While surfing online the other day, I came across a picture of Jessica Simpson with a mouthful of cake, making out with her boyfriend, NFL player Tony Romo. According to the article, she actually smeared the cake on his face and licked it off in front of a crowd of party guests. The first thing I thought was, “What has gotten in to Jessica Simpson???” The picture she painted on “Newlyweds--the MTV reality show based on her marriage to Nick Lachey--was one of a wholesome Christian southern girl who held out to have sex after marriage (good for you girl!). To see her sort of slutting it out with her current boyfriend Tony was kinda unexpected but I’m sure well deserved as she held on to that good girl image for as long as she could…
Unfortunately while analyzing the pics I started thinking about black celebrities and how we almost never see them showing public displays of affection. Is it that African Americans are not as big on showing affection in public as other races? Or is it because the media pushes images of white celebrities and interracial couples down our throats, but refuse to believe that there is a such thing as black love? Think about it, in most big budget films with a black actor as the lead, they normally compliment him with a non-black love interest (think "Hitched," "Training Day," "Rush Hour" 2 & 3). Will Smith even said it himself that the reason a black woman wasn’t cast as his love interest in "Hitch" was because the movie-makers feared that a black couple would have turned off worldwide audiences. “There’s sort of an accepted myth that if you have two black actors, a male and a female, in the lead of a romantic comedy, that people around the world don’t want to see it,” he was quoted as saying.
I think it’s pretty sad and pathetic that African American couples aren’t glorified in the media. It’s because of this that we are led to believe that 90% of black professional athletes are married to women of other races when in actuality the number is probably under 20%. We are only led to believe this because the media constantly pushes images of interracial couples such as Tiger Woods, Kobe Bryant etc on a daily basis but have no interest in the black wives that are cheering in the stands as well. We don’t hear much about the black wives until it’s time for them to head to divorce court. Shame! -Necole Bitchie