I'm a queer, fat, femme black woman and I deserve respect
Hi, my name is Kytara and I am a fat black queer femme woman. There are so many layers of my identity but in movies you’ve seen me as the mammy or sassy black friend. I’m not a skinny white girl, but that’s okay; I’m still fucking fabulous.
Being a feminine cis woman doesn’t seem like a revolutionary thing, but I’m not just a feminine cis woman. I’m black. I’m fat. I’m queer. I am not society’s ideal role model for anything feminine. That’s why I make it my job to change the face of femininity to make it include people like me. I’m not a prop for Miley or any other white women who want to juxtapose their femininity or sexuality.
The way I look does not devalue my humanity. Many times I’ve had my identity, my femininity, my worth challenged because of the way I look. I’ve had my intelligence questioned because friends prefered to put me in the sassy black girl box. I’ve had a male schoolmate tell me it was ok to hit me because I was a big girl.
Let’s clear up a few things:
- My thick, black thighs don’t fit into most things, let alone bullshit stereotypes.
- I would have cut a motherfucka if he laid a finger on me.
These one-dimensional understandings of who I am are wrong, incorrect, invalid and most certainly fucked up. However, when it’s all they’ve been shown, what else would they think? People like that only see people like me playing the matronly mammies, funny sidekicks, crazy fat witches, etc. Who am I and what I look like is a punchline. Of course they would see me as a caricature instead of the layered, complex, fierce bitch I am but that doesn’t mean I have to accept it.
So, what’s a fat femme supposed to do? Be more visible. Be proud, unabashedly sexual. Reclaim my image, body, sexuality and humanity. Manifest our destiny and take the public space fat Black woman deserve.
I want fat black women - queer or otherwise - to have the option of being feminine, masculine or whatever the hell they want. I want us to be sexual beings. I want us to be seen as soft femme, hard femme and any combination in between. There’s no reason we can’t be a sex kitten, vixen, lumberjack, doctor or jiggly unicorn and be proud of who we are. .
I am a full and beautiful human being and I deserve to be seen for who I am. I am worthy of love, praise, desire, worship and just as much as my stereotypically beautiful counterparts. I’m a damn fine queer femme princess who deserves the damn universe!
