1. Introduction
[1.1] Labor is not a strange concept to Black people in the United States. From the moment they were taken from African soil and brought to the United States, African Americans had labor instilled in their lifestyles. African American women in particular experience the intersection of labor in relation both to slavery and to womanhood. Existing as both Black and a woman in the United States creates an incredibly unique experience. Fandom exists as a space where the othered—women, people of color, and queer individuals—in society may express themselves, creating the perfect space for Black women to engage with media objects that were not intended for their use. However, to engage in fandom requires labor, and due to the issues of representation surrounding gender and race in media, Black female fans must perform extra labor in order to properly immerse themselves in their fan objects. I base my exploration of Kimberlé Crenshaw's ([1989] 2015) intersectionality in relation to fandom and fannish labor on the works of Henry Jenkins, Kristen J. Warner, bell hooks, and more, and explore how even in fandom, Black female fans must labor more in order to achieve the same results as other fans, much like the experiences of Black women in everyday life.
[1.2] Being a fan goes beyond the accepted societal standards for engagement with texts. This leads to the fan being viewed as a societal Other. The perceived overexcited and overinvolved nature of fans places them outside hegemonic society and into the space of Other. Fans do not maintain what is considered an acceptable distance from their fan objects, injecting them into various aspects of their real lives rather than maintaining a boundary between object and self. The creation of fan objects—"fan writing, art, song, or video" (Jenkins 1992, 49)—presents fans as overinvested and overly attached to their objects, placing them outside what is considered acceptable behavior. This leads to fandom being resistive in nature, as it goes against what is acceptable, creating a space for fans to thrive and express themselves via their fan objects.
[1.3] The original otherness attached to fandom was attached to the image of the white male geek, creating a space where those who typically were not othered could claim to be marginalized, while those who were already marginalized were further excluded (Stanfill 2011; Martin 2019; Wanzo 2015). Black, female, and queer fans have long lived as outsiders, and the association of such fans with overindulgence and a lack of self-control situates them outside the bounds of whiteness and maleness. The exclusion of otherwise ideal members of society on the basis of fandom has led to the identity of many in fandom to be structured around their outsider status (Scott 2019). With the growth of fandom via digitization and the embrace of certain fan activities by the media, fans who had claimed their outsider status as an identity began to rebel against the expansion of fandom, inadvertently replicating the exclusion they faced elsewhere (Scott 2019, 79–80). For example, male fans, seen as effeminate outside the fandom space (Stanfill 2011), have exerted extra effort to curate fandom as an androcentric space, leading to the exclusion of female fans in compensation.
[1.4] In a similar vein, Black fans have been excluded by white fans. The lack of representation and misrepresentation of Black people has long been documented in Hollywood, and this lack has had real consequences for Black audiences. As bell hooks has established in her consideration of the history surrounding Black Americans' relationship with spectatorship, "to stare at the television, or mainstream movies, to engage its images, was to engage its negation of black representation" (1992, 117). She theorized that Black viewers needed to take on a resistant, "oppositional gaze" to resist their own negation. More, the move from nonexistence to representation of Black people gave rise to static tropes and stereotypes. In the case of Black women especially, the unique combination of a subordinated race and subordinated gender created representations that are typically less than flattering. These include the Black Best Friend (e.g., Stacey Dash in Clueless [1995]); the Angry Black Woman (e.g., Tyler Perry's Madea in the Madea movies); and the Mammy (e.g., Hattie McDaniel in Gone with the Wind [1939]). Thus, from its inception, Black female spectatorship in America was resistive. Because fandom is a resistive practice, destabilizing boundaries between the spectator and the object, the space of fandom became one in which Black spectators could exist. However, Black fans—and particularly Black female fans—have faced widespread exclusion from fandom spaces. Rebecca Wanzo (2015) explores the exclusion of race (Blackness specifically) from fandom studies/spaces, highlighting holes in the notion that fandom is a space for Black people. She emphasizes, among other factors, that Black fans do not often have the privilege of being central to a text and instead have to carve out their own mirrors—an act that can face resistance from white fans. However, the exclusion of nonwhite fans from mainstream fandom allows nonwhite fans to create their own worlds, ones that are not easily boxed into existing constructions of fandom, creating a different sphere through which nonfandoms can be analyzed.
2. What is fan labor?
[2.1] A defining aspect of fan labor that separates it from sustenance labor is the reward: love, not wages. Fans connect with texts in relation to the lens formed by their unique life experiences, and those with similar life experiences may connect to fan objects in similar ways. When connecting to fan objects, audiences must first find aspects worthy of connection, and the work required to form such connections can be considered labor (Shimpach 2005). Thus, before even being categorized as fans, audience members perform labor. To be considered an audience member requires some level of effort (labor), as media must be consumed before an audience member chooses to enter the participatory culture of fandom. Becoming fans takes audience members to higher levels of active participation by inviting them to participate in communities inspiring their own cultural productions. Mel Stanfill (2019) coined the concept of "lovebor" to account for the work of loving and sharing love for fan objects. They note that "although lovebor does produce value, it does not always do so quantifiably" (152). Stanfill then likens the devaluation of fan labor to the devaluation of women's labor, acts of love that are not valued as work due to the component of affect (153).
[2.2] For Black female fans, whose labor is doubly devalued, this can be taken further. Black viewers' labor begins before connection has occurred. Due to Hollywood's historical negation of Black representation, there has been a particular labor in Black spectatorship. Despite eventual Black representation, there has not been a decrease in the labor required of Black spectators. Instead, there was an increase, for rather than configuring their minds to accept their erasure, Black viewers had to reconcile the often negative and stereotypical representations on screen with reality, turning a blind eye to the harm caused by the image and embracing solely its positive aspects or embracing a gaze at once critical and "oppositional" (hooks 1992, 115). Black audiences function similarly to fandom, but rather than being fans of a specific object(s), Black audiences aim to support Blackness in all its forms. As Wanzo writes, "African American fans make hypervisible the ways in which fandom is expected or demanded of some socially disadvantaged groups as a show of economic force and ideological combat" (2015, ¶ 2.1). This ideal is backed up by Alfred Martin Jr. (2019), who highlights some key facets of Black fandom: must-see Blackness, economic consumption, pedagogical properties, and the intersection of all three. Black audiences are aware of the precarious nature of Black media representation and thus employ must-see Blackness—"black fans' 'civic duty' to see blackness in all of its forms" (741)—to support Blackness, whether they are fans or not. In his study, Martin encountered Black fandom participants who support well-known Black entertainment mogul Tyler Perry not necessarily out of preference for Perry but rather to support Blackness (743–44). Must-see Blackness thus leads to economic consumption; as Martin argues, keeping Blackness alive in media is a combination of not just seeing Blackness but supporting it financially, because when Blackness makes a profit, it can remain visible. It is through this economic consumption that the pedagogical properties—"how fit are fan objects for learning and role modeling?" (741)—come into play. This support of visible Blackness and knowledge of the intricacies of media culture industries are the backbone of Black spectatorship and Black fandom.
[2.3] Combined with the existing labor Black people must perform to enjoy popular media, there is labor specific to the of Black women. hooks highlights how "conventional representations of Black women have done violence to the image" (1992, 120). In response to this violence, many Black female spectators elect to avoid film and television. My personal experience as a Black female spectator confirms this strategy: when the consumption of Hollywood's negative depictions of Blackness, womanhood, and especially Black womanhood assaulted me, I stepped away from Hollywood films for two years, preferring to focus on media where Blackness was ignored or was the norm. Henry Jenkins (1988, 477) notes that for women to enjoy and engage with a text, they are "often forced to perform a type of intellectual transvesticism [sic]" by identifying with characters that do not represent them. For Black women, this "transvesticism" is doubled by having to identify with characters who are different in terms both of gender and of race. As hooks states, "Every black woman I spoke with who was/is an ardent moviegoer, a lover of the Hollywood film, testified that to experience fully the pleasure of cinema they had to close down critique, analysis; they had to forget racism. And mostly they did not think about sexism" (1992, 120). In general, to spectate as a Black woman is to willingly forgo at least one aspect of one's identity.
3. Oppositional loving? Black women, fan love, and labor
[3.1] Living as Other in society is why Black women find safe spaces so readily in fandoms that include other Black women, as (Black) fandom is one of many "spaces of agency…for black people, wherein we can both interrogate the gaze of the Other but also look back, and at one another, naming what we see" (hooks 1992, 116). Through fandom, Black female spectators can gather and interact with fan objects together, forming a community based on being Other as both fans and Black women. This creates space for Black women to insert themselves into narratives and create their own visibility in line with their lived realities, speaking from "collective identity" (Jenkins 1992, 23).
[3.2] Early notions of Black female fans' labor can be said to have been invoked in support of Sapphire, a character from Amos 'n' Andy (1951–53) that embodied the angry Black woman stereotype. hooks writes of Black women's reactions to Sapphire, "Grown black women…identified with her frustrations and her woes. They resented the way she was mocked…And in opposition, they claimed Sapphire as their own, as the symbol of that angry part of themselves white folks and black men could not even begin to understand" (1992, 120). This reclamation of the character is a prime example of where the oppositional gaze merges with fandom, for it includes not simply interpreting an image oppositionally but also taking, protecting, and expanding upon a depiction. These are aspects of the labor of Black female fandom.
[3.3] Black women employ fandom for pleasure, advocacy, and resistance. Being a Black female fan of popular media is to accept that, more often than not, it will exclude Black female narratives; thus, Black female fans take the stories they enjoy and integrate their "cultural concerns" (Jenkins 1988, 472) into spaces that were not created for them. This has led to creation of sites like Black Girl Nerds, whose "about" section reads, "Black Girl Nerds is an online publication and multimedia space that is the intersection of geek culture and Black feminism" (Black Girl Nerds, n.d.). Spaces like Black Girl Nerds became necessary for Black women to practice their fandom due to exclusionary practices based on race and gender in fandom.
[3.4] One of the ways in which Black female fans' extra labor comes to fruition is through racebending in fan fiction and art. While racebending sometimes occurs in (trans)media representations of women, usually through racially blind casting, it often does not account for the nuances that come with living life as a Black woman. While there are universal female experiences, there are certain things that are either only possible or not possible when race is factored in. As Kristen J. Warner writes, "Race bending allows for a negotiation between the original actor's performance and the audience's acceptance of the performance" (2015, 39). When Black female fans racebend characters in their fan fiction or art, they put in the labor of carefully depicting the characters as authentically Black, based on their own lived experiences as Black women. Thus, Black female fans insert themselves into a narrative that is not otherwise catered to them; they elect to rework such narratives to include Black women like them, fighting for their right to be represented while also engaging as fans with the texts they love.
[3.5] However, Black female fans often face backlash. They have often been attacked for their acts of (re)insertion. For example, Black female cosplayers have often faced severe backlash for cosplaying as characters originally written as non-Black. They are harassed and often attacked with racial slurs over their portrayal of paler characters. Twitter user @bangantangirls detailed her experience as a cosplayer in a tweet on May 8, 2023, stating, "I was told I'm a monkey and an ugly brown terrorist that should kill myself otherwise they'd take a gun and do it for me because I did a cosplay of a paler character. My experience is felt by many other brown/Black cosplayers." There have also been fan artists who have faced backlash for their reimagining of fictional characters as Black in their art. Black artists outside of fandom have also faced backlash for their portrayals of characters in new adaptations or transmedia franchises. For example, when Halle Bailey was cast as Ariel in Disney's live-action The Little Mermaid (2023), the backlash was instantaneous. Many fans displayed their public disassociation from the new film, with petitions going around and the hashtag #NotMyAriel employed as a tool to campaign against Bailey's casting. Black female fans were forced into a protective role, as they historically were with Sapphire (hooks 1992). As the old saying goes, "heavy is the head that wears the crown," and heavy are the heads of Black female fans as they rise to racist challenges to Black women's visibility, both in media and fans' transformative works.
4. Black female fans in action
[4.1] In keeping with their roles as protectors, the self-proclaimed Iris West Defense Squad (IWDS) was established via a community of Black female fans gathering in defense of Candice Patton's casting as Iris West in the television adaptation of DC Comics' The Flash (2014–23). The origins of this community can be traced back to Tumblr (Warner 2017, 257). In 2014, Patton debuted as one of the earliest cases of race swapping from source material in television. Race swapping for this purpose is the changing of a character from white to Black, as opposed to a character of color being swapped for a white actor. As a Black woman playing an originally white character, she was in a position of vulnerability, and the IWDS was "self-tasked with the responsibilities of protecting and defending the Blackness of the television character as well as the actress who portrays her" (Warner 2017, 253). The Black female fans of The Flash took upon themselves the labor of protection for both West and Patton. Here, Black female fans were driven by what Kristen J. Warner describes as the "dual functions" (253), as their labor was born out of both love for the fan object and Black female fans' resistance against a racist society. Iris West served as an extension of Black female fans, and thus, her protection and elevation was synecdochically equated with the protection and elevation of all Black women.
[4.2] While protecting West/Patton from those who were against the casting, and by extension, Black females and their fandom, the IWDS fought also against the writers, aiming to protect West/Patton from any perceived harm. While the casting of Patton was in its own way a win for Black female fans, with racially blind casting came the issue of misrepresentation of Black women's experiences (Warner 2015). As discussed above, racially blind casting typically does not account for the changes that a different race would bring to a character. While it mostly occurs in roles where race is "not of consequence," changing the race of a character should result in certain changes in characterization. This often places the extra labor of advocacy for accurate representation on the shoulders of the Black female fans, as was the case with ABC's Scandal (2012–18).
[4.3] Scandal was the third program created by Shonda Rhimes to air on ABC. In 2014, ABC made the decision to schedule all three of Rhimes's programs—Grey's Anatomy (2005–), How to Get Away with Murder (2014–20), and Scandal—during a three-hour block on Thursday nights termed Thank God It's Thursday (#TGIT). Two of these three shows featured Black women protagonists, and all of them feature Black women in prominent roles, drawing upon that Black femininity "to create transracial appeal in a way that sublimates Black feminine empowerment as a sort of universal liberated professional womanhood" (Patterson 2018). Rhimes herself is a Black woman, and thus her position as a television producer influential enough to dominate an evening each week situates her as a prime candidate for Black fandom support. #TGIT was so heavily presented under the guise of (Black) femininity, with its characters as well as their creator heavily featured in the campaign; however, the shows—and Rhimes—mostly subverted overt acknowledgments of the influence of race on their Black female characters.
[4.4] There are conflicting accounts of the casting decisions for Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) in Scandal. In a season 1 bonus clip, Shonda Rhimes stated that she had "no preconceived notions" about Pope's appearance (Blackfilmandtv 2012). However, in a 2017 The Hollywood Reporter profile with the Scandal cast and crew, Rhimes and Channing Dungey (ABC president at the time of interview) recalled that Rhimes had always wanted Pope to be Black, as she was based on real-life Black female lawyer Judy Smith (Goldberg 2017). Scandal thus differs from the other shows mentioned here in one crucial aspect: Pope was always influenced by the Black experience, from inspiration to casting. However, Pope was marketed for her womanhood, not her race, leaving a significant part of her identity underserved. For Black female fans, this meant that they were still tasked with filling in the gaps left behind by the creators.
[4.5] One such gap was that of Pope's hair. Hair is of high importance in the Black community, given the history of Black hair in the United States and its correlations with unprofessionalism and uncleanliness. Because Pope is a woman in a position of power in her fictional universe, it can be reasonably inferred that the way in which her hair was presented on the show was important; realistically, she could not sport her natural hair out and about, especially not in the climate of the show's early days, before discrimination against natural hair became a mainstream subject of discussion. However, there were liberties taken with Pope's hair that once again required Black female fans to fill in the gaps. Warner notes that "when Olivia wears her hair in sophisticated, yet impossible-to-create-based-on-her-very-tight-timeframes styles, conversations about her 'magical' hair emerge" (2015, 44). Oftentimes, Pope would engage in activities that Black women are aware would not allow her hair to remain in its straightened and well-kept state; however, the show did not account for Black hair care activities such as donning shower caps or wearing bonnets/silk scarves to sleep (especially with the ever-present silk dress Pope sported).
[4.6] In line with the conversation regarding hair, in my own recent Black female spectatorship experience with Netflix show You, (2018–24) season 4, the state of Marienne's hair oftentimes took me out of the narrative. Marienne—played by Tati Gabrielle and one of only two Black women in the season—was held hostage by Penn Badgley's Joe Goldberg for long enough that she became visibly emaciated. However, her knotless braids remained intact. Each time the character appeared on screen, the absolute lack of change in her hair baffled me. Despite being held in captivity for over a month with no hair care, her hair had not become messy, nor was there any visible growth, a characteristic of knotless braids. As a Black female fan, I decided that Marienne had taken to touching up her own hair. I thus took it upon myself as a fan of the show to make up for its shortcomings in its Black female representation—a labor of love.
[4.7] Due to my affinity for Jenkins, and the fan studies discipline, I consider this article a fannish labor, and in my writing, I stumbled across the exact phenomenon I aimed to describe. I found myself extracting and molding elements of some of the works cited to reach a conclusion that applies to my experiences as a Black female fan and spectator. The field of fan studies has long focused mostly on the experiences of the white fan, and in its diversification efforts, either the female fan or the Black fan, not necessarily Black female fans. The circumstances that arise at the intersection of these two underserved identities remains understudied. I have here combined separate texts on female fans' and Black fans' experiences to provide a clearer picture of Black female fans' experience. The experiences of Black female fans disrupt the idea of fandom as an idyllic space for minoritized groups to thrive, yet these experiences also reveal the persistence of Blackness as a culture even in nondominant spaces. To be a fan is undoubtedly a labor of love; however, to be a Black female fan is to extend labor beyond love, safeguarding survival and relevance.