David Barton Gym Wants You To Stereotype

By Sexual Correspondent Andrea (AJ) Plaid

If you’re looking for heroines in all of the wrong places–like your video store–check out the gun-toting , karate-kicking, sass-spitting supermamas of the seventies blaxploitation flicks.

Of course these films are “negative image” superfests.  All we do in these movies, and by inference life,  is sell drugs, sell our bodies, and shoot each other.  For home-video release, they should come with labels.  “Warning:  This film contains oppressive images of blacks that may be unsuitable, unpleasant, and downright, unfit for some viewers.

–Lisa Jones, Bulletproof Diva:  Tales of Race, Sex, and Hair

David Barton Gym is definitely selling Black women’s bodies–or, rather, using the “hip 70s supermama” image (the perfectly spherical ‘fro, the make-up, the hooker shorts) with the copy and pose riffing on the centuries-old Black-women’s-sexuality-is-for-the-lowest-bidder stereotypes–to get more bodies into their gyms.

This is Jezebel on reverb.

(Thanks to HighJive for the tip!)