Ari Lennox Responding to an Internet Troll Saying She Looks like a Pitbull Signifies Something Deeper

On January 1st 2020, a pitiful and disgusting Twitter troll with the handle @WinEverUwantIt tweeted the following: 

“Ari Lennox and Teyana Taylor's ability to have dangerously high sex appeal while simultaneously looking like rottweilers will always amaze me.”

This tweet not only went viral, but it also sparked a larger conversation regarding Black women and their facial features, misogyny and aggression toward certain Black women aesthetics. 

Ari is very vocal, and before taking to Instagram Live to tearfully vent out her frustrations, she tweeted:

“People hate Blackness so bad.” 

-Ari Lennox @Ari Lennox, January 1st, 2020

Teyana Taylor retweeted her next tweet urging Black mothers and fathers to love on and tell their children that Black features, children and people are beautiful. 

Ari then headed over to Instagram Live, where she told her followers how hurt she was and how she was no longer standing for folks tearing down Black women and their features because they don’t fit the European standards of beauty. 

“I’m not with it, how people hate Black people so much," she said on Instagram live. "How Black people can sit up here and say, ‘It’s not my problem' or ‘She does look like a Rottweiler.’ That’s fine. And you want to talk about how people are so sensitive, they want to cancel freedom of speech. Why is this your speech? Why are you so comfortable tearing down Black women and no other race? Look around! When are Hispanic women ever compared to dogs? When do they do that? When do they do that to white women? When are white men doing that to white women? When are Hispanic men doing that to Hispanic women? They’re not doing it."

A lot of fans condemned Ari for “crying” on Instagram, saying she was too sensitive to the criticism and that as  an entertainer, she should be used to the disrespect and that she needed to get over it, but Ari disagrees. 

As a Black woman, I can tell you exactly why Ari was so emotional. She wasn't sensitive nor unjustified in her feelings, she was fed up and saddened by the constant scrutiny that Black women are faced with-and most often, it comes at the hands of Black men-not all, but a lot. 

Black women are the only group of people who are scrutinized, disrespected and harrased consistently to extreme levels, especially darker skinned women. For the Black men that don’t uphold internalized racist and sexist fallacies against us, he typically has at least 2 friends that do. 

Tupac said, “Since we all came from a woman/got our name from a woman/and our game from a woman/I wonder why we take from our women/why we rape our women/do we hate our women?” 

He poses a valid question, since a lot of folks didn’t learn from the song, obviously- do l Black men hate Black women? 

We can talk about the misdirected disrespect from both sides, but instead of deflecting like ya’ll usually do, right now, we’re specifically talking about Black men and misogyny. It’s debilitating, tired and painful.

Black men who clown Black women need to re-visit where they come from and realize that just because you have the freedom to say things, doesn’t mean that it needs to be said. Imagine waking up to talk about another Black woman on a social media app proudly as if you weren’t birthed from a Black woman and raised by one, a lot of them single mothers at that who taught you a lot of lessons you know now. I personally am surrounded by great men who will shut down any slander on Black women, but not everyone is. I definitely have also checked some Black men who thought disrespecting me and other Black women was something okay to do without repercussion- it’s not, at all. You will get educated and if it’s serious enough, dragged. 

Your favorite Black rappers have Black mamas- would you let another Black man disrespect your mama? Absolutely not, so why do you think it’s appropriate to ridicule and mock their daughters and nieces? 

A lot of these internalized racial biases stem from slavery, but Black men are the main ones to uphold them and refuse to see the value within Black women, but praise Latina and White women because they have European features and a host of other meaningless facets. That’s an entirely different conversation, but the mold fits.

It’s disheartening to see, especially when Black women are on the forefront for Black men each day, fighting to tell the world why we love you and honor you-from police brutality to representation in media to fatherhood and so on. Black women a lot of times don’t even get half of that love, consideration and protection back, and I refuse to subscribe to that. 

Black women celebrate Black excellence feverishly with Black men and often-publicly loved and admired, as everyone should be. 

Black men like Steve Harvey, Tyrese, Rev Run and  who are serial cheaters and have been known to be open misogynists whose marriages are fake labeled “couple goals” make millions by creating media that convinces Black women to shrink themselves in order to be attractive or accepted. 

That in itself is gross. Black women aren’t cookie cutter- no mold can hold us, we shape our own world views and own our beauty. Black women are not required to primp and press and dumb ourselves down for you in order to gain the love, Queendom and respect that we earned from birth and generations before. Remember, pretty is not the rent you pay to live in the world as a woman. 

In order for the culture to move forward, we need the Black men that love and adore Black women to be louder and more convincing than the ones who don’t. Raise your sons to celebrate and honor Black women. Check your homeboys and fellow Black men in real life and social media if you see or hear something unsavory. Black women are divine and the closest thing to God on Earth. Your misogyny and internalized hate is chilling, isolates and hurts us-sometimes quite literally kills us.

Give us our flowers before it’s too late. Our lineage depends on it.