pointing to a “wonderful kind of confluence of events,” she attributes the burgeoning growth of these Facebook pages to what she calls “SmartPower:” the rise of a new mindset in which individuals are more self-determined, socially aware and are using digital platforms to change the sociopolitical dynamic between all of us.
“If I don’t see myself reflected, but I still have ideas, questions, and views, of course I’m going to start my own thing,” said Coleman, referring to this growing trend. “This is why we the see the advent of these pages.” For black women, who often comment that positive images of themselves are sorely lacking, the do-it-yourself model of media is a welcome balm for persistent negative representation.
Nichelle Gainer founded Vintage Black Glamour to provide a window on black history that is enticing as well as uplifting. “I like to post things that people have not seen, that they don’t know about and then they see it and go, ‘Oh, my God, where did that come from?,’” Gainer told NPR about her project in a recent interview.
Fans of Vintage Black Glamour showered her with compliments and gratitude for the existence of their community upon learning that NPR had spotlighted the page. A Facebook destination that exhibits rarely seen photos of black celebrities and achievers from decades past, Vintage Black Glamour exposes audiences to archival photographs of African-American celebrities like Lena Horne, Josephine Baker, Stevie Wonder, and Langston Hughes that delight the Vintage Black Glamour subscribers, as well as images of lesser-known, yet equally glamorous individuals.
It’s quite impressive, and the ladies and gentlemen portrayed tend to look very stylish, coming from an era when people dressed up just to rehearse for a play. These photos are not something you are going to see in an everyday magazine — and her subscribers appreciate it.
“You do important work. We are grateful that you took the time, Nichelle,” wrote one audience member about the empowering nature of the photos.
“This depicts an era when black women knew how to carry themselves in a positive manner […] sometimes we forget these days,” read another comment. In this way, Vintage Black Glamour teaches style and beauty advice in a refreshing way, ironically by reviewing the past.
Vintage Black Glamour and other pages are able to focus only on the positive in part because their activity is not constrained by the business models limiting traditional media. Unlike their newsstand counterparts that are subject to a monthly or weekly publication cycle, Facebook pages like these churn out new content on a daily — sometimes, hourly — basis, allowing for these micro-media locales to provide an extensive offering of edify African-American pictures and facts. Additionally, because the creation of these pages require no capital or advertisers, the founders are not bound to any stipulations in terms of what type of content they can post.
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This freedom of expression is drawing people to interact with these online brands — and with each other — in droves. It could only be a matter of time before these gathering points become major media forces.
“I think it’s wonderful that we have those forerunners,” said Coleman, “but now its time to add to that because we as a people are so diverse.”
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