New York Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley recently wrote a review on Shonda Rhimes’ new crime drama How to Get Away with Murder, which has drawn the ire of both Rhimes and black women.
Stanley said Rhimes’ heroines – Kerry Washington in Scandal and Chandra Wilson in Grey’s Anatomy – are “authority figures with sharp minds and potent libidos”, no longer maids and nurses.
But she also describes Rhimes as “an angry black woman”, playing to the prevailing stereotypes. Rhimes and readers responded.
In the same article, Stanley also gave her opinion of Viola Davis, the new heroine in How to Get Away With Murder.
She wrote: “As Annalise, Ms Davis, 49, is sexual and even sexy, in a slightly menacing way, but the actress doesn’t look at all like the typical star of a network drama. Ignoring the narrow beauty standards some African-American women are held to, Ms Rhimes chose a performer who is older, darker-skinned and less classically beautiful than Ms. Washington, or for that matter Halle Berry, who played an astronaut on the summer mini-series “Extant.”
The phrase “less classically beautiful” has also sparked a heated debate on what is beautiful. Readers again responded, many submitting pictures of their definition of beauty.
NATIONNews wants your take on how you define beauty and what is beautiful to you.
Tell us here on the website or use #iambeautiful to respond on twitter and on our facebook page The NationBarbados.
Share your beauty with readers by submitting pictures to editorial@nationnews.com or via private message on our facebook page. (SAT)
