Could Black Women Get Away With Producing Something Like Jezebel.Com?

I have come across Jezebel.com from time to time, but never really had much interest in regularly reading it. The site reminded me too much of my college days, where everything revolved around a white girl's view of the world, her idea of what was funny, what was enraging, what was sad, and of course, what was most important to care or talk about. As I learned in college, this point of view often times regularly and strongly excluded most things that I as a black women was interested in or cared about.

I do admire the site's concept and their editors fierce determination to create a space for young women to be themselves and discuss adult topics without being judged. I love how they cover a multitude of issues and stories over the course of one day. Anyone who claims there is nothing interesting to read at Jezebel is a damn liar.

I also love how they confront the daily if not hourly demands and standards that all women face in society, with stories spanning from the horrors of menstrual cycles to will I die alone? to does this outfit make my butt look big? to does it make me a whore to sleep with two different men in the same week? Jezebel.com must be credited with challenging conventional thinking for women. It slays me that in the 21st century, it is still shocking to folks that women enjoy a good drink, a good meal, and good sex, and sometimes all in the same evening! Jezebel.com helps shatter many of the stereotypes about what women want and believe.

Looking at the site this weekend, I began to have one of my rhetorical musings about whether or not black women could have produced something like Jezebel.com. As soon as the idea popped into my head, my thoughts were immediately filled with a shrieking "hell no!" I was instantly reminded of how a few weeks ago, I dared to diss the Sex In The City movie and black women descended on that post taking me to task about bashing the series and the movie. Yet, when I raised the point about whether or not there could ever be a black version of SITC, those same women that defended the show, all passionately answered "hell no!"

This kind of debate remains an interesting conundrum for me. The belief that black women can only be participants in the ongoing dialogue of women in society, but never the leading voice. When I look at the above picture of the editors of Jezebel.com, I don't see anything special or different from when my friends or sorority sisters get together to talk trash about everything from politics to sex. These group of women are no different than others, but I am hard pressed to believe that there would be the same excitement or interest in Jezebel.com if the site's editors had six black women and just one white woman.

Would white women view black women as the trendsetters of fashion, sexuality, beauty, and style? Would thousands of young white women flock to a site written and produced by black women? Could a black woman get away with a blog pen name of "slut machine"? Considering how the word Jezebel has been used against black women, could we even name the site that? And since most white women struggle mightily to even discover the numerous blogs written by black women, I doubt that they would even find anyway. I still run into white women who are shocked that Essence magazine exists.

And it's not that Jezebel doesn't try to appeal to black women or women of color. And the site surely does not shy away from creating or reporting stories about black women or women of color. Unfortunately, most of the stories about black women come off as voyeuristic observations of white women that don't know any black women or misunderstanding that what white women may find funny, black women do not.

For example, recently, two of the editors of Jezebel.com had a minor media dust-up after appearing on the show, Thinking And Drinking, (another thing that black women could never get away with), where it is now an on-going debate about whether or not the two women joked about rape. I watched the clips and read the comments and there is clearly a fine line being tread during their appearance, but I was still disturbed by their comments period.

Considering many black women's feelings about the gang rape at Dunbar Village, the acquittal of R. Kelly, and the Genarlow Wilson case, black women would never find anything about the crime of rape anything to joke about. And since when is it progressive or empowering for women to joke about rape? It doesn't matter their intention, sometimes you need to be responsible for what you say, particularly when being recorded. Some things are just not funny.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking Jezebel. I was just struck at the difference of freedom of expression and the on-going rules of oppression. White women can say or do virtually whatever they want, black women and women of color must still be careful. It's a burden of inequity that is becoming truly troublesome.