F06 :: Feminist Film Studies

This is a painting in my mother's living room. So I took a picture of it using my cell phone!! In the actual painting , the painter uses a mid shot, which is approximately from the waist up. In the background the artist uses dark colors such as deep browns. His characters, a black mother and her newborn child, are draped in white, so as to make them stand out and be very noticeable amongst the dark. The flowers next to her are white and purple signifying innocence and royalty. The mood is very calm, loving, and motherly. You can almost feel her passion of being a mother. I chose this image because naturally when one thinks of a black woman, they picture the half naked braud in some rap artist's music video, shaking her butt, and being addressed as a b**** or a h**. This portrait presents an image that is not often portrayed in the media. This painting portrays the black woman as a mother, a nurturer, a provider, a caregiver, and a protector. Her body fully covered in white, represents her femininity and purity. Her body, a sacred temple, her breast, the life sustainer for her newborn child, not something to be shown off to the rest of the world. Historically, the black woman has been associated with being a mother. This goes back to slavery when she was torn away from her own baby, in order to nurture and breast feed the slavemaster's baby. Over the centuries, the black woman's motherly associations and qualities has been lost.