Misogynoir and the public woman: analog and digital sexualization of women in public from the Civil War to the era of Kamala Harris

ABSTRACT

This essay identifies how the very conception of public woman is infused with the opprobrium hurled against a wanton woman – a sexualized figure who has lost claims to moral standing or social worth. Our analysis begins diachronically by using thin description to trace the historical conflation of public woman in general, and Black woman in particular, with prostitute to outline the contours of the trope of public woman that have solidified across time. We document how the public woman became equated with prostitute, and then how the label prostitute was affixed to women in public to situate them as promiscuous or prurient. Our analysis proceeds synchronically as we argue that the toxic archive of memes and hashtags that name Kamala Harris a “ho” operates as a contemporary iteration of misogynoir that conflates public woman with prostitute. The result of our analysis is an identification of the digital public woman wherein the acceleration and repetition of such tropes ensures a recalcitrant public sentiment toward public women and hides the technological and rhetorical connections that intensify such public feelings.

KEYWORDS:

• Kamala Harris
• misogynoir
• public woman
• memes
• toxic archive

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 As cited in Utkarsh Bhatla, “NBA Fires Photographer Bill Baptist over Offensive Meme on Kamala Harris,” The Sports Rush, August 15, 2020, https://thesportsrush.com/nba-news-nba-fires-photographer-bill-baptist-over-offensive-meme-on-kamala-harris/.

2 Mary Stuckey, “Arguing Sideways: The 1491s’ ‘I’m an Indian Too,’” in Disturbing Argument, ed. Catherine H. Palczewski (New York: Taylor & Francis, 2014), 75–80, 76, 79.

3 We nod here to the approach used by McGee on ideographs and the argument that analysis of them requires both a synchronic and diachronic orientation. Michael C. McGee, “The ‘Ideograph’: A Link Between Rhetoric and Ideology,” Quarterly Journal of Speech, 66, no. 1 (February 1980), 1–16.

4 Stephanie Madden et al., “Mediated Misogynoir: Intersecting Race and Gender in Online Harassment,” in Mediating Misogyny: Gender, Technology, and Harassment, ed. Jacqueline Ryan Vickery and Tracy Everbach (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2018), 71–90, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72917-6_4.

5 Ruja Benjamin, Race after Technology (New York: Polity, 2019), 45.

6 Benjamin, Race after Technology, 45, 46.

7 Benjamin, Race after Technology, 46.

8 Memes are characterized by these three actions. See Eric S. Jenkins, “The Modes of Visual Rhetoric: Circulating Memes as Expressions,” Quarterly Journal of Speech, 100, no. 4 (November 2014), 442–66; Davi Johnson, “Mapping the Meme: A Geographical Approach to Materialist Rhetorical Criticism,” Communication and Critical Cultural Studies, 4, no. 1 (March 2007), 27–50; Michele Kennerly and Damien Smith Pfister, Ancient Rhetorics and Digital Networks (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2018).

9 See Carolyn Eastman, A Nation of Speechifiers: Making an American Public after the Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); Glenna Matthews, The Rise of Public Woman: Woman’s Power and Woman’s Place in the United States 1630–1970 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Alison Piepmeier, Out in Public: Configurations of Women’s Bodies in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004); Mary P. Ryan, Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots, 1825–1880 (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990).

10 Chandra Talpede Mohanty, Feminism without Borders (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 55.

11 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (New York: Routledge, 2000), 81.

12 Jacqueline Jones Royster, Traces of a Stream: Literacy and Social Change Among African American Women. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000), 109.

13 Ryan, Women in Public, 3.

14 Ryan, Women in Public, 4.

15 James B. Jones, “Municipal Vice: The Management of Prostitution in Tennessee’s Urban Experience. Part I: The Experience of Nashville and Memphis, 1854–1917,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly, 50, no. 1 (Spring 1991), 33–41, 34.

16 Sarah Handley-Cousins, “Prostitutes!” National Museum of Civil War Medicine, February 15, 2017, http://www.civilwarmed.org/prostitutes/; William Moss Wilson, “The Nashville Experiment,” New York Times, December 5, 2013, https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/05/the-nashville-experiment/.

17 William Moss Wilson, “The Nashville Experiment,” New York Times, Opinionator blogs, December 5, 2013, https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/05/the-nashville-experiment/.

18 Sander L. Gilman, “Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward an Iconography of Female Sexuality in Late Nineteenth-Century Art, Medicine, and Literature,” Critical Inquiry, 12, no. 1 (Autumn 1985), 204–42, 206, 229.

19 Evelynn M. Hammonds, “Toward a Genealogy of Black Female Sexuality: The Problematic of Silence,” in Feminist Genealogies, Colonial legacies, Democratic Futures, ed. M. Jacqui Alexander and Chandra Talpade Mohanty, 170–82 (New York: Routledge, 1997), 173.

20 Paula Giddings, “The Last Taboo,” in Race-ing Justice, En-gender-ing Power, ed. Toni Morrison, 441–63 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1992), 450.

21 John W. Jacks quoted in Shirley Wilson Logan, With Pen and Voice: A Critical Anthology of Nineteenth-Century African-American Women (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1995), 120. Jno. W. Jacks, letter to Florence Balgarnie, March 19, 1895, https://rwklose.files.wordpress.com/2021/03/jacks-letter.jpg.

22 Matthews, The Rise of Public Woman, 3.

23 “The Liberation of Lizzie Schauer,” New York Journal (December 10, 1895) cited in endnote 48 in Karen Roggenkamp, Narrating the News: New Journalism and Literary Genre in Late Nineteenth-Century American Newspapers and Fiction (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2005). Matthews cites the New York World as the crusading paper. See also the role of the New York World in Richard Zacks, Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt's Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York (New York: Anchor, 2012), 188–91.

24 Matthews, The Rise of Public Woman, 3.

25 Katie Robertson, “News Media Can’t Shake ‘Missing White Woman Syndrome,’ Critics Say, New York Times, September 30, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/22/business/media/gabby-petito-missing-white-woman-syndrome.html?action=click&pgtype=Article&state=default&module=styln-petito&variant=1_show&region=MAIN_CONTENT_1&context=STYLN_TOP_LINKS_recirc.

26 Saidiya Hartman, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019), 218, 224.

27 Hartman, Wayward Lives, 221.

28 Hartman, Wayward Lives, 241.

29 Although typically referred to as “Ain’t I a Woman,” Campbell makes a compelling case that Frances Dana Gage used “the argot of blackface minstrel shows” and “racist caricatures” when they published a version of the speech 12 years after it was delivered, likely attributing to Truth an idiom unlikely to have actually been used by Truth. Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, “Agency: Promiscuous and Protean,” Communication & Critical/Cultural Studies, 2, no. 1 (2005), 1–19, https://doi.org/10.1080/1479142042000332134. See also Roseann M. Mandziuk, “‘Grotesque and Ludicrous, but Yet Inspiring’: Depictions of Sojourner Truth and Rhetorics of Domination,” Quarterly Journal of Speech, 100, no. 4 (2014), 467–487, https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2014.989896; Roseann M. Mandziuk and Suzzane Pullon Fitch, “The Rhetorical Construction of Sojourner Truth,” Southern Communication Journal, 66, no. 2 (2001), 120–37, https://doi.org/10.1080/10417940109373192.

30 See Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (New York: Routledge, 2000).

31 Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought, 81.

32 Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought, 81.

33 Mireille Miller-Young. A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women in Pornography (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), 144.

34 Miller-Young, A Taste, 144.

35 Shanara R. Reid Brinkley. “The Essence of Res(ex)pectability: Black Women’s Negotiation of Black Femininity in Rap Music and Music Video,” Meridians, 8, no. 1 (2008), 236–60, 246.

36 Reid-Brinkley, “The Essence,” 244.

37 Miller-Young, A Taste, 145.

38 Miller-Young, A Taste, 145.

39 Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Feminism without Borders (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 55.

40 Barbara Welter, Dimity Convictions: The American Woman in the Nineteenth Century (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1976).

41 Amy Brandzel, Against Citizenship: The Violence of the Normative (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2016), 15.

42 Moya Bailey and Trudy, “On Misogynoir: Citation, Erasure, and Plagiarism,” Feminist Media Studies 18, no. 4 (2018): 762–68, https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2018.1447395; Moya Bailey, Misogynoir Transformed (New York: New York University Press, 2021).

43 Bailey, Misogynoir Transformed, 1.

44 Bailey, Misogynoir Transformed, 2.

45 Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought; bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman (Boston: South End Press, 1981).

46 Joan Morgan, When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks It Down (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000); Brittney C. Cooper, Susana M. Morris, and Robin M. Boylorn, The Crunk Feminist Collective (New York: The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2017); Treva B. Lindsey, “Let Me Blow Your Mind: Hip Hop Feminist Futures in Theory and Praxis,” Urban Education, 50, no. 1 (January 2015), 52–77, https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085914563184.

47 Catherine Knight Steele, Digital Black Feminism (New York: New York University Press, 2021).

48 Our understanding of the rhetorical power of memes is influenced by Heather Suzanne Woods and Leslie A. Hahner’s Make America Meme Again: The Rhetoric of the Alt-Right (New York: Peter Lang, 2017).

49 Bailey, Misogynoir Transformed, 1.

50 Kishonna Gray, Intersectional Tech: Black Users in Digital Gaming (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2020), 111.

51 Gray, Intersectional Tech, 90.

52 Bailey and Trudy, “On Misogynoir,” 763.

53 Katy Steinmetz, “How Your Brain Tricks You into Believing Fake News,” Time, August 9, 2018, http://time.com/5362183/the-real-fake-news-crisis/.

54 Amy Mitchell, Mark Jurkowitz, J. Baxter Oliphant, and Elisa Shearer, “Americans Who Mainly Get Their News on Social Media Are Less Engaged, Less Knowledgeable,” Pew Research Center, July 30, 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2020/07/30/americans-who-mainly-get-their-news-on-social-media-are-less-engaged-less-knowledgeable/.

55 Alice E. Marwick and Robyn Caplan, “Drinking Male Tears: Language, the Manosphere, and Networked Harassment,” Feminist Media Studies, 18, no. 4 (2018), 543–59, https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2018.1450568; Adrienne Massanari, “#Gamergate and The Fappening: How Reddit’s Algorithm, Governance, and Culture Support Toxic Technocultures,” New Media & Society, 19, no. 3 (2017), 329–46, https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444815608807.

56 Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, “The Discursive Performance of Femininity: Hating Hillary,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs, 1, no. 1 (1998), 1–19; Kristina Horn Sheeler, “Marginalizing Metaphors of the Feminine, in Navigating Boundaries: The Rhetoric of Women Governors, ed. Brenda DeVore Marshall and Molly A. Mayhead (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2000), 15–30.

57 Tyler G. Okimoto and Victoria L. Brescoll, “The Price of Power: Power-Seeking and Backlash against Female Politicians,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36, no. 7 (2010), 923–36.

58 Catherine H. Palczewski, “The Male Madonna and the Feminine Uncle Sam: Visual Argument, Icons, and Ideographs in 1909 Anti-Woman Suffrage Postcards,” The Quarterly Journal of Speech, 91, no. 4 (November 2005), 365–94.

59 Caroline Heldman, Susan J. Carroll, and Stephanie Olson, “‘She Brought Only a Skirt’: Print Media Coverage of Elizabeth Dole’s Bid for the Republican Presidential Nomination,” Political Communication, 22 (2015), 315–35;

Dianne G. Bystrom, “Advertising, Websites, and Media Coverage: Gender and Communication Along the Campaign Trail,” in Gender & Elections: Shaping the Future of American Politics, 3rd ed., ed. Susan J. Carroll, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 169–88; Susan J. Carroll and Kelly Dittmar, “The 2008 Candidacies of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin: Cracking the ‘Highest, Hardest Glass Ceiling’,” in The 2008 Presidential Campaign: A Communication Perspective, ed. Susan J. Carroll and Richard L. Fox (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 44–77; Meredith Conroy et al., “From Ferraro to Palin: Sexism in Coverage of Vice Presidential Candidates in Old and New Media,” Politics, Groups, and Identities, 3, no. 4 (2015), 573–91, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21565503.2015.1050412; James Devitt, “Framing Gender on the Campaign Trail: Female Gubernatorial Candidates and the Press,” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 79, no. 2, (2002), 445–63; Erika Falk, Women for President, 2nd ed. (Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2010); Danny Hayes and Jennifer L. Lawless, Women on the Run: Gender, Media, and Political Campaigns in a Polarized Era (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Diane J. Heith, “The Lipstick Watch: Media Coverage, Gender, and Presidential Campaigns,” in Anticipating Madame President, ed. Robert P. Watson and Ann Gordon (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 2003), 123–30; Theodore F. Sheckels, Nichola D. Gutgold, and Diana B. Carlin (eds.), Gender and the American Presidency (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012).

60 Roseann M. Mandziuk, “Dressing Down Hillary,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 5, no. 3 (2008), 312–16, 313.

61 Diana B. Carlin and Kelly L. Winfrey, “Have You Come a Long Way Baby? Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and Sexism in the 2008 Campaign Coverage,” Communication Studies, 60, no. 4 (2009), 326–43, 327.

62 Karrin Vasby Anderson, “‘Rhymes with Blunt’: Pornification and U.S. Political Culture,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 14, no. 2 (2011), 327–68, 333, 336, https://doi.org/10.1353/rap.2010.0228.

63 Anderson, ”Rhymes,” 336.

64 Kristina Horn Sheeler & Karrin Vasby Anderson. Woman President: Confronting Postfeminist Culture (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2013), 136.

65 Sheeler & Anderson, Woman President, 136.

66 Bailey, Misogynoir Transformed, 35.

67 Dartunorro Clark, “Harris Makes History as First Female, Black, South Asian American VP-elect,” Yahoo, November 7, 2020, https://www.yahoo.com/now/harris-makes-history-first-female-170241196.html.

68 David Siders, “‘Ruthless’: How Kamala Harris Won Her First Race,” Politico, January 24, 2019, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/01/24/kamala-harris-2020-history-224126/.

69 For a thorough explanation of the timeline and relationship, see Bethania Palma, “Did Kamala Harris Have an Extramarital Affair with Willie Brown That Boosted Her Career?”, Snopes, August 14, 2020, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/kamala-harris-affair-willie-brown/. Harris did date Brown for a time from 1994–1995. Brown had been estranged from his wife for over a decade. Brown did appoint Harris to two political posts. Harris’s first electoral run was in 2003, almost a decade after the relationship ended.

70 Siders, “Ruthless,” n.p.

71 Anderson, “Rhymes,” 339.

72 Siders, “Ruthless.”

73 Vincent Barone, “When Kamala Harris Was ‘Extraordinarily Nasty’ to Brett Kavanaugh,” NY Post, August 11, 2020, https://nypost.com/2020/08/11/when-kamala-harris-was-extraordinarily-nasty-to-brett-kavanaugh/.

74 Benjamin, Race after Technology.

75 Caitlin Bruce, personal correspondence, December 8, 2021. The scholarship referred to includes Ann Cvetovich, Depression (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012); Phaedra Pezzullo, Toxic Tourism (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2007); Jenny Rice, Awful Archives (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2020); Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003). Bruce also noted the role toxic archives play in “critical fabulations” in Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s M Archive (Durham: Duke University Press, 2018); Sadiya Hartman’s “Venus in Two Acts” (Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, 12, no. 2 (2008), 1-14, as critical practices to write against the archive when the formal archive has only preserved pain and has left ephemeral and fleeting evidence of imagination, agency, and life.

76 For another example of an archive of misogynoir bile targeted at Harris, see Anne Helen Peterson, “The Ideological Banality of #heelsupharris,” Substack, October 8, 2020, https://annehelen.substack.com/p/the-ideological-banality-of-heelsupharris.

77 Benjamin, Race after Technology, 45.

78 Benjamin, Race after Technology, 46.

79 Maggie Astor, “‘A Woman, Just Not That Woman’: How Sexism Plays out on the Trail,” New York Times, February 11, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/11/us/politics/sexism-double-standard-2020.html.

80 Karen Tumulty, Kate Woodsome, and Sergio Peçanha, “How Sexist, Racist Attacks on Kamala Harris have Spread Online—A Case Study,” Washington Post, October 7, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/10/07/kamala-harris-sexist-racist-attacks-spread-online/.

81 Tim Chambers as qtd. in Tumulty et al.

82 Tumulty et al., “How Sexist.”

83 Tumulty et al., “How Sexist.”

84 Kaelan Deese and Rebecca Klar, “Harris More Often the Target of Online Misinformation Than Pence: Analysis,” The Hill, October 29, 2020, https://thehill.com/homenews/news/523507-harris-more-often-the-target-of-online-misinformation-than-pence-report.

85 Ewan Palmer, “Everything Rush Limbaugh Has Said about Kamala Harris,” Newsweek, August 17, 2020, https://www.newsweek.com/rush-limbaugh-kamala-harris-radio-show-1525554. See also “Limbaugh Calls Sen Harris a ‘Hoe’. 1000s of Advertisers and 100+ Pro Teams, Universities Endorse It,” Daily Kos, August 16, 2020, https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/8/16/1969528/-Limbaugh-calls-Sen-Harris-a-ho-1000s-of-advertisers-and-100-pro-teams-and-universities-endorse-it.

86 Palmer, “Everything.”

87 Palmer, “Everything.”

88 Dan MacGuill, “Was Kamala Harris Called ‘Hoe’ on Car Dealer’s Billboard,” Snopes, August 27, 2020, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/joe-hoe-kamala-harris-billboard/.

89 Michael Luciano, “Jesse Kelly Says Kamala Harris Slept Her Way to the Top,” Mediaite, July 15, 2021, https://www.mediaite.com/tv/fox-news-guest-says-kamala-harris-slept-her-way-to-the-top-she-started-out-her-political-career-as-willie-browns-bratwurst-bun/.

90 Luciano, “Was Kamala.”

91 Andre van der Bij (@AndrewMacCloud), “Make America Tired Again Dementia Joe and Camel Toe Harris,” Twitter, March 30, 2021, https://twitter.com/AndrewMacCloud/status/1376941292660359173.

92 @TommyNoleBuck, “Pedo Joe and the Nappy Headed Hoe,” Urban Dictionary, June 6, 2021, Retrieved from https://www.urbandictionary.com.

93 Luciano, “Was Kamala.”

94 Libby Cathy, “Trump Mocks Harris’ Name, Says Having Her as President Would Be ‘Insult’ to Country,” ABC News, September 9, 2020, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-mocks-harris-president-insult-country/story?id=72901540.

95 As qtd. in Tumulty et al., “How Sexist.”

96 Anne Helen Petersen, “The Ideological Banality of #heelsupharris,” Cultural Study (blog), October 8, 2020, https://annehelen.substack.com/p/the-ideological-banality-of-heelsupharris.

97 “R/Trump - Big Willie Brown, the Mentor of Kamala Harris, Gave Biden a Very Positive Endorsement for Kamala’s Performance While Working under Willie,” Reddit, https://www.reddit.com/r/trump/comments/i8he7q/big_willie_brown_the_mentor_of_kamala_harris_gave/ (accessed October 20, 2020).

98 Kamala Harris Meme Pimped out by Mayor Willy Brown, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fp5V1uvFZY.

99 Okimoto and Brescoll, “The Price of Power,” found that male politicians who were perceived as power-seeking are perceived to be “more assertive, stronger, and tougher” and have “greater competence” while women politicians who are perceived as power-seeking are seen as uncaring and people responded to them with moral outrage. General resistance to female candidates has been demonstrated in experiments that found 26 percent of the population expressed anger at the idea of a female president. See Matthew J. Streb, Barbara Burrell, Brian Frederick, and Michael A. Genovese, “Social Desirability Effects and Support for a Female American President,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 72, no. 1 (2008), 76–89.

100 Jalen Ramsey The Back Faker (@RINOHUNTER2020), “Here’s the truth: Kamala Harris slept her way into the position she’s in now … ” Twitter, September 4, 2020, https://twitter.com/RINOHUNTER2020/status/1302056267641479170.

101 K. M. Burton Sr (@KM_Burton_SR), “Take your bitch ass back to where you came from … ” Twitter, September 8, 2020, suspended account.

102 City of Eros, html?id = aB5fDwAAQBAJ.

103 Dave Rueckl (@DaveRueckl), “Always banana to the mouth Kamala,” Twitter, August 19, 2020, https://twitter.com/DaveRueckl/status/1296566737849200640.

104 Pink Lady 4 Trump-Best President Ever (@pink_lady56), “Here’s another one … ,” Twitter, August 12, 2020, https://twitter.com/pink_lady56/status/1293614236279754757.

105 Dan MacGuill, “Was Kamala Harris Called ‘Hoe’ on a Car Dealers Billboard,” Snopes, August 27, 2020, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/joe-hoe-kamala-harris-billboard/.

106 As quoted in Ron Dicker, “Trainer of Kentucky Derby Winner Grilled on Nasty Kamala Harris Tweet,” USA Today, May 12, 2022, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/eric-reed-kamala-harris-tweet_n_627cd1ade4b06ce0a1b27b58.

107 Catharine A. MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 193.

108 Bailey, Misogynoir Transformed, 1.

109 Caitlin E. Lawson, “Platform Vulnerabilities: Alt-right Trolls and Misogynoir in the Digital Attack on Leslie Jones,” Information, Communication, and Society, 21, no. 6 (2018), 818–33.

110 Tressie McMillan Cottom, “Lizzo, ‘Body Positivity,’ and the Impossible Expectations for Black Women’s Bodies,” Harper’s BAZAAR, December 17, 2020, https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/art-books-music/a34992690/lizz-body-positivity-smoothie-cleanse-essay/.

111 Tisha Dejmanee et al., “#MeToo; #HimToo: Popular Feminism and Hashtag Activism in the Kavanaugh Hearings,” International Journal of Communication, 14 (2020), 3951.

112 Dejmanee, Zaher, Rouech, and Papa, “#MeToo,” 3951.

113 Newspapers (e.g. The New York Times, NY Post, Daily Mail, UK), magazines (e.g. Marie Claire, Elle, Parents), and television news (e.g. CNN) both in the US and internationally used the Momala title in their stories about Harris.

114 Maressa Brown, “Five Ways Kamala Harris’ Nickname ’Momala’ is the Epitome of Modern Blended Family Life,” Parents, August 25, 2020, https://www.parents.com/news/momala-kamala-everything-vice-presidential-candidate/.

115 Saturday Night Live, season 45, episode 7, ”2020 Democratic Debate,” aired November 24, 2019, in broadcast syndication. NBC, 2019, https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/2020-democratic-debate/4073708.

116 Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought, 139.

117 Shanara Rose Brinkley, “Mammies and Matriarchs: Feminine Style and Signifyin(g) in Carol Mosely Braun’s 2003–2204 Campaign for the Presidency,” in Standing in the Intersection: Feminist Voices, Feminist Practices in Communication, eds. Karma Chavez and Cindy Griffin (New York: State University of New York Press, 2012), 48.

118 Shawn J. Parry-Giles, “The Veeps Audition—Campaign 2020: Disciplining Kamala Harris,” Quarterly Journal of Speech, 107, no. 4 (2021), 446.

119 Parry-Giles, “The Veeps,” 444.

120 Parry-Giles, “The Veeps,” 446.

121 Jodi Kantor as qtd. in Bonnie Dow, “Michelle Obama, ‘Mom-in-Chief: Gender, Race, and Familialism in Media Representation of the First Lady,’” in The Rhetoric of Heroic Expectations: Establishing the Obama Presidency, eds. Justin S. Vaughn and Jennifer Mercieca (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2014), 238.

122 Steele, Digital Black Feminism, 30.

123 Melissa V. Harris-Perry, Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), 5.

124 Harris-Perry, Sister Citizen, 29.

125 Harris-Perry, Sister Citizen, 40.

126 Tehama Lopez Bunyasi & Candis Watts Smith, “Do All Black Lives Matter Equally to Black People? Respectability Politics and the Limitations of Linked Fate,” Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics, 4, no. 1 (2019), 181. https://doi.org/10.1017/rep.2018.33.

127 “What We Do.” M4BL, accessed February 28, 2023, https://m4bl.org/about-us/what-we-do.

128 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism (New York: Routledge, 2004), 128.

129 Benjamin, Race after Technology.