Filed under: News
From USA Today:
I really hope what Sophia Nelson is saying will muffle the voice of NeNe Leakes, whose growing presence on TV surreality shows sullies the image of black women.
A former stripper, Leakes is a hulking, loud-mouth whose profanity-laced outburst on a recent episode of NBC's The Celebrity Apprentice was the most appalling of her bad-girl acts on a genre of TV shows that falsely claims to reflect real life. She's also a mainstay of Bravo's Real Housewives of Atlanta, where she regularly behaves like an overgrown schoolyard bully on estrogen.
Nelson is the author of a new book that seeks to debunk the image of accomplished black women as angry and unfulfilled - a stereotype that Leakes feeds. While Nelson doesn't say her book is the antidote to Leakes and the proliferation of other dysfunctional, angry black women who populate TV surreality shows built around black female characters like her, I hope it is.
Ghetto bravado
In a recent Celebrity Apprentice episode, Leakes, who rose to TV fame as a well-to-do Atlanta housewife in the Bravo show, confronted fellow black contestant Star Jones with an expletive-laced tirade that had to make a lot of television viewers cringe.
"You talked a good game. Now bring your street game, because that's what I'm bringing," Leakes said to Jones in a ghetto bravado that she flashes just about every time a camera focuses in on her. And usually for no good reason, Leakes threatens to pounce upon someone.
Read more here.