Black female hyper sexuality, a product of global racial conception, remains at the forefront of black female identity.

From the welfare mother whose sexuality births what the world labels bastards– babies derived from the hyper sexual loins of black male and female lust, to the black pop star oozing with a hyper sexuality that drips dollars for her white oppressors, sexuality follows the presumed “black magic” of the black female body believed to induce the detriment that befalls her.

Fertility remains one of the most central means to illustrate black female sexuality—although seldom articulated as problematic. The black female celebrity who functions to represent a portrait or symbol of black female sexuality, illustrates black female hyper- fertility in later-in-life pregnancies and multiple births.

The Diva, Othering, and Multiple Births  

Mariah Carey, Jennifer Lopez, and now Beyonce– three of the world’s top-selling and most esteemed pop stars– share long prominent careers, lightened tresses, African ancestry, and multiple births. These births aid the contemporary diva in maintaining relevance, but also to consummate a hyper- sexuality that anchors their careers.

Admittedly, Lopez and Carey are hardly black women, but both have distant African origins as descendants from the slaves harbored in Puerto Rico and Venezuela. So while they are not black women, Carey and Lopez still fall under the “other” labeling, a labeling reflected in their sexualized images. Namely, Carey and Lopez mirror their hyper sexualized ancestors sampled by European men on slave voyages, and thus join Beyonce in assembling an essential portrait of “othered” sexuality  to a global racist gaze.

Collaboratively, the three women assemble this portrait through birthing fraternal twins, as a testament to the racist caricature of black female sexuality.

Unlike Beyonce, Carey and Lopez, have been affiliated with numerous men in a series of high profile relationships over the years. The many men of Lopez and Carey fuel the hyper sexual image portrayed in their revealing and form-fitting clothing. Thus their multiple births function to consummate their labeling at “other,” despite seemingly achieving their woman label in worldwide exposure and monumental wealth. 

A pillar of black female identity, Beyonce Knowles possesses an ethereal image of the intersectional woman emerged in the glamour of wealth and a feminine beauty– attributes typically separated from black female identity. Beyonce’s full lips, full hips, honey blonde locks, and round backside, usurped Lopez as the blonde-haired, round booty “other,” and has yet to relinquish the throne. Despite bearing the gift of singing, dancing, and stage presence, Beyonce’s career is rooted in her carefully constructed sexuality. Beyonce’s voluptuous figure, suggestive dance moves, revealing costumes, long full mane, and soulful sound culminates her sexuality, painting her as possessing unearthly talent, conventional beauty, while exuding the assumed sexuality of an African woman. Beyonce, like the late Saartje Baartman, is a black female body granted visibility to entertain the white gaze with a portrait of other. Esteemed scholar bell hooks discusses this “otherness” with the following: 

She is there to entertain guests with the naked image of Otherness. They are not to look at her as a whole human being. They are to notice only certain parts. Objectified in a manner similar to that of black female slaves who stood on auction blocks while owners and overseers describe their important, salable parts, the black women whose naked bodies were displayed for whites at social functions had no presence. They were reduced to mere spectacle. Little is known of their lives or motivations. Their body parts were offered as evidence to support racist notions that black people were more akin to animals. (page 62)

Baartman is the historical equivalent of the contemporary black female pop icon— objectified and dismembered by an intrusive gaze. Baartman’s sexuality, substantiated her systemic objectification and ultimate death, just as the primal connotation of black female sexuality validates perceiving and treating black women like animals. Not given the chance to breed in a life cut short, Baartman reproduced in the physical organs and limbs that remained above ground long after her death to prove her inhumane status. The hyper-fertility of the black female celebrity functions similarly, seemingly providing evidence for her presumed inferiority during and after her life. In other words, hyper- fertility functions to depict the black female as possessing a sexuality that causes her to breed in multiples like animals.

Beyonce: Barren or “Black Magic”  

The news of Beyonce’s first pregnancy—despite the announcement occurring in a dramatic and news-making way, caused many to speculate Knowles’ ability to carry a child. Many felt as if her stomach was prosthetic and that the she and husband— rapper, and entrepreneur, Jay- Z hired a surrogate to have their child. I suppose the time between Knowles’ marriage and conception was far too long for most. While these speculations may seem menial, rumors of infertility stain the hyper sexual image of the black female body. The hyper sexual body, caricatured by the white gaze,  must breed in order to solidify the value of her stock. Thus, whispers of Beyonce’s infertility threatened the western ideology of the black woman, essential in composing the binary opposite of white womanhood.

In verbalizing her fertility struggles, Knowles surfaces as an everywoman. In her emergence from these struggles, however, Beyonce surfaces as hyper fertile– a superwoman bearing the fertility wish of countless women throughout the globe—twins.

Fertility troubles aligned Knowles with the seasoned white women ever-present on adoption sites and adoption lists around the globe, seeking to obtain what they are unable to attain naturally— a child. This is not to say that black women do not struggle with fertility, but that the maintain myths of black female hyper-sexuality this page is one torn out of a fictive black female narrative. Thus, Beyonce’s emergence from these struggles resumes the narrative of the hyper-sexual black female and places her in line with the presumed “black magic” hyper-sexuality of her indigenous origins.

The same black magic that catapulted Beyonce into the global superstardom, is the same black magic white men and women historically labeled lethal to their conjugal sanctity. It is this same hyper sexual imaging that functions to depict the hyper sexual woman of African ancestry as a sexual beast who breeds like an animal. Yes there are famous white actresses such as Sarah Jessica Parker and Angelina Jolie, who have twins. Their births however have been linked to, or following surrogacy. Parker had twins via surrogate, and Jolie gave birth to twins after adopting three children and therefore serving as their surrogate mother. Also, much of Jolie’s allure comes from her full lips, which historically bore correspondence to the fullness of the African woman and her able womb, encased in a fertility exaggerated in a global racist gaze. Thus, Jolie’s proximity to blackness via physical attributes works to substantiate an innate and animalistic black female hyper- sexuality depicted through hyper-fertility.

While  a testament to their remarkability, the hyper fertile woman of African ancestry does not exist to bolster positive imaging to blacks, but to further the “othering” of the dark race in a subversive manner. bell hooks argues,

“Certainly from the standpoint of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy the hope is that desires for the “primitive” or fantasies about the Other can be continually exploited, and that such exploitation will occur in a manner that rein scribes and maintains the status quo.” (22)

The narrative of the black woman as hyper sexual is a direct reflection of her enslaved role, where black female worth was rooted in her ability to reproduce. Similarly, a central component to the sexualized popular stone cast along the Hollywood plantation is the black woman’s ability to prove the black magic fictively aligned with her African genitals.

The Later in Life Pregnancy

The hyper-sexual black female image is also festered in the later-in-life pregnancies of Janet Jackson and Halle Berry. Jackson, a global icon and the youngest Jackson child, is a testament to black female hyper fertility as the tenth (ninth living) child of a black woman. As one of the top-selling and most revered black female artists of all time with a career spanning three decades—Jackson’s hyper-sexuality is not typically displayed in her dance moves, which are more orchestrated than sensual, but in her lyrics and explicit performances. Namely, Jackson is known for strapping a male concert goer to a moving board where she sexually teases him for the entire three minutes of a song. She’s racy, unapologetically sexy, and possesses a soft feminine voice even well into her middle aged years—but up until last year, Ms. Jackson was not a mother.

Although there are rumors that Jackson abandoned her daughter with her ex husband James DeBarge, this was never confirmed, so to the world Jackson, the object of global admiration for years was childless. Beginning motherhood when the average woman has  sent her children off to college, and begins to prepare for retirement, portrays the black woman as a hyper-fertile and capable of fertility magic. Actress and beauty icon Halle Berry depicted a similar image when she became pregnant with her son Maceo at the age of forty-seven.

The hyper- fertile black woman, while bearing the gift of reproduction also corresponds to profit garnered in her objectification. The fertile black female body  meant more field hands and concubines, which meant more babies and ultimately more money and power for white consumption. Similarly, the extensive media afforded to later- in-life pregnancies or multiple births of celebrities bearing black blood, garnered increased funds for white media outlets.

The black female, who is collectively objectified through the black, or black “ish” celebrity, is often an eager participant in the veiled objectification and dismemberment of black female identity. Most don’t see that to objectify the genitals of celebrity equivalents is to objectify their collective selves.

This disconnect is rooted in the failure of most to view pregnancy as a form of objectification. Yet, considering the  historical trajectory that accompanies the black female body, cognizance of systemized objectification in all its forms is prevalent not only for advancement, but collective survival. Celebrating the multiple or later-in-life pregnancies of already sexualized figures is yet another means to reduce black women to their genitals—a systemic objectification that strips the black female body of mortal status and instead casts her as an object, a body, solely for global depletion.

Beyonce at the height of her fame, is no longer a person to the global gaze. Instead she is an entity placed in the panopticon of popular culture to be placed, prodded, and exploited as deemed necessary by her oppressors. So in celebrating her latest performance– birthing twins, the masses cast another stone in stripping the collective black female demographic of their humanness.

A subjugated and  inhumane entity, violence cast against the black female body is corroborated and deemed self defense from her primal sexuality. This violence, be it systemic like poverty, or direct like murder or rape, occurs harmoniously with the pervasiveness of black female hyper sexuality.

In summary, Beyonce, as a figure of black femininity to the global gaze, had to have twins. Bearing twins was not only a means for the Knowles-Carter dynasty to expand, but for the world to portray the fictive hyper-sexuality of the  black female body as fact.

Black female objectification is as American as apple pie, and as globally overlooked and ignored as slavery, so it is without wonder that the black female celebrity bare the height of exploited black female identity veiled by riches and fame. While the masses are slowly acknowledging the pattern of hyper-sexuality in its overt display on social media, scripted sitcoms, and reality television, it is essential that this portrayal is exposed as ubiquitous—so that the black female—through her systemic subjugation is not an accidental participant in her own defilement.