Preparing for the National Premiere of Tyler Perry’s For Colored Girls

This coming Friday, Tyler Perry’s movie, For Colored Girls, will premiere nationally on November 5, 2010. The premiere of Perry’s movie is preceded by the viral YouTube Sesame Street video; I Love My Hair, and Willow’s video, I Whip My Hair. Both videos tell a black girl story of empowerment and self-love.  The last couple of weeks have been a type of black girl haven considering the predominance of negative images that saturate various forms of media. I must say watching a little chocolate Muppet with natural black hair sing about how she loves her hair makes me smile a big smile within as if a part of my black girl childhood hair issues are healed.

So, to say the least the coming of Tyler Perry’s movie, For Colored Girls, has a huge act to follow. And, given his film track record, we as black feminist, womanist, cultural workers, mothers, daughters, sisters, aunties, and big mommas must prepare ourselves for the spiritual and emotional outcomes of the movie. We need to have places both online and offline that can absorb the emotional openness that the film will produce. That being said there are several online groups who are organizing various national discussions about the movie.

The groups are:

• Real Colored Girls: Real Colored Girls (RCG’s) are women of the African diaspora, who take issue with the ways we are being represented globally. Our ability to contribute fully to humanity depends on the reclamation and articulation of our true selves, and global, white-supremacist, patriarchal media has exploited the degradation of our original archetypes. In amputating the spiritual meaning of black women we are continuously reduced from Great Mother and original life-source, to mammy stereotypes, from Wise Oracle to neck-snapping Sapphire’s, and from Sacred Whore, the body upon which the seasons revolve, the sexuality that heals and prospers, to everybody’s favorite hottentot. Real Colored Girls are offended and bored by the mean-spirited, simplistic portrayals of who we are and we are committed to the dismantling of outdated representations. Real Colored girls are reclaiming the true meaning of our archetypes and forging new models for Black womanhood from a place of internalized freedom.

• Quirky black girls are hosting blog carnival. A blog carnival consists of hosting a web page were one blog will link to other blogs that are talking about a similar subject. In general, we know that many people are going to blog about the movie, but wanted to have a central location where people could read various accounts of the movie and share their thoughts about the movie, the play, and the various group discussions they have had about the movie. If you would like to participate in the blogging carnival, please send your link by Friday, November 12, 2010.