Lifetime Fails Its Awful Mission to Bring Out the ‘Strong Black Woman’ in White Women

By Jamilah King Aug 28, 2014

Because black women make great accessories for folks basking in too much white privilege, Lifetime has announced a new show called "Girlfriend Intervention." From the looks of it, the show — featuring four stereotypically "strong" black women (Tracy Balan on beauty, Nikki Chu on "home and sanctuary," Tiffiny Dixon on fashion and  reality star Tanisha Thomas) — will bring out the "girlfriend" in timid white women.

From NPR’s Monkey See:

Like so much of makeover television, this is shaming dressed up as encouragement (they actually call the segment where the makeover candidate shows them how she currently dresses the "catwalk of shame"). It’s conformity dressed up as individuality, and it’s submission to the expectations of others dressed up as self-confidence.

Only now, with obnoxious racial politics slathered all over the entire thing!

It is not like those politics need to be introduced by the viewer, either: They are the premise of the show, and they are repeated over and over. Black women, we are told in so many words, are unerringly confident, gorgeous, stylish, unflappable, and — ah, yes — better at pleasing men, especially black men. 

Read more.  

The show’s already one episode in and the reviews are terrible. Take this scathing piece from TV columnist Brian Lowry at Variety: "Loud, brash and filled with stereotypes, it’s hard to know what’s most irritating — the sweeping declarations about black women as if they were monolithic, or the forced remodeling of women who are perfectly comfortable with their looks and style, after subjecting them to a ‘Catwalk of Shame.’ If indeed there’s cause for shame here, the producers should start with a mirror."