How to get away with authenticity: Viola Davis and the intersections of Blackness, naturalness, femininity and relatability

ABSTRACT

By focusing on the star image of Viola Davis, this article explores intersecting narratives concerning authenticity, Blackness, celebrity, and embodiment, which are revealed as part of media and public responses to famous Black actresses. Discourses of race and fame are unpacked whilst scrutinising overlapping perceptions of naturalness, femininity and relatability. Building upon prior studies of the socio-cultural impact of celebrities’ hair, the analysis focuses on how the hair of famous Black women is read as an aesthetic signifier of the perceived (in)authenticity of their Blackness, which may be entwined with ideas about Black feminist politics. Since the launch of Scandal in 2012 and How to Get Away with Murder (HTGAWM) in 2014, much attention has been paid to Viola Davis and Kerry Washington, the lead actresses in these US television dramas respectively. By analysing online narratives and aspects of interviews with Black women in Britain, this article examines assessments of the authenticity and relatability of famous Black actresses. It contributes to scholarly conversations regarding the contingent nature of impressions of authentic celebrity, including their raced and gendered components. This involves accounting for some of the ways that normative perceptions of Blackness, femininity and feminism operate as part of interracial and intraracial celebrity discourse.

KEYWORDS:

• Race
• Black
• feminist
• authenticity
• hair

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In 2017 MTV’s Movie and TV Awards ceremony introduced gender-neutral performance categories, which highlights how gender power relations are associated with the terms ‘actor’ and ‘actress’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Francesca Sobande

Francesca Sobande is a Lecturer in Digital Media Studies at Cardiff University. Her work focuses on how racism and sexism manifest in media and the marketplace. She has published work in the European Journal of Cultural Studies, Marketing Theory, and Consumption Markets and Culture. Francesca is the author of The Digital Lives of Black Women in Britain (Palgrave Macmillan, Sobande 2020). She is also co-editor (with Akwugo Emejulu) of To Exist is to Resist: Black Feminism in Europe (Emejulu and Sobande 2019).