She’s the sassy, overweight, mammy archetype without an ounce of sex appeal. She bakes cakes, fries chicken and will not hesitate to slap you upside the head if you step out of line. While she was sometimes married the husband was a couch dwelling imbecile that she waited on hand and foot. This is however, not a gesture of love but more an act of sympathy because he was too dumb to take care of himself . Sound familiar?

Fast forward to 2013, and the perception of Black women in media has shifted somewhat. Now we are high powered execs with fancy cars and huge houses. We are doctors, lawyers, and entrepreneurs. We are Joan Clayton, Eva Dandridge, and some of us are Olivia Pope.The beautiful, educated Black woman who has it all together but her love life is in shambles. We’ve all heard the statistics. Black women are enrolling in college at a higher rate than any other race or ethnic group but remain largely unmarried or so the media would have you believe. 70 percent of Black women will never marry.

Lies! 70 percent of Black women between the age of 25-29 never marry. Black women marry, we just marry later in life. This is not reflected on TV or in the movie theaters. They’d much rather send us on a wild goose chase looking for a man, any man who will have us I.e. Baggage Claim.

While the image of Black women has changed, one stereotype has remained the same. The misnomer that Black women are not capable of a successful and loving relationship. Recently there has been a lot of talk about ratings phenomenon Scandal. Some see it as another stereotype that Black women have been saddled with, the new millennium bed wench. Scandal has become a very polarizing issue in the Black community. It has been vilified by some Black men and romanticized by many Black women who rarely see someone that looks like them being an object of desire on television. I must admit I haven’t watched the show since the first season. While I personally have no problem with Scandal’s storyline I can understand the frustration. Perhaps if there were more Black women on TV to choose from there would not be so much focus placed on Olivia Pope’s character who is a White man’s mistress, Presidential status notwithstanding.