No Fats No Femmes No Dark Skins

It’s 5 minutes before the return of season’s 2 Empire and I’m feeling some type of way. I’m seeing a problem that I think a lot of us are scared to say without looking like we’re jealous or hating. Sometime this week a Facebook friend of mine shared a blog about black representation in gay media. Something I truly understood and have noticed for quite some time. I took it even further and started to think about the representation of black gay men as well. I’m going to explain this in my perspective and what I see as a fellow content creator.

Sometimes I feel as though it’s a struggle being a dark skinned black man. It doesn’t stop there. Being a size which is sometimes looked down upon in the gay community is a factor too. Let’s first start with the color thing because I’ve been fighting this battle before I even knew it. I’ve always noticed from the LGBT clubs and party flyers that the men I see never really looked like myself. I thought well maybe because they need to use them to bring attention to the event. Everyone loves a man with a 6-pack right? Then I noticed that all of the men on them usually always looked a certain way. They all have the same color skin and build, like the goddess of Tumblr. They seem to be very masculine and a lighter skin complexion.

Have you ever gone on one of the so-called “sexy gay men” Instagram pages? Ever notice that every 20 or 30 pictures they sprinkle a dash of a darker skinned male? The sexy couple ones too but that’s another subject since some of us believe that to be in a successful relationship both individuals have to be fine as f*ck. LGBT web series are another one but not all. No Shade… but I asked myself and some of my friends “Why don’t we look like these men?”. So much that when people tell me about a particular web series I ask “What grabbed your attention?”. They can’t answer and start stuttering trying to gather there lies together. They already know where I’m going with this. Not knocking any content creators for their work but I’m just calling what I see from my eyes. It seems that some of you are only interested in a certain type of man to be featured in your projects. You can do what you want with your project and I can only sit back and tell you about yourself.

My question is this…. Do you have a problem featuring men that look and talk like me? Do you all get tired of portraying this “trade” image for views and attention? We complain about the representation of gay black men on tv. Saying that they always end up being make-up artists, stylist and assistants but when given the opportunity some of us don’t even try to feature a diverse group of black gay men. Why is that?