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Abstract
Using discourse analysis and autoethnographic research, I center twerking as a Black dance and a Black feminist practice. My research challenges omissions in communication studies, which has tended to overlook embodied practices as paths to liberation and contributes to scholarship in dance studies that amplifies the significance of Black women and ratchet feminism. Inquiries propelling this research are: (1) what does it mean for Black women to express physical joy through twerking?; (2) how do women resist politics of respectability and embody worthiness through twerking? By analyzing both the affordances of twerking and the ways the dancing has been dismissed, I reveal interlocking systems of white supremacist and patriarchal exclusions that attempt to destroy Black women’s pleasure and power.
Acknowledgments
This one goes out to all the baddest in the game. Our asses are our greatest asset. A very special thank you to my mom (Rhonda Johnson) for laying the groundwork for what would be the most important project of my life (so far). Without you and Club Rhonda, this project would not exist. It wouldn’t be me if I didn’t also thank Melissa “Lizzo” Jefferson, Megan Thee Stallion, Beyonce, and all the other bad ass Black women of the world. Thank you!
Notes
1 @takea_shotfor_g. (2013, January 26). The leg kick before a female starts to twerk symbolizes the shackles of 400 years of slavery and oppression being broken. God bless America [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/TakeA_ShotFor_G/status/295241537762242560
2 Khadija Mbowe, “The Rise and Fall of the 2000s Video Vixen,” YouTube, April 11, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?V=Pq4hDxZZJHU.
3 Intelexual Media, “Confessions of A Video Vixen: The Rise and Fall of an Era,” YouTube, June 29, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZTCNok6N7I.
4 Mariah Johnson, Wait ‘Til You See It From the Back: Twerking as an Expression of Sexual Agency, OUR Journal: Old Dominion University Undergraduate Research Journal (2020).
5 Niamba Bakersville, “Twerk It: Deconstructing Racial and Gendered Implications of Black Women’s Bodies Through Representations of Twerking,” BA thesis, Swarthmore College, 2014.
6 Bakersville, “Twerk It,” 33.
7 Johnson, Wait ‘Til You See It, 11.
8 Marilou Poncin and Fannie Sosa, “Cosmic Ass,” Vimeo, 2017. https://vimeo.com/123000371.
9 Mark Graham, “A Complete History of Twerking (1993-2013).” VH1, August 7, 2013, https://www.vh1.com/news/svjeel/twerking-complete-history.
10 Elizabeth Pérez, “The Ontology of Twerk: From ‘Sexy’ Black Movement Style to Afro Diasporic Sacred Dance,” African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal 9, no. 1 (2015): 16–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/17528631.2015.1055650.
11 Aria S. Halliday, “Twerk Sumn!: Theorizing Black Girl Epistemology in the Body,” Cultural Studies 34, no. 6 (2020): 874–91. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2020.1714688.
12 Graham, “Twerking,” 2013.
13 Lizzo, “The Black History of Twerking––and How It Taught Me Self-Love,” Ted, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlSzEw0vmQ0.
14 Melia Robinson, “‘Twerk’ Is Now a Word in Oxford Dictionary Thanks to Miley Cyrus.” Business Insider, August 28, 2013, https://www.businessinsider.com/twerk-is-now-a-word-2013-8.
15 Pérez, “Ontology of Twerk,” 5.
16 Pérez, “Ontology of Twerk,” 5.
17 Pérez, “Ontology of Twerk,” 5-6.
18 Makau Kitata, “Sexualizing the Performance, Objectifying the Performer: The Twerk Dance in Kenya,” Agenda 34, no. 3 (2020): 11.
19 Simon Akindes, “Playing it ‘Loud and Straight’: Reggae, Zouglou, Mapouka and Youth Insubordination in Côte d’Ivoire”. Playing with Identities in Contemporary Music in Africa. Nordic Africa Institute (2002): 99–100.
20 Kyra D. Gaunt, “Inside The Games Black Girls Play,” American Journal of Play 13, no. 2-3 (2021): 147.
21 Lizzo, “Black History of Twerking.”
22 Bakersville, “Twerk,” 28
23 Shereen Zink, “Twerking and Cultural Appropriation: Miley Cyrus’ Display of Racial Ignorance,” MacEwan University Student Journal 3, no. 1 (2016).
24 Keith Wagstaff, “Twerking, Nelson Mandela, ‘How to Tie a Tie’: Google’s Top Searches of 2013,” TODAY, December 17, 2013. https://www.today.com/money/twerking-nelson-mandela how-tie-tie-googles-top-searches-2013-2d11744553.
25 Nordyke, Kimberly. “FCC Flooded with Complaints over Miley Cyrus’ Racy VMA Performance.” Yahoo! 2013. https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/news/fcc-flooded-complaints-over-miley-cyrus-racy-vma-050000164.html.
26 Z. Christmas, “Big Freedia Interview,” The Snipe News, September 30, 2014. http://www.thesnipenews.com/2013/10/Big-Freedia/.
27 Murali Balaji, “Why Do Good Girls Have to Be Bad? the Cultural Industry’s Production of the Other and the Complexities of Agency,” Popular Communication 7, no. 4 (2009): 225–36.
28 Zink, “Twerking and Cultural Appropriation,” 23
29 Kyra D. Gaunt, “YouTube, Twerking & You: Context Collapse and the Handheld Co-Presence of Black Girls and Miley Cyrus,” Journal of Popular Music Studies 27, no. 3 (2015): 244–73.
30 Jessica Pressler, “Miley Cyrus on Her Wild Past, Reinvention and Being a ‘f*cking Role Model,’” Harper’s Bazaar, June 21, 2022. https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a10290838/miley-cyrus/.
31 Margaret Hunter, “Shake It, Baby, Shake It: Consumption and the New Gender Relation in Hip-Hop,” Sociological Perspectives 54, no. 1 (2011): 15–36.
32 Lizzo, “Black History of Twerking.”
33 Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent the Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993).
34 Regina Marie Duthely, “(Dis)Respectability Politics: Black Feminist Liberatory Digital Rhetorics.” PhD diss., St. John’s University (New York), 2017).
35 Brittney C. Cooper, Beyond Respectability: the Intellectual Thought of Race Women (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2017).
36 Cooper, Beyond Respectability, 8.
37 Nadia E. Brown and Lisa Young, “Ratchet Politics: Moving beyond Black Women’s Bodies to Indict Institutions and Structures,” Broadening the Contours in the Study of Black Politics (2017): 45–56.
38 Rupe Simms, “Controlling Images and the Gender Construction of Enslaved African Women,” Gender & Society 15, no. 6 (2001): 879-97.
39 Joe Price, “Dallas Restaurant Owner Faces Criticism after Anti-Twerking Video Goes Viral (Update),” Complex, December 3, 2020. https://www.complex.com/life/2020/11/dallas restaurant-owner-anti-twerking-video.
40 Price, “Dallas Restaurant Owner.”
41 Christina Carney, Jillian Hernandez, and Anya M. Wallace, “Sexual Knowledge and Practiced Feminisms: On Moral Panic, Black Girlhoods, and Hip Hop,” Journal of Popular Music Studies 28, no. 4 (2016): 412–26.
42 Pérez, “Ontology of Twerk,” 9.
43 Itumeleng Mothoagae, “Reclaiming Our Black Bodies: Reflections on a Portrait of Sarah (Saartjie) Baartman and the Destruction of Black Bodies by the State.” Acta Theologica 36 (2016): 62–83.
44 Tamura A. Lomax, Jezebel Unhinged: Loosing the Black Female Body in Religion and Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018).
45 Johnson, “Wait Till You See It,”, 5.
46 Jennifer C. Nash, “Strange Bedfellows: Black Feminism and Antipornography Feminism.” Social Text 26, no. 4 (2008): 51–76.
47 Wendy A Burns-Ardolino, “Jiggle In My Walk: The Iconic Power of the ‘Big Butt’ In American Pop Culture,” The Fat Studies Reader (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 271–79.
48 Mireille Miller-Young, Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women in Pornography (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014).
49 Intelexual Media, “Confessions of A Video Vixen.”
50 Halliday, “Twerk Sumn!,” 4.
51 Audre Lorde, “Uses Of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Toronto, ON: Crossing Press, 2020), 53–59.
52 Ansley Quiros, “Partying ‘The Atlanta Way’? Freaknik and Black Governance in 1990s Atlanta.” Atlanta Studies, March 19, 2022. https://atlantastudies.org/2017/09/26/ansley-quirospartying-the-atlanta-way-freaknik-and-black-governance-in-1990s-atlanta/.
53 L. H. Stallings, “From the Freaks of Freaknik to the Freaks of Magic City.” University of Illinois Press, 2017. https://doi.org/10.5406/illinois/9780252039591.003.0007.
54 Lucille Toth, “Praising Twerk: Why Aren’t We All Shaking Our Butt?” French Cultural Studies 28, no. 3 (2017): 291-302.
55 Burns-Ardolino, “Jiggle In My Walk”, 8.
56 Halliday, “Twerk Sumn!,” 7.
57 Halliday, “Twerk Sumn!,” 4.
58 Sesali Bowen, “Let’s Get Ratchet! Check Your Privilege at the Door.” Feministing, 2013. http://feministing.com/2013/03/28/lets-get-ratchet-check-your-privilege-at-the-door/.
59 Hannington Dia, “Michaela Angela Davis Looks to ‘Bury the Ratchet’,” NewsOne, June 19, 2019. https://newsone.com/2100749/michaela-angela-davis-bury-the-ratchet/.
60 Cooper, Beyond Respectability, 199.
61 Nick Montgomery and Carla Bergman, “Chapter 4: Stifling Air, Burnout, Political Performance.” In Joyful Militancy: Building Thriving Resistance in Toxic Times (Edinburg, TX: AK Press, 2017), 139–53.
62 Quindera McClain, “My Feminism Is Ratchet: A Black Feminist Review.” (PhD diss., State University of New York at Buffalo, 2018).
63 Robin D. G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002).
64 Marilou Poncin and Fannie Sosa, “Cosmic Ass.”
65 Therí A. Pickens, “Shoving aside the Politics of Respectability: Black Women, Reality TV, and the Ratchet Performance.” Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory 25, no. 1 (2014): 41–58. https://doi.org/10.1080/0740770x.2014.923172.
66 Pérez, “Ontology of Twerk,” 6.
67 Kyra Gaunt, “The Magic of Black Girls’ Play,” The New York Times, July 21, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/21/parenting/black-girls-play.html.
68 Halliday, “Twerk Sumn!,” 876.
69 Pérez, “Ontology of Twerk,” 5.
70 Lizzo, “Black History of Twerking.”
71 Halliday, “Twerk Sumn!,” 4.
72 Aimee M. Cox, “You Can Do Better! Marginalized Black Girls and the Performance of Respectability.” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2006).
73 Sara Ahmed, “A Killjoy Manifesto,” In Living a Feminist Life (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019), 251–268.
74 Cooper, Beyond Respectability, 152.
75 suprihmbé, “ThotScholar: A Working Theory of Proheaux Womanism 1 (Revised 2019) w/Blog Commentary,” Medium, 2019, https://medium.com/heauxthots/thotscholar-a-working-theory-of-proheaux-woman-ism-1-revised-2019-w-blog-commentary-2775fc27f1a8
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Mariah Johnson
MARIAH JOHNSON, a communication professional with a Master of Arts degree from Old Dominion University, explores the transformative power of digital media for social change. Specializing in the intersection of Black feminism and online activism, her paper, "This Ass is Magic: The Black Feminist Power of Twerking," delves into the cultural and empowering dimensions of twerking as resistance for Black women. Mariah challenges stereotypes, revealing the political, social, and cultural implications of this dance form. Her work contributes significantly to discussions on feminism, racism, and digital media, sparking transformative dialogues and inspiring further research in the field.