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afterword Superbaad for the Twenty-First-Century Screen Through spring and summer 2006, several occurrences dramatized the unique ways in which the social identities and bodies of black women can become spectacle in the public sphere and cultural imagination. Georgia Democratic representative Cynthia McKinney’s response toward a Capitol Hill security officer who failed to recognize her gave way to her hair and appearance becoming far more newsworthy than her politics. It became such a hot topic indeed that even some black radio and news shows devoted air space to debating how she should wear her hair and evaluating whether or not her cornrowed hairstyle or straight hairdo made her look more attractive and appropriate for Capitol Hill. During the same period, the Duke University scandal exploded. In late spring, a young black woman charged several members of the prestigious Duke men’s lacrosse team of sexual assault. The case triggered a public frenzy as the social and physical identity of the young woman, a black single mother and student working as a stripper, became a spectacle in which class, race, sex, and gender dramatically converged. Historical and contemporary inscriptions of sexualized women, working-class black women in particular, were whipped to the fore as scholars, legal experts, spectators, and racially divided students and professors debated the authenticity of the woman’s claims. The question of authenticity was intimately tied to the social legitimacy and moral caliber of the young woman herself versus that of the socially privileged young men. The public conversation disturbingly centered on the fact that she was a black woman working in a sexualized position designed to illicit the heterosexual gaze of men. This became even more clear as the case began to fall apart amid charges that the prosecutor had mishandled it. 13 4 . afterword At the same time as the Duke case continued to unfold, Janet Jackson’s body became news again. This time it was not a source of scandal but rather celebration. With the infamous Super Bowl nipple flash seemingly all but forgotten, the media couldn’t get enough of Jackson’s newly svelte body. The late summer cover of iconic hip-hop magazine Vibe dramatized the distance between then and now but still centered the attention on Jackson’s breasts. Janet, adorned by long tresses and a shell necklace, appears topless in a slinky bikini bottom. Her right arm shields her nipples from view, just covering the rest of her breasts, which peek out from under the arm. So Jackson was no longer at forty a “middle-aged” pop star shamefully offending the public with too much female nudity but rather the latest sex symbol and poster girl for how good forty could look. Jackson, her silent retreat from the media spotlight now over, half-jokingly declared that she wouldn’t stop flaunting her body until she was at least eighty. Headline after headline proclaimed her miraculous weight loss. She was suddenly everywhere, usually in a midriffbaring ensemble that accentuated her full breasts and toned abs. Every interview with the pop diva focused on the big questions first: How many pounds had she really dropped, and how had she had done it? Jackson, prepping for the release of her upcoming fall album, smiled demurely and declared again and again that she didn’t like to work out, but it was a necessity. I thought a lot about these women in the late spring and summer of 2006 and tried to process the implications of their public presence. At the same time, I escaped to a lot of movies and was one of the many who flocked to check out several blockbuster action films. They were mostly sequels, two a part of the dynasty that is Marvel Comics. One of these, the third installment of the X-Men series, hit the screen in June. As I was a longtime fan of the comic book and television cartoon versions, there was no question that I’d be on the scene to bear witness to the third and supposedly final film in the series, X-Men: ἀ e Last Stand. I did so with a little trepidation. The first and second films had offered a disappointingly wimpy and minimal representation of the X-Men character I adored most, the African woman Ororo, known as Storm. This strikingly beautiful, dark, dignified, and wise fantasy sista is so powerful that she not only can sail effortlessly in the air but can whip up a mighty hurricane or...

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