Tag Archives: queer women of color

Finally! Greeting Cards For Queer Women

You’re shopping for a Christmas card for your best friend, but Hallmark doesn’t carry anything specifically for a queer Latinx. You want to give your coworkers a card for their wedding, but can’t find any cards depicting two grooms. You want to surprise your girlfriend on Valentine’s Day, but all the cards available are just, so…heteronormative.

Provoke Culture is here to fix that. Thank God.

Provoke Culture is an “online artique. “This art boutique features work by LGBT and other minority artists who “celebrate culture and identity through their work.” Each artist receives 75% of all profits, while the other 25% of profits is donated to organizations that help women and youth escape domestic violence and homelessness.

Yes, that means that when you purchase awesome queer art, you’ll be donating to charity at the same time.

Artists Jenny Cunngingham and Sam Kirk designed this new line because they recognized a void: Whenever they looked for cards depicting anyone queer or of color, they came up short. So they decided to make their own.

This new greeting card line showcases an intersectional mix of queer people and people of color from many different backgrounds.

One design features eight brown and black people dressed in clothing from all over the world. The title reads, “Happy Chrismahanukwanzaa’eid.”

The card selection updates quarterly, so restock your collection every three months. You can currently purchase anniversary cards, birthday cards and more.

If you want to get more hands-on with the designs, Sam Kirk has also designed As Queer As I Wanna Be, a coloring book for queer women of color. This coloring book features 24 illustrations.

Head over to the Provoke Culture website in order to purchase bowties, posters, briefs, t-shirts and even furniture.

‘Brown Girls’ – Hilarious Web Series With Beautiful Lesbians

Broad City made headlines for putting Jewish girls at the forefront.

Girls made headlines for being painfully homogenous.

Now Brown Girls, which is the best of both shows, is making headlines for centering around queer women of color.

This isn’t just another show about 20-somethings in New York City (for one, Brown Girls is set in Chicago). Leila is a young South Asian woman who’s finally allowing herself to explore queerness. Her best friend is a black musician struggling to hold down a relationship.

The show was born out of Fatimah Asghar’s desire to see more people like her on television – not just brown girls, but queer brown girls. A 2016 study proved that only 1/3 of speaking roles go to non-white actors of any minority. Only 1/4 of speaking roles go to women, so the chances of seeing a woman of color in a role are only 8.3%. On top of that, queer characters only appear in TV 2% of the time, so your chances of seeing a queer woman of color are 602 to 1.

Not anymore, thanks to Fatima Asghar and her co-creator Sam Q. Bailey.

Asghar doesn’t make art in order to fill a quota but to create the roles that she would want to play.

I really believe in working towards solidarity between different woman of color. Whenever I am around women of color I feel at home, there’s a certain kind of ease that happens. I want to see woman of color in more complicated roles, exploring our friendships with each other across races, the way that we show up and take care of each other. I want to see a world that looks like mine, and the people who let me know it was okay to be my fullest self.”

The audience for this show definitely exists, so the two creators probably could have taken this idea to high-paying producers. So why the web series format? Why give this art away for free?

Asghar recognizes that although shows like Insecure are bringing women of color to the screen, TV channels remain out of reach for anyone who doesn’t have Cable, own a TV or hold Netflix, Hulu and HBO subscriptions.

She wanted to create a show that could be accessed by anyone with an internet connection. Her art is for everyone.”

The show comes out in early February. Keep up with it at the official website.

‘Girls Just Don’t Do That’ Is Your Next Guilty Pleasure

I love watching highbrow fantasies like Game of Thrones, but sometimes I just want a big bowl of popcorn and some melodramatic lesbian television. Girls Don’t Do That is the perfect midnight indulgence.

Based off a popular novel of the same name, Girls Don’t Do That is a new webseries about lesbians in Atlanta:

These women are navigating life on a college campus in Atlanta, trying to survive love, relationships and life. Some people think that girls are the sweetest and they’d never do that. Yes, they do…only better!”

This show is a wild, steamy ride from start to finish. The first episode begins with several interconnected sex scenes that leave the girls – and the viewer – out of breath.

The show has several lighthearted moments, like when one girl knees her ex between the legs because he was hitting on her, or when sorority drama boils to the surface before a big step show.

But Girls Don’t Do That went to a much darker place than expected, most notably with Shavonne and her abusive girlfriend Tracy.

When Tracy proposes, Shavonne is forced to untangle the knot of fear, love, apprehension and excitement in her chest in order to decide what she wants for herself.

Meanwhile, her friends wonder how much to involve themselves and how much to let Shavonne work the issue out for herself – this show will ring true to anyone who’s struggled to help a friend in an abusive relationship.

Girls Just Don’t Do That speaks to the representation of queer women of color in media – created by queer women and for queer women, it doesn’t fetishize their bodies but amplifies their stories.

The strong female characters take control of their own sexuality. One girl tells a man who gives her unwanted advances, “I [have sex] on my schedule, not yours. And unfortunately you don’t fit into that.”

No one is mindlessly chasing after men, and by the end of the first episode even Shavonne is learning to stand up to her abuser.

Furthermore, the show features more than one type of lesbian – some are feminine, some are masculine, and some straddle the line. There are thin lesbians, there are heavyset lesbians, and there are several girls who don’t know their orientation.

Girls Just Don’t Do That isn’t perfect by any means. The sound in one scene is off, making it hard to decipher the banter of sorority girls, and some scenes dragged with no clear connection to the plot – but overall, the show is hilarious, provocative and honest. Only two episodes are out so far, and the fanbase is growing every day.

Watch it for free here.