Black Girls Aren't Fast.

Unspoken truths about labeling our Black girls and policing their femininity before they can explore it themselves. Don't walk like that or wear that you got men looking at you.

“Stop walking like that with you butt stuck out. Your walk, switching your hips - you are going to have grown men looking at you. Now stop!”

“I can’t stop, this is just how I walk. What do you mean, stop walking like that? Like what?”

“Don’t get smart with me! Girl, your tail is getting fast, you smelling yourself a little too much now!”

Man, why they always calling me “fast” like I can help the way I walk or the way my body is developing. What do they expect me to do?

As Black women, how many of us remember this kind of dialogue growing up at some point in our lives? Being completely honest, I have to stop myself from doing it to my daughter, the older she gets. It’s a form of protection so deeply engrained in our DNA as a culture that the older generation never realized the harm those words have done to us as Black women today.

I’ve been reading Mikki Kendall’s Hood Feminism for leisure, and I find it to be no coincidence that Ryan reached out after seeing my post on social media about the Blackstack Magazine with her submission for the second issue. Getting through the chapter “Of #FastTailedGirls and Freedom” was difficult for me, and I couldn’t figure out why until after spending time with Ryan’s words for this week’s post.

I hope y’all enjoy this one as much as I did. This topic has been coming up for me a lot lately, so what better time than now to get it published?

---

Black Girls Aren’t Fast: The Genesis of Black Girl Woes

RyansOasis

White America has been at the forefront of crafting Black narratives even before the first slave ship landed ashore in the Caribbean and the United States. Prior to the introduction of Maritime Empires, African women were a symbol of powerful duality by acknowledging that being a woman is not solely based on perceived softness and agreeability but also on the wisdom and wrath displayed when faced with indignity. The religious figure of Yemoja in Yoruba spiritualism—the goddess of rivers and oceans—was not seen as a subdued figure but rather as a passionate embodiment of wisdom and wrath. In today’s world, it seems like Black women have lost this vital connection to their womanhood. Black women have not only had their sexuality decided for them, but society has the inability to see rage and justice as feminine behaviors, rendering Black women as masculine and therefore “unworthy” of sexual exploration. What is worse is that these power displays are now bleeding onto the central image of Black children and, specifically, little Black girls. Black girls who explore their sexualities are deemed “fast” or “fast-tailed” and promptly punished. It seems that, despite all trying, the Black community sexualizes young girls before they’ve even had a chance to define their identity. The Black community should discontinue use of the phrase “fast-tailed girls” because it is an extension of colonized thought made to disempower Black youth, deprioritize sex education and the mental monologues of children, and steal Black girls’ innocence while affording it to White children. Instead, Black mothers specifically should encourage monologues of self-worth in their children and introduce sexuality as a neutral and natural topic.

By referring to young, Black girls as “fast” for wanting to explore sexually or exist in their bodies, the Black community is setting the stage for an entire demographic to have an underdeveloped sense of an essential master status. By placing this topic as “off limits,” the Black community is inviting White America and the world to define their children’s sexuality for them. By teaching our children about sex as a neutral topic, it is harder for people to take advantage of them sexually and decenter them in conversations regarding sex. Let’s not forget: young Black girls become women. When White America asks a grounded Black woman who she is and who she is going to be, she is more likely to respond with, “No, this is who I am; do not perceive me based on your prejudices.” But when White America begs a question of an ungrounded, unconfident Black woman, she is more likely to respond with agreeability based in inferiority. In Audre Lorde’s essay, “Uses of the Erotic,” she vehemently opposes the demonization of Black sexuality at any stage and states that the erotic is innately spiritual and personal. She goes on to say that there is a suppression of the erotic because it is “vilified, abused, and devalued within Western society,” and that is a false belief that only women who deny their sexual nature can truly be free (Lorde 53). In common terms, the demonization of the erotic is a tool used by White America in order to disempower women, and it is currently being used to disempower our young girls. Similarly, Ruby Hamad points to “The Jezebel” as a means for sexual disfranchisement in her chapter “Lewd Jezebels, Exotic Orientals, Princess Pocahontas.” Hamad recites that “The Jezebel” archetype was made to oppose “the ideal Victorian lady,” crafting the lie that Black women were “Godless and promiscuous.” Jezebel was a “sensual, animalistic creature governed by her physical sensations and carnal desires” (Hamad 23). Hamad even cites the paradox of Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemmings, with whom he had six children, which is that White men demonized Black sexuality so that Black women could gain an “unrapable status to justify their attraction” (Hamad 25). We should not and cannot allow our young girls to exist in this paradox, in a paradox where they are sexually used and discarded. Closing off the important conversation of sex will only allow White America and other people to craft their sexuality for them, which is rarely to their benefit. With the introduction of sex as a neutral topic by parents, there can be a productive conversation about sex in which the Black community prioritizes the mental awareness of children. 

Mental awareness takes me to my next point, which is that referring to young girls as “fast” only deprioritized sex education and the mental monologues of young girls. It is an outdated term that only encompasses laziness and a lack of questioning. It is shameful that in a young world that constantly dehumanizes women and Black people, the Black community continually disregards those who are both. No one ever questions, “Why is she presenting herself in this way? Is it a lack of confidence or overcompensation?” Instead, the Black community had gotten way too accustomed to judging our youth instead of establishing a proper line of questioning, which sounds all too familiar. In Mikki Kendall’s chapter “Of #FastTailedGirls And Freedom,” she acknowledged that “what my mother saw as me being fast-tailed was really the fumbling efforts of a survivor struggling to figure out my own sexuality without someone else’s input (Kendall 49). Such a powerful statement that she was struggling with autonomy, and that no one even noticed, just quickly went to demonizing her. One may wonder where Kendall could’ve been if her mother had just sat her down and asked her what she was feeling and why she was presenting herself in that way. Would she have opened up? Would she have remained closed-lipped and suffered alone? No one knows because no one even thought to pose the question. And that is not a knock on Kendall’s mother, because she was also a Black girl at some point who just happened to grow and adapt the behaviors that exhibit a much larger problem. So now, the Black community can see that this is not only a modern-day problem; it is a generational conversation, and it always was. There was a study conducted by CNN called the “AC360 Doll Study,” where young children—Black and White—were asked to identify the child that most fit the statements. The options included drawn pictures of 6 young girls and boys, ranging from fair-skinned to dark-skinned. Overwhelmingly, when Black children were asked which child had the skin color most adults didn’t like, they pointed to the darker-skinned person (00:01:08). Furthermore, when Black children were asked which doll was the best-looking, most of them pointed to the White doll because she “is light-skinned or White” (00:00:42). Black parents may not think that their children aren’t being exposed to the inherent cruelty of the world, but they would be wrong. As young Black girls go through puberty, they in particular struggle with self-esteem and feeling uncomfortable in their bodies, and this can lead to overcompensating by being hypersexual. All of this sounds like a very mundane argument, yet these are not questions that are regularly being asked by parents to their children; even White parents deprioritize their children’s mental monologues. Contrastingly, calling Black girls “fast” also deprioritized sex education. In “Growing Up Too Fast,” Natasha Cook details that Black girls often physically develop faster than their White counterparts, which leads society to label them as more sexually deviant and grown. What’s even more disheartening is that Black girls with developing bodies, especially in low-income areas, don’t have access to proper sexual education and access to contraceptives. This has resulted in a widening gap in which young Black girls are more likely to contract HIV and herpes (Cook). Another reason why it is so important to educate our Black girls on sexual identity and sex is so that they can recognize when they are being taken advantage of. Rape and sexual assault rates are skyrocketing as a consequence of globalization and our society becoming more conducive to rape culture. Kendall even speaks on this, claiming that “40-60% of Black women in America are sexually abused before the age of 18” (Kendall 48). As stated previously, Black women have historically been thought to be godless and promiscuous, so the very sentiment can cause unwelcome sexual advances for young Black girls. The Black community should never want a young girl to toil with sexual assault by herself or, even worse, not even be able to recognize it. Instead of completely shutting down conversations about sexual identity, parents should approach sex from a place of education and inquire about their children’s mental well-being more often. And the assertion of Kendall’s story with sexual abuse also highlights another issue: we need to find a way for Black mothers to connect with their inner child again and present a system in which they can unlearn harmful behaviors and speak life into themselves as well as their children. Oftentimes, parents can see the fires and struggles toiling in their children, but they are too scared to touch the flame in fear of being burned by their past traumas and self-hatred. Affirmations and journaling would be especially helpful in this case, because mothers cannot heal their children if they themselves are broken. 

Finally, the term “fast” should be removed from the Black vernacular because it results in the immediate adultification of Black girls. Sarah Blanchette brings an interesting perspective to the conversation of Black innocence in her academic article “Black Girlhood Persists: Pecola’s Persistence as Non/Child in Toni Morrison’s Bluest Eye.” She expounds that Black mothers are forced to kill their child’s girlhood once the child reaches puberty, all to protect them from the dangers that await them in White America. This results in a status as a “Non/Child,” a term that is meant to encompass the social death that Black girls go through once they hit puberty (Blanchette 1). Similarly, in Mikki Kendall’s Hood Feminism chapter “Of #FastTailedGirls and Freedom,” she explains how Black girls are never afforded innocence in our modern society through the ever-polarizing discussion of R. Kelly. Kendall addresses R. Kelly’s marriage to a 15-year-old Aaliyah and video evidence of him urinating on another young girl. Following the aftermath of these truths and light being shed on his abuse victims, Kendall claims, “The girls were blamed for being near him, for not knowing better, for not being prepared to navigate interactions with an adult predator who had celebrity and wealth on his side” (Kendall 49). The argument may sound ridiculous when voiced in real life, but it is a sad reality that the Black community and White America expect Black girls to navigate situations with far more cognitive thinking than is even biologically possible for their age. Who perpetrated these horrible actions? R. Kelly. And yet, who is being continuously blamed and mocked by the public? His very Black, female victims. It’s a movement of insanity that society has turned to blaming girls for their own abuse, claiming that they know better, despite probably not having any education on the subject of sex or abuse. Society assumes Black girls know better. The R. Kelly case was the perfect way for the Black community to protect their youth and shield their innocence, but no, instead, they perpetuated the worst attitudes that humankind has to offer. Of course, questions can be raised about how educating minors on sex can protect their innocence, a topic that can be seen as unjustly throwing them into adulthood. There will always be a paradox of innocence, but should we extend this same thought process to police and our young boys? Should the Black community only educate Black boys' self-preservation after they have had a gun waved in their face and been unjustly beaten? No. The Black community wants its boys conscious and alive, and the same can be said for young Black girls. Black girls should be made to have a certain awareness about thembut also know that they have a community behind them that will not accept such vicious action under the guise that they “should have known better.” Childhood is about being conscious of the things that may harm you, but having that important innocence protected by their parents and loved ones. Promoting the rhetoric of “fast-tailed girls” only strips Black girls of an essential aspect of life: innocence. Black parents should instead approach sex neutrally, if they choose, and never blame their children for experiencing hardships and abuse. It is a rhetoric that is unacceptable and dehumanizing. 

To put it simply, maintaining this rhetoric of calling young, Black girls “fast” in the Black community is only going to serve to uplift outdated, colonized thought, deprioritize sexual education and the mental monologues of children, and serve to take away Black girls’ innocence, resulting in a social death. Of course, the genesis of these problems is not the Black community’s making, but we have a duty and obligation to fix it. Furthermore, Black mothers—and Black fathers, if we are applying it to sons—need to figure out when they stopped choosing their Blackness in favor of Whiteness; when did they stop choosing themselves? When did they start choosing to perpetuate a sense of femininity that only serves to disempower them? If we can find those answers, then we are one step closer to solving the problem. 

---

Works Cited Page: 

Blanchette, Sarah. “Black Girlhood Persists: Pecola’s Persistence as Non/Child in Toni 

Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.” Routledge, 2023. 

Cooper, Anderson. “Study Shows How Black Children View Race Bias.” YouTube, YouTube, 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYCz1ppTjiM. 

Crooks, Natasha, et al. “Growing up ‘Too Fast’ : Black Girls’ Sexual Development.” Doi, 2023, file:///Users/ryanpayne/Downloads/EBSCO-FullText-02_03_2025%20(3).pdf. 

Hamad, Ruby. “Jewd Jezebels, Exotic Orientals, Princess Pocahontas .” White Tears, Brown              cars, Penguin Classics, 2022, pp. 19-45

Kendall, Mikki. “Of #FastTailedGirls And Freedom.” Hood Feminism , Penguin Classics,       2021, pp. 47-67. 

Lorde, Audre. “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power.” Sister Outsider, Penguin Classics,     

           2020, pp. 53-60.        

---

Editor’s Note: A few people have reached out asking if submissions are still open, yes they are but I will be posting an updated newsletter. The flow is shifting just a little so there is going to be an update form available next week.

For those that have submitted, I’m finally back in a good flow so I will be emailing you with some requests to get your work scheduled to publish this month. I’m so excited for all the many things in store - especially magazine order drop offs!

Should we count down for a celebration of one year dedicated to cultivating this Black space for writers? Let me know!