This Tomboy Loves Makeup

In American popular culture, black women often appear among white women as magical figures. These modern mammies, like their nineteenth-century counterparts, are capable of solving white women’s personal crises without ever hinting at the depth of their own oppressive circumstances. For example, the modern Mammy made several guest appearances on the wildly popular HBO series Sex and the City. Though living in New York City, the lead characters—four white women—rarely encountered black women. The few African American women written into the script appeared briefly, with little character development, and were often capable of magically comforting the white women and solving their problems. A black woman chauffeur takes Carrie Bradshaw out for a midnight meal after her book party. Her presence immediately soothes Carrie, who has reported in an earlier scene that her ‘‘loneliness is palpable.’’ After Miranda becomes a single mother and has trouble quieting her colicky baby, the Emmy-winning actress Lisa Gay Hamilton shows up as a neighbor, never seen before or after, to assist her. She brings a vibrating chair that immediately quiets the infant, reinforcing the notion that black women instinctively understand child rearing in ways that white women do not. When the first film version of Sex and the City hit theaters in the summer of 2008, Academy Award–winning actress Jennifer Hudson was cast as Carrie’s feisty young assistant. Although her movie role is much more significant than the sister cameos in the series, Hudson’s ‘‘Louise’’ is able to fix her boss’s love life, website, and personal files even though she is two decades younger. These updates of the Mammy caricature are hardly limited to Sex and the City. Contemporary popular culture is replete with black women characters with an instinctive ability to ‘‘help Whites get in touch with their better selves.’’