About

Irrational Black Woman is an advice animal image macro series featuring an African American woman wearing a business suit. The series is heavily influenced by the stereotype of irrational expectations set by certain African American females in popular films and TV shows, especially in regard to romantic interests and interactions with significant others.

Origin

The original photo is of the Miss Black USA Executive Director of Pageant Relations Karen Lyew, found on the Miss Black USA^[1] online website. On Saturday October 22, 2011, the first image macro was posted on the Team Pervert^[2] Tumblr blog and featured the caption "Complain about down low brothas / wants to have sex with Anderson Cooper."

Precursor

The stereotype of dark-skinned women as domineering girlfriends or spouses has been regularly explored by a number of black male comedians like Chris Rock, Kevin Hart and Jamie Foxx, as well as in popular films and TV sitcoms:

Spread

On October 25th, threads related to the meme popped up on the Lipstick Alley^[8] and Black Hair Media^[7] web forums, which led to a discussion over the appropriateness of the joke and whether it promotes negative stereotypes associated with black women. The single topic Tumblr^[5] was subsequently created on October 26th.

A compilation of derivatives was posted to the Divine African Queens^[6] blog the following day. The Meme Generator^[4] page has received a total of 173 submissions as of November 9th, 2011. Derivatives are often posted on Tumblr^[3] under the #irrational black woman tag.

On October 26th, 2011, YouTuber SaulGoodmanLBS posted a video expressing his thoughts on the stereotypes of black women as used in the image macro series:

Notable Examples

External References