The XX Factor: What women really think.

Perry's Problems

Switching gears from the recent political appointments (and dropouts) for a moment to talk about Tyler Perry. Full disclosure: I've never seen a Tyler Perry movie, but his box-office dominance and cultural relevance is certainly undeniable. Which is why I found this analysis of the portrayal of women in TP's movies from the race and pop culture blog Racialicious particularly troubling:

There is little to dispute that TP’s target audience is Black women, so let’s look at the message we’ve received so far from the play [Madea Goes to Jail]. A beautiful, ambitious, driven woman is a promiscuous, shrill bitch and a danger to the home. A good woman doesn’t turn heads with her beauty, is soft-spoken, religious, and will wait—sexually and emotionally—for the right man to come along. We see this play out as well in the movie version of Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married. ... TP wants to teach women how to have successful relationships by making sure their male partners are satisfied. His morality plays, on stage and film, scold women: Be quiet, in appearance and voice. Don’t try to be more than what you are. Serious ambition is a danger to the family. Be grateful for “good enough.” Wait for the right man to notice you. Don’t bring attention to yourself. Be appropriately thankful when a man takes care of you.

The commenters who like Tyler Perry at Racialicious argue that TP's embrace of a group so rarely seen in Hollywood movies (African-American church-goers) helps them to ignore the more insidious aspects of his "morality plays." The Root touched on this issue briefly last year, and one has to wonder, especially in light of the media's "momification" of ex-lawyer Michelle Obama, if Perry's portrayal of black women does more harm than good.