So You’re Mad About Pharrell’s G I R L Album Cover, Now What? [Editorial]

It certainly doesn’t take much for Twitter to erupt . This is one of the many aspects that make the site interesting, but also disappointing.

Today’s topic of discussion surrounds the lack of Black women on Pharrell’s G I R L album cover.

To be clear, Skateboard P released the artwork a week ago, and no one seemed outraged about him standing in a terry cloth towel surrounded by three (allegedly) White women until now. Last night however, G I R L went up for pre-sale (and streaming) on iTunes and by daybreak P was getting slaughtered all across Black Twitter.

Journalist Dream Hampton tweeted, “Couldn’t be more disappointed by @Pharrell’s album cover. I was looking forward to it too. Just wow.” Another person flat out refused to “support the album” because there are no Black women on the cover.

So what happens now?

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Photo: YouTube

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Black women have a long history of being “left behind” so to speak, by the media at large. We are looked at as sexual objects, praised for our butts and not our brains, and stereotyped as being argumentative. Such treatment evoke the feelings of neglect that I believe contributes to the lowering of the Black esteem as a whole, something that started long before Pharrell released this album cover — but that’s not the issue here.

This particular uproar is clearly another lazy Twitter protest that will bring about nothing more than an “I didn’t mean to offend” comment from Pharrell. If P even bothers to respond, his words should be enough to make a Twitter protester feel like they actually accomplished something because let’s face it , this entire “anti-Pharrell” fight is ego based, as most arguments are.

If  Pharrell had put a Black woman on the cover, a feminist argument still would’ve been raised –and probably still will– because the girls either look like they’re headed to a steam room, or a threesome foursome (maybe, both?).

Being a Black man doesn’t mean that he has a personable responsibility to every Black woman, and must use his platform specifically for the purpose of uplifting us (yes, I’m Black. Surprise!).

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As a Black woman it’s not that I don’t understand the Twitter argument, or am unable to comprehend the systematic degradation that we have endured for the last 400 plus years. That said, I am also a Black woman that doesn’t look towards artists or other public figures to define my beauty, or my self worth.

You see, I learned years ago that being a Black woman in America means several things, and many of them are not bad. I derived from a strong lineage of women who ran their households, followed their dreams, and maybe even left a mark on the world in the process; on the contrary, being a Black woman in America also means not being publicly viewed as the standard of beauty, yet privately worshipped as the standard of beauty.

This reality is one that takes up no space in my brain because I’m more concerned with how I myself can set a good example for little Black girls (and girls of other colors) around the world that need someone to look up to. In this case, what I see as my personal responsibility is much more important than worrying about how the world at large may look at Black women because of Pharrell’s album cover.

And so for the “protestors,” I have a question: When are Black women going to stop expecting others to validate their beauty/existence and actually be the change that they seek?

Of course that would require signing off Twitter, so maybe it will never happen.