Flo, Not My Job & Rejecting the Idea of the ‘Strong Black Woman’

Written by Anita Mowete

Edited by Veronica Vivi

Illustrated by Florence Aina

Black women are often expected to put their heart and soul in relationships, even if it is to their own detriment. However, just because you can, does not mean you should.

This feeling of frustration is the central theme of the song ‘Not My Job’ by the girl group Flo. Releasing music since 2022, Flo continues to see a steady rise in popularity. The group has a late 90s/early 2000s RnB and Hip-Hop style, reminiscent of groups like Destiny’s Child, SWV, and TLC.

It is clear the woman in ‘Not My Job’ is at a breaking point in her relationship. She reminisces back to when she “had the patience” to put up with her partner’s problems but now she has found her voice and is making her boundaries clear (Flo, 2022). It is a situation most people can relate to, by either being in it themselves or witnessing it happen to someone else – our mothers, aunts or friends overworked and underappreciated in relationships that do not fulfil them.

However, finding the strength to cut the rope and leave these relationships behind can be the ultimate act of self-care and liberation. Going from that low point of realising you have become a shadow of yourself to taking back ownership of your life is one of the few glimmers of light that can shine through a bad relationship. This act of rebellion is contrary to the role black women are expected to play in relationships. In the black African and American community, the idea of the steadfast wife or girlfriend who takes a man at his lowest and transforms him into the most successful version of himself is very common. Women are even expected to put up with abuse or infidelity as too many people give excuses for this behaviour. Black women are taught to forgive first and foremost when dealing with these types of behaviour, therefore rejecting the docile and submissive role placed on their shoulders is a powerful act of resistance.

Throughout my course studying journalism, I have not had the chance to analyse songs specifically; however, music is a vehicle of pop culture that can help understand the thoughts and feelings of different communities at any given time. Gaining the skills to look at media critically granted me the ability to see that a catchy song on social media is also a window to look at important issues. It is thought-provoking to see how a simple song can also serve as a doorway into the thoughts and emotions of black women. In this sense, ‘Not My Job’ would fit well in any course that involves finding the background and deeper meaning behind pieces of media.

‘Not My Job’ can also be a useful piece in a historical context. The theme of the song presents parallels with the 1953 song ‘Hound Dog’ by Big Mama Thornton. Although decades apart, the two songs have similar themes as they both come from the viewpoint of a black woman leaving a man who is not good for her. When Thornton sings, “cause you ain’t looking for a woman, all you’re looking for is a home” (Big Mama Thornton, 1953), this draws parallels with the line “never been my job, never been my occupation” in Flo’s song (Flo, 2022). In both situations, the men in the relationships are not looking for the woman herself, but what they can get out of her. Whether it is somewhere to stay or someone to invest in them fully, they do not see nor care about the pressure they are putting on their partners. It is also a reminder that rebelling against the role black women are burdened with in relationships is nothing new for them.

On a wider scale, the song can serve as a more zoomed in focus on the emotional labour expected of black women in general. From Rosa Parks to Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu, in using their voices to stand against racial bigotry and fight for justice and equality for black people, black women often get caught in the line of fire as a result. While we regularly see the great acts of resistance taken by black women, how often do people consider the toll it takes on them? We are expected to educate over and over even if it means reliving unpleasant experiences on top of the added stress of being a full-time employee at a job thinly veiled as a relationship.

The emotional labour expected of black women in relationships is a symptom of a bigger issue. While on the surface the idea of the strong black women may seem empowering, this strength comes at a great cost. When you are constantly on the chopping block you end up being seen more as a mascot than a real person, even within your own community. Although building up someone regardless of its effects on your wellbeing is a brave and selfless act, it is not something that should be assumed or demanded. Truly, as the song says, it is no black woman’s job to make a man something that they are not.

Anita Mowete is someone who loves to find deeper meaning in seemingly simple things. Currently a BA Journalism student at Robert Gordon University, she’s particularly interested in the experiences of Black people in the UK. She also has a love for history and travel, which both allow her to explore different cultures.

Works Cited

Big Mama Thornton, ‘Hound Dog’, Peacock Records, 1953.

Flo, ‘Not My Job’, Island Records, 2022.

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A UTOPIAN CURRICULUM PART FIVE: SUPERMAN

Written by Ibtisam Ahmed

Edited by Maria Elena Carpintero Torres-Quevedo

Illustration by Iara Silva

Before I delve into this part of the Utopian Curriculum series, I must offer some thanks. First and foremost, to the incredible team at Project Myopia for their patience and compassion for me as an individual. The past several years have been difficult for so many of us and it is encouraging to see a publication actually embody the ethos of care and utopianism that we collectively agreed to explore when this series was first pitched. It is rare and makes all the difference. Second, specifically to Maria Elena Carpintero Torres-Quevodo for your feedback and nurturing editing. It has been a real joy being asked to delve deeper into my thoughts in a way that was constructive and empowering. Third, to Iara Silva for your incredible artwork. Arresting visual media is a wonderful way to express complex thoughts – all the more relevant for this particular essay given the graphic nature of the source material.

And finally, to you dear reader, for sticking with this endeavour. It feels serendipitous offering my gratitude halfway through this curriculum, especially as so much has changed since it was first pitched. Part of this change is the actual source material itself. When I first included Superman as an example of utopia, it was a more generic take on the character and his history. But Superman has evolved since then and it is the specific take on his latest iteration – an openly queer child of a refugee with intentionally inclusive politics – that I will be exploring here.

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A UTOPIAN CURRICULUM PART FOUR: VOGUING

PART FOUR: VOGUING

By Ibtisam Ahmed

Edited by Maria Elena Carpintero Torres-Quevedo

Illustration by Iara Silva

As I continue to write this Utopian Curriculum series, it feels important to address questions raised from previous essays. In online conversations and email exchanges around parts two (Black Panther) and three (Sultana’s Dream), a particular point raised was whether something can be truly utopian if it is only positive and ideal for a specific demographic. It is apt, then, to dedicate part four to the art form of voguing.

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A UTOPIAN CURRICULUM PART THREE: SULTANA’S DREAM

**PART THREE: SULTANA’S DREAM (1905)**

By Ibtisam Ahmed

Edited by Maria Elena Carpintero Torres-Quevedo

Illustration by Iara Silva

Welcome to the new year and welcome back to the Project Myopia Utopian Curriculum series. So far, I set up a broad overview of the discipline and the series in the first post, and then looked at the anti-colonial Afrofuturism of Black Panther in the second. In part three, I will be exploring Sultana’s Dream and how it uses satire and humour to highlight how oppressed communities can create a specific vision of liberation and utopia.

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Basking in the Afterglow: Barry Jenkins’ ‘Moonlight’

Laura Hackshaw

Edited by Veronica Vivi

Artwork by Maia Walcott

Moonlight has been an unprecedented and much needed piece of art which transcends the basic categories and labels that accompany the ideals of it simply being a unique ‘independent’ movie or at its most reductive, a movie about what it is like to be a young, black, gay boy becoming a man. Moonlight is about running through doors with your eyes closed not knowing how to find your way to the other side. It is about the fear, the panic, the discomfort and the frustration of having to come to terms with your own identity when your identity itself is based on societies preconceptions and expectations of who you should be, how you should talk, walk and who you should love – all before understanding how to first love yourself. It is profound because it transforms and challenges common ideologies surrounding black male-hood; black male tenderness and affection, the redemptive power of mentors, music and community and how these all shape the people we become.

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The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

Erin Hutton

Edited by Veronica Vivi

Illustration by Ottelien Huckin https://www.ottelienhuckin.co.uk/

History often ignores women’s contributions. Modern schools, such as my own, may try to teach about their contributions, yet it is clear that many women are resigned to the shadows. Pat Barker has emphasised this injustice with her shocking novel The Silence of the Girls, a retelling of The Iliad with one crucial difference: it tells the story of the women who were caught up in the bloodshed.

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More Than Just Blood: Bloodchild by Octavia E. Butler

Angie Spoto

Edited by Maria Elena Carpintero Torres-Quevedo

Illustration by Iara Silva https: https://www.instagram.com/iiaraz_/

I hadn’t felt my baby move yet and wasn’t sure I wanted to. I confessed this to a friend in a café, who, bringing his hands together in front of his chest and clawing his fingers, said, ‘Yeah, it might feel, you know, like Alien.’ And his hands exploded outward, raining imaginary blood across our lattes.

My friend touched on a fear of mine: that having a baby would be like hosting an alien creature in my body. A fear no doubt inspired by my consumption of science fiction. Immediately, the prospect of pregnancy makes me think of the 1979 movie Alien, which undeniably plays out humanity’s pregnancy fears in the form of chest-ripping, murderous alien children. There’s also the ‘mystical pregnancy trope’: women in science fiction media are regularly forcibly or accidentally impregnated by aliens (Sarkeesian). This trope appears in Stargate SG-1, the X-Files, and Torchwood among other television shows and films.

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There but for the by Ali Smith

Allie Kerper

Edited by Ketaki Zodgekar

Illustration by Edith Pritchett https://www.instagram.com/edithpritchett_art/

Ali Smith’s novel There but for the tells the story of a man who, in the middle of a dinner party, locks himself in the spare room. The story unfolds over the course of the following year or so through the perspectives of four different characters whose lives the man, Miles, has touched in small ways. The characters whose voices comprise the story are Anna, an unemployed Scottish woman; Mark, a middle-aged gay man; May, an elderly woman with dementia; and Brooke, a 10-year-old Black girl. In each of their narrative turns, these characters reflect on experiences in their lives and how others perceive and react to them, giving the reader a rich and textured composite image of what human life can be in and around Greenwich, London in 2009-10. Smith’s novel marries realism and surrealism, satire and earnestness, and weaves it all together with wit and wordplay to create a compelling story of what it feels like to live in the political moment of the Recession.

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NOTHING OF WOMAN IN ME by Juliano Zaffino

Diane Lowman

Edited by Abigail Eardley

Art by Iara Silva: www.instagram.com/iiaraz_

Often, the contemporary eye looks at Shakespeare’s plots and characters with a certain skepticism. No matter how timeless and universal the themes – the joy, the anguish, the love – we cannot help but wonder: how could a mother not recognise her own twins? Do those simple disguises really trick everyone? And perhaps most persistently for me, as Jerry Seinfeld would say, what’s up with all these women? Under the auspices of the patriarchal system in early modern England, female Shakespearean characters are often submissive, with few admirable exceptions: the Princess in Love’s Labours Lost and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing come to mind. Ultimately however, Kate in Taming of the Shrew and others like her, leave modern women shaking their heads.

Any author of fiction – and Shakespeare is no exception – asks an audience to momentarily suspend disbelief. In novels, films, and plays, ghosts walk, witches prophesize, and statues come alive. But still, that final question persists: what is up with all these women? In Nothing of Woman in Me, which debuted in February 2018 at the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford Upon Avon, and will be reprised in July at the RSC Dell, director and playwright Juliano Zaffino attempts to answer this question. Zaffino earned his MA in Shakespeare and Theatre from the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford Upon Avon, and will pursue his PhD there next year. As a gay man, he has first-hand experience of belonging to a marginalised group in society. By exploring the psyches of some of Shakespeare’s most complex and thought-provoking female characters, Zaffino hoped to give expression to all silenced populations by “capturing the voice of women throughout history and in our modern day, and unifying these voices through the vehicles of Shakespeare’s voiceless women.”[1] He “brought his experience to the table: my life as a gay man, the women who had raised me and whom I had grown up with, the reading and watching and listening I had done.” The dawning of the #MeToo era has offered a relevant and powerful backdrop for his work, having finally provided the opportunity for many muted female voices to whisper, speak, and shout above decades of oppressive abuse. No longer willing to suffer in silence as if that were the norm, women from professional, political, academic, and personal backgrounds are setting each other free by telling their truths. Women in Shakespeare’s time could not do that: but Zaffino imagines what it might have been like if they could have.

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Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Hannah Marcus

Edited by Ketaki Zodgekar

Art by Figgy Guyver http://www.instagram.com/themineralfact/

The Barbican’s 2017 summer exhibition Into the Unknown: A Journey through Science Fiction, was a little disappointing. Firstly, unless you already had previous knowledge of the shows, films and novels the exhibit was about, the opportunity for learning was limited. Rachel Cooke summed this up well in The Guardian: “this ambitious sci-fi exhibition is big on content, but where is the context?” This dovetails neatly into my second criticism; this exhibition was essentially aimed at men. Not only in the content, which was overwhelming produced by men and about men, but also in the specific kind of childhood it invoked. As a woman interested in science fiction both academically and personally, I was unsurprised, and frustrated, by how little effort was made to include and inform a wider audience.

Perhaps this is why, when browsing the bookshop afterwards, I was drawn to Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The tonal quality of the blurb of the Vintage Classics edition was both soothing and intriguing, clearly intended to resonate with the modern feminist:

When three American men discover a community of women, living in perfect isolation in the Amazon, they decide there simply must be men somewhere. How could these women survive without man’s knowledge, experience and strength, not to mention reproductive power? In fact, what they have found is a civilisation free from disease, poverty and the weight of tradition. All alone, the women have created a society of calm and prosperity, a feminist utopia that dares to threaten the very concept of male superiority.

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