“Hey, girl, hey,” my dorm mate at university would say in a conspiratorial, hushed voice, unveiling a box of caffeinated soft drinks and Krispy Kreme doughnuts as we prepared to pull an all-nighter for one coming exam or another. “Guuurl,” my friends and I would sing along to Destiny’s Child’s “Girl” as we got dressed for a night out, placing extra emphasis on the vocal runs every time Beyoncé, Michelle, and Kelly would hit the title word. “Guuuuurl,” we would sing along, imploring our imaginary friend to let a philandering man go, adding a vocal run or two and a fluttering hand for extra dramatic effect. Girl was a one-word lingua franca that transcended class, generations, and geography. A word we used with each other to show affection and acknowledge shared history, experiences, and aspirations.
When I entered the working world as a graduate, I became conflicted about the colloquialism. On the one hand, I was steeped in feminist culture as an assistant editor at Jane, an iconic magazine in the feminist publishing community. Girl was a polarizing word. Some viewed it as an infantilizing condescension (that’s “womyn,” please, and thank you), others as an empowering subversion (hey, riot grrrls.)
And then there was the hipster racism I’d inevitably encounter at dive bars after work. Bearded White boys in flannel shirts telling me, “You go, girl,” in an annoying mimicry of an equally annoying, old imitation of Black women comedian Martin Lawrence popularized in his eponymous sitcom years before. Or young White gay men on the fashion party circuit who mistakenly thought their queerness excluded them from buying into cultural stereotypes and who caused me to stiffen with their awkward greeting: “Hey, girl, I like your hair. Is it yours?”
I didn’t recognize myself in any of the pantomimes, though this was clearly how many envisioned Black women—one neck-rolling monolith. I refused to play to type and fit a narrow idea of what Black women were supposed to be.
I felt more kinship with the plethora of “girls” in the Black and brown ballroom scene. Yes, the icons in Paris Is Burning popularized the now-commonplace social media age lexicon that includes yassss, girl, read, and honey to the mainstream. These expressions—innocuous, everyday words given entirely new meanings—originated with us, Black women (cis and trans), and can be traced back through generations to our hair salons, kitchens, and churches. So I’d code-switch, limiting the love language to conversation with my closest Black women friends and family members back home.
I didn’t quite realize the Americanness of this, though, until I moved to London from New York in late 2008 and felt the need to build up my own network of Black women friends after tiring of always being the Only in my work and social life. I befriended Ghanaian, Nigerian, Jamaican, and Black British women with sharp opinions, bold voices, and thriving careers. Women who didn’t dot their anecdotes with a loud girl for emphasis or use it as an affectionate preface to a warm hug or effusive compliment: “Girl, you did that.” So it dropped out of my daily lexicon, only coming out for occasional phone marathon catch-ups with stateside girlfriends.
But as a new wave of racial discourse and Black consciousness rolled in with the Obama administration in the late aughts, girl took on a new life of its own, crossed the pond, and worked its way through the entire diaspora. We became, in a word, magic.
Like most cultural touchpoints in the 2010s, it began with a tweet. The hashtag #BlackGirlsAreMagic was created by one CaShawn Thompson to counteract a wave of bad PR in the form of tired stereotypes and lies. No, of course we’re not shrill, unmarriageable, ugly, and uneducated. We are strong, beautiful originators of movements and culture the world over. As I write this, I’m listening to the official #BlackGirlMagic playlist on Spotify, filled with music by women of color from across the world: London, Los Angeles, Lagos, New York, Ekiti, Chicago, and Atlanta, among others. There are Black Girl Magic T-shirts and books and book clubs and websites. Not that we needed the hashtag to tell us who we are—we don’t need a hashtag as validation. But the shortened #BlackGirlMagic and the like, including #BlackGirlJoy and #CarefreeBlackGirl, took off, broadcasting to the world what we already knew: when it comes to excellence, we’re not new to this (to quote Drake, vocal appreciator of Black women), we’re true to this.
Some people are validation junkies, addicted to the likes and shares, the digital pats on the back. But I get my highs from the hit of underestimation. Give me a “meh” and I’ll make you eat it. Disregard me and I’ll show you. I get a rise out of proving people wrong. During the many interviews I’ve given as a fashion editor about the lack of diversity in the business, people sometimes ask me, “What does it feel like to make it in an industry filled with people who don’t look like you?”
It’s being nineteen years old and being told by a university professor in Charlottesville, Virginia, to manage your expectations and try a career in teaching high school when you express a desire to move to New York and work in magazine publishing. It’s being told to go back to the drawing board during a staff meeting at your second magazine publishing job in New York after the editor dismisses your pitch about a story on teenage moms with the nonchalant and wholly inaccurate logic that it “was no good because the story would just be about Black girls, and no one wants to read that.” It’s an editor sitting next to you in the front row during New York Fashion Week and showing you a photo of the African tribeswoman who will be her toddler’s nanny during an extended winter stay at a national reserve in South Africa. It’s being repeatedly asked to go on television to comment only about why there are so few of you in media, television, and fashion, as if it’s the only subject you’re qualified to speak about.
It’s being seated next to a model agency owner at a work dinner who tells you you’re pronouncing your name wrong. “I know the most luxurious lodge in Keenya. Where do you like to stay when you’re there? Surely you’ve been to the country before, no? Not even Nairobi? Then why did your parents name you Keenya? You pronounce it ‘Ken-ya,’ you say? Not ‘Keenya’? Hmmmm, are you sure?” It’s trying to restrain yourself from using the other kind of girl—“Girl!”—as admonishment and verbal eye roll. The kind of girl I use for women who test my patience, no matter what their race. As in, “Girl, stop! Old White colonialists pronounce it that way.” It’s sitting in a staff meeting and suggesting a Black pop star for the cover, only to be told, “But we just had a Black woman on the cover last month. And it would be too weird to have two in a row.”
But that was then. And this is now, the age of Black Girl Magic, in which we’re owning the expansiveness of Blackness at its cross-section with womanhood, tracing its myriad shapes and textures, during a time when what it means to be a Black woman has permeated every level of public discourse, from the unbelievably tragic (Sandra Bland, Breonna Taylor, Atatiana Jefferson, and a tragically long list of others) to the tragicomic (Rachel Dolezal).
What is Black Girl Magic? It’s Solange Knowles dressed in white, dancing on the streets of New Orleans. It’s Malia and Sasha Obama, with girlfriends, in my favorite photo of them, trailing behind their dad, the first Black president of the United States, as they deplane Air Force One. It’s Black Lives Matter founders Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi, galvanizing a global movement against the brutalization of Black bodies. And Bernardine Evaristo winning the Booker Prize, the first Black British author to do so. It’s Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie interviewing Michelle Obama about her record-breaking book in front of a sold-out theater in London. And a video clip of Michelle Obama congratulating Beyoncé on her record-breaking Netflix special, Homecoming, a rich, rousing, and very Black tribute to historically Black universities. It’s nineteen Black women being elected to judgeships in Texas, a long-standing conservative state, during the American midterm elections. And five Black women, their backgrounds spanning South Africa, Jamaica, and the US, winning the world’s five most iconic beauty pageants, Miss America, Miss USA, Miss Teen USA, Miss World, and Miss Universe. It’s Black actresses, singers, and models dominating UK and US women’s magazine September 2018 issues for the first time in history. And South African two-time Olympic 800-meter champion runner Caster Semenya declaring herself “supernatural” as she sought to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics. It’s Kamala Harris running for president. And all of us avowing our solidarity in the face of global pandemics and tragedy. Women, girls, daring to be true to the gradations of ourselves in a world where anyone not named Beyoncé, Rihanna, or Lupita tends to get depicted as chronically angry, perennially overlooked, forever victimized, unfailingly ratchet, and more. That’s not how I view myself. That’s not how anyone I know views themselves.