Representation for Dark-skinned Black Girls in Teen Shows

Nowadays, teen shows are getting more popular. Along with teen shows becoming more popular, representation is also becoming more inclusive, and diversity is becoming more apparent. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that there still aren't dark-skinned black girls in most teen shows. Most of the time, whenever a black girl is going to be in a teen show, they’re usually portrayed as lighter, but if they are darker, then they are just a caricature of a stereotype. For example, an article on vice.com talking about the show Euphoria states that “...Rue's mental health battle makes the show fall into familiar tropes of Black girls being defined by the pain they endure.” This is important because even though shows like Euphoria perform so well, it still fails to promote diversity, since the only black girls in the show are the light-skinned black girls.

Another reason why we need more representation for dark-skinned black girls is because of how they are portrayed. Like I mentioned with the example with Euphoria, the black girls are usually portrayed in a way that makes them out to be a caricature of a stereotype. For example, with Rue, she has mental health problems, with Gia, she only dates the black boys because there are no other boys in the school for her to date, and for Leslie, she can only date white men because it’s what she is used to and how there aren’t any other black men for her to date. And it’s not like these things are bad, it just seems stereotypical, and I wish there was better representation because for a show that prides itself on diversity, there’s very little of it. Hopefully in the coming years, we’ll be able to get more dark-skinned black girls in teens shows. 

https://www.vice.com/en/article/9kxm98/euphoria-isnt-the-coming-of-age-show-black-girls-deserve