Cosmopolitan

 

TV Keeps Scapegoating Black Women for Investigating the Truth

The Black Lady Cop trend plays directly into existing issues with racism within fandom communities, revealing and exacerbating toxic reactions to characters who aren't straight white men. As diversity in casting has become a flashpoint in Hollywood, the proliferation of this trope is yet another way to undermine the expansion of roles for black women onscreen by setting them in opposition to the audience's sympathies. 


The Bold Type Is a Feminist Reimagining of The Devil Wears Prada

The Devil Wears Prada might have been the film that made working in fashion look glamorous and desirable, but The Bold Type is the show that acknowledges the difficult realities of that experience. Andy had to deal with a challenging career without a support system or a nurturing boss, but The Bold Type reframes her story as a chapter in life that can be survived with the right people at your side.


Aziz Ansari and the Struggle to Trust the "Feminist" Men of Hollywood

While the way Babe handled the reporting of Grace’s account has rightly been subject to criticism, the discourse that has been generated in response is a necessary next step in interrogating our culture of systemic sexism and misogyny. Coercive sex is still harmful even if no physical violence is involved, and it is uniquely harmful coming from men who make public claims of feminist allyship.


The Flash Still Doesn't Know How to Handle Its Female Characters

While it’s commendable that The Flash’s writers understand and acknowledge that feminism is an important part of our current political moment, they would have been better off slowly incorporating a more feminist moral landscape into the show than trying to shoehorn every millennial girl power trope into one episode. What they’ve done instead is flatten a diverse and widespread political movement into a pithy slogan rather than exhibit a substantial understanding of how feminism affects the lives of everyday women, and there’s nothing empowering about that.


Insecure's Second Season Ends With Some Closure and Lots of Questions

Well, it’s the end of an era in more ways than one. Insecure’s second season finale closed the chapter on these characters for the foreseeable future and forced them to reckon with their past actions and recognize their own mistakes. It was an interesting and layered finale that showed just how strong the writing on the series can be when the character motivations are clear and defined.


Jay Ellis on What Insecure Has Taught Him About Women

Lawrence Walker has been through a lot over the course of Insecure's second season. Regardless, he has the full support of the #LawrenceHive, one of the most vocal factions of the Insecure fandom. Ahead of Insecure’s season-two finale, I spoke with Ellis about condoms on TV, relationship deal-breakers, and using your words.


Issa and Lawrence Finally Have It Out on Insecure

Insecure presents a world in which black women and men have their own interior lives, and are figuring things out too. But the problem with not getting your shit together is that it gets old really fast. It’s one thing to empathize and identify with characters who are mostly making things work, but it’s another thing entirely to watch characters repeat the same mistakes while expecting different results. After all the promise of this season’s early episodes, Issa, Molly, and Lawrence are all recreating old patterns, and digging deeper holes of dysfunction. 


Molly's Dilemma and a Shocking Blowjob Scene

There’s a stark difference between who you are, who you want to be, and how you see yourself. Part of becoming a fully realized person is bringing those three selves into alignment. The problem is that doing so requires a level of self-awareness and radical honesty that not everyone is capable of, and it’s the reason Molly, Issa, and Lawrence are struggling this week. You can’t move forward without a clear sense of where you want to go.


Issa Plays the Field and Molly Makes a Shocking Decision

Insecure is a show that shines largely because it acknowledges the complexity of black people. The characters aren’t magical negroes or murderous villains or one-dimensional respectable beings. Instead, they’re ordinary, average people who strive to be better today than they were yesterday. Sometimes they succeed and often they fail. But their winding path to personal growth is never linear because that’s not the way people behave in real life. "Hella Shook" takes us through what happens when you hit that melancholy plateau on self-reflection.


Issa Reunites With Daniel and Lawrence Has an Unfortunate Threesome on Insecure

The biggest strength of Insecure is its ability to create honest and meaningful representations of black Millennial life. Its cultural significance is nicely juxtaposed by its internal mundanity — it's a show about young black professionals figuring out how to navigate their careers and love lives. It's refreshing in a way that shouldn’t still be notable in 2017, and it's remarkable how deftly Issa and her creative cohorts manage to find the funny in narrative points that are routine to black people while still allowing these characters to learn, grow, and introspect. This week’s episode was a shining example of everything that works about Insecure and how well-crafted stories can be when they’re not afraid to get specific.


Issa Discovers the Joy of Casual Sex on This Week's Insecure

After three months (and three episodes), the characters we know and love are finally starting to make some changes and grow out of their ruts. But change is slow and awkward and painful. Thankfully, our protagonists are making it through.


Issa Deals With the Aftermath of Her "Nebulous" Sex

The worst thing you can do to a girl with a broken heart is give her hope for a reconciliation, and yet that’s exactly what Lawrence did last week when he abruptly initiated sex with Issa on the couch they bought together, then left with nary a word. Predictably, this week’s "Hella Questions" seeks resolution on that front, but the answers aren’t exactly what Issa hoped.


Insecure Returns With Issa Missing Lawrence and Molly Going to Therapy

The last time we saw Issa, she was sobbing into her best friend Molly’s lap on the dilapidated "bouch" outside the apartment complex where she lived with Lawrence, after realizing he had officially moved out. Now, months later, the two are still separated, and Issa is going through the motions of moving on, but her heart isn't in it.


Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale May Be Race-Blind, But That's Not a Good Thing

Treating black characters as though they occupy the same social position as their white counterparts negates the purpose of including them at all. For black women, Gilead’s oppressive tactics are not a new transgression, but a cyclical repetition of history.