When is Black Women's Pain & Heartbreak Enough?

 

OVER the weekend, it was announced that rapper Megan Thee Stallion and her boyfriend, basketball player Klay Thompson had broken up due to cheating allegations. Even though not a lot of details have bene revealed between the two, Megan took to her story to announce the breakup, removed all her photos from her socials with Thompson, as well as ending her 8-week run as the character Zidler in the Moulin Rouge Broadway musical early. 

Many people have showered Megan with love and support, while on the flip side, some individuals have taken it upon themselves to instead switch the blame on Megan, saying that she was in the wrong for being in a relationship with him. This is not the first time Thompson has cheated, in fact, it's reported that he also cheated on actress Laura Harrier as well as actress and singer Coco Jones. Ironically enough, Thomson does not have an impress record of cheating on black women and it may not be a coincidence that his string of cheatings follow this pattern. 

Megan is a prominent figure along the black community as well as the queer community as the rapper identifies as being bisexual. During the span of her career, her songs have empowered black women and helped them reclaim back their own sexuality and define their own identity. Megan embodies a multilayer individual herself from not only rap scene, but also being passionate and open about her interests such as anime, K-pop, her love for dogs, fitness, etc. She's been able to demonstrate her softness and strength as a black woman without sacrificing one for the other. This manifests itself throughout her music as well as the brand she promotes for herself. Even with all the positive she's promoted, of course negativity has always followed: people have insulted her height, masculinized her (which is usually common among black women), body shamed her, called her liar when her ex shot her, and now with Thompson cheating, it leaves us to wonder, when is black women's pain and heartbreak enough? Haven't we as a collective endured way too much? When do we get our happy endings? 

Beyoncé's 2016 Grammy winning album, Lemonade demonstrates this topic more. Almost similar to Megan's case, Beyoncé was cheated on by her rapper husband, Jay-Z in 2014 after they had been married and had even had their first daughter, Blue Ivy. Accompanying the songs, there was also a visual album that accompanied that further dove into the topics regarding the stages of Beyoncé's grief, heartbreak, and pain. She makes the black woman so many layers from the grief, to the softness, to the anger, to the intelligence, to all the aspects of a black woman in terms of being a black daughter, black wife, black sister, and black mother. She makes her main relatable; almost mainstream to express her pain and heartbreak. Within the end of the album and the end of the Lemonade era, Beyoncé did end up getting back together with her husband and even had twins with him, ultimately forgiving him.

It leads questions to ask why aren’t black women’s pain taken seriously within the mainstream? Why should Megan be blamed and face public abuse and harassment when she wasn’t aware that he was cheating? Black women already live in a society where there emotions aren’t taken seriously enough, and even when they are, they don’t get the chance to truly be vulnerable, but we’re expected to be the strong ones. The tough ones that have to push through our emotions. There’s never a chance to just breathe and not have the urge to mask our emotions. There’s not a real chance to really sit through the grief, but there’s always that expectation to immediately get back up. It erases our humanity. 

I think the pain and grief Beyoncé went through wasn’t taken seriously enough even through a musical and visual manifestation. Therefore, I definitely believe people aren’t considering Megan’s emotions through this rough patch and have even been to quickly blame for leaving her Broadway run earlier than intended. There’s only so much you can push though. 

And even though these are both celebrity women, I analyze them as black women, prominent within our culture beyond their musical endeavors. If people are willing to treat these black women who have high statuses, they are for sure willing to treat black women on the day to day basis just as bad. Currently now, there have been high percentages of domestic killings and attacks against black women. It all trickles back.