Hood Bitch: A Black Feminist Framework for Understanding the Power and Resistance of Cardi B.
You might know her as the “regula, degula, shmegula girl from The Bronx” on Love and Hip-Hop, or you might have been tagged on one of her Instagram videos by your friends; regardless, Cardi B. has proven to be a name worthy of knowing. However, in a world that would immediately dismiss an Afro-Latinx queer woman who was previously a stripper, a Black feminist framework is the only way we can begin to understand why Cardi B. is so great.
Don’t get it twisted now- Cardi’s videos are not made for everyone. Her specific positionality as a Black woman is in direct contrast to the dominant hetero-patriarchal structures present in all of our lives. Her videos include some of the everyday struggles that Black women face everyday. Because of the comedic nature of her videos and the accessibility of Instagram, Cardi B. has an audience of about 3.2 million followers. The problem is that while the people who live the life she describes are laughing with her on her rants about fuck boys, white people and everyday Bronx shenanigans; there are white people commenting “hoodlum” and black men calling her a “bitch” in the comment section of her Instagram.
Y’all needed to hear that. To the white people who keep calling her “hood,” there is your answer. You will never understand the lived experience of black womanhood and therefore you resort to calling her “hood.” You don’t understand the art form that is the language spoken in New York City: a hybrid of ebonics and both Dominican and Jamaican curse words that give us a better approximation of the things we feel inside as a result of the failures and limits of “standard English.”
Black men, this is also a message for all of us. Stop projecting your ideas of what “real women” are and are not onto women. Cardi B. wants you to stop doing it to her and she also wants you to stop doing it to the women you encounter in your life. She declares herself as a “hood bitch” as a reclamation of the terms that get thrown at her everyday. She carries herself the way she wants to be seen and names herself accordingly. If that ain’t what you like well then…
If you are familiar with Cardi, then you might know her previous work as a stripper. Even though she is no longer in the strip club, she still centralizes her experience there because she learned how to “hustle men.” Since the strip club is often associated with male consumption, Cardi learning how to hustle men is her regaining the power that has been predicated on her body for centuries. She takes this power and uses it against men to ultimately prove that the strip club doesn’t belong to men anymore, it belongs to Cardi B.
And perhaps the best part is that Cardi B. is always placing her hood alongside her name or is in constant dialogue with people back in the Bronx. Barbara Christian in her “Racism and Women’s Studies” speech calls out professionals who feel as though they are excused for inaction and ethical responsibility just because they are “professionals” or even celebrities. Cardi does the exact opposite. Her videos are consistently dedicated to little girls who look up to her. While trying to destigmatize sex work, she is also trying to get people to stop glorifying stripping as something that anyone can do when they need money. Her transparency about what it means to be a stripper, often brings up the physical insecurity that took a personal toll on her. She urges girls to stay in school and follow their dreams.
Cardi B. is continuously in the practice of naming and renaming herself as fit to whatever she wants to be addressed as. In an act of resisting stereotypes and the different names that get attached to her, she is also projecting the power she has found within herself to be herself. This can only be found through black feminism because she would be illegible through a eurocentric, masculinist lens. Situated in a historical legacy of black feminists, Cardi B. is in the tradition of breaking down the structures that predicate on black women everyday.
She belongs to no one but herself (and The Bronx).
