Blame It on Black Male Pathology: Why Bella Gonzalez Can’t Just Have a Fatty


During this weekend’s main event, Showtime Pay-Per-View sandwiched eight rounds of anti-climactic boxing between two spectacular events.  If you watched the fight, you saw them: in round 3, Manny Pacquiao hit Shane Mosley with a beautiful straight left that put him on the canvas, and drew the obligatory “Ohhhhh!” from the guys with whom I was watching the fight.

Then, in between rounds 11 and 12, the cameras showed a side-profile shot of Bella Gonzalez, Mosley’s girlfriend.  Comically, the exact same “Ohhhhh!” went up from the fellas at our fight party.

Ours was a real UN meeting: a Filipino, two Mexicans, a Nigerian, a half- Haitian/half-Black Cuban, and me, a Black American, ranging in age from our mid-20’s to early-40’s.  This small United Nations group, though very diverse, came to a quick, decisive, and unanimous proclamation: She’s is FINE!  And she has a helluva (nice posterior).

The rest of the main event paled in comparison (though the undercard was entertaining and boxing is NOT dead, but that’s another article).  Predictably, “Bella Gonzalez” became a trending topic on Twitter.  Another not-so-small ripple in the Twitter universe however, was an equally predictable indictment of Black men and their reactions to Bella Gonzalez.  We were taken to task by an assortment of tweeters – some unpopular, others with many followers and a lot of influence – for our outspoken response to Bella and her curves.  (An important aside here for those who are unfamiliar: Twitter ceased being simply a “place to see what some celebrity ate for lunch” years ago.  It has a powerful, worldwide influence, and it has become the most popular electronic nexus for people, famous or not, to engage in all types of conversations, a wealth of which are stimulating and important).

Here is a representative example from one Twitter user:

“…I wondered if her body wasn’t *ahem* enhanced.  It’s not that she’s not attractive+ But no, I don’t believe had there been an undeniably Black face on that body, she’d be as appreciated”

To them this was yet another example of color-struck Black men, who were giving unearned credence to a Latina (Gonzalez is half-Cuban and half-Mexican), primarily because she was curvaceous but not Black.  Some echoed the above microblogger, lamenting that a darker-skinned Black woman with the same body would have been ignored or summarily dismissed by these Black men.  Others considered our response an example of our fetishization of non-Black women who have Black women’s features (i.e. thick lips, a round bottom, and curvy hips) –

‘she got all of the features y’all want, minus the darker skin and the “you-know-how-Black-women-are” attitude’, they implied.

While there are legitimate criticisms of some Black male behaviors, the problem I have is that the most common and accepted diagnosis ends up being the pathologizing of Black males in general – meaning that the very definition of being Black and male, with almost no exceptions, is to engage in abhorrent behaviors.

Even though misogyny and fetishization, violence, and greed are just as American as our stubborn sense of freedom, determination, and national pride, Black American males are the only American group for whom the former are considered instinctive behaviors.  In fact, for those who subscribe to the pathological view of Black males, they are our only intrinsic behaviors.  And for the “few” Black men fortunate enough to have the ability to act outside of our faulty nature?  We are one 3-second camera shot of a curvy Latina booty from reverting back to our “normal” ways.

As a researcher and a scientist, I love Occam’s razor.  It tells us that ‘the simplest solution is the best one’.  It doesn’t mean that it’s always the right one, but it often helps us ‘cut away’ all of the complexity that people want to add to a solution.  Applied in this case, when brothers saw Bella Gonzalez stand up, we weren’t fetishizing her, or expressing some subconscious dislike of Black women or ourselves, we really just thought she had a nice ass!


3 responses to “Blame It on Black Male Pathology: Why Bella Gonzalez Can’t Just Have a Fatty”

  1. The point is, it’s fake though, just like some of the black women on that horrible basketball wives show, just like Kim K, just like a lot of women. It’s fake. Non-black women wear hair extensions, but only black women get talked about for it, when a non-black woman has a nice butt and it’s fake she gets praised and black women get treated in a misogynistic way. It’s the way of the world. I once read a black man put that Spanish women are a black man’s weakness and black women are his strength. What sense does that make? I’ve hear Latina women tell me that a black man has told her she has the “upper hand” over black women because she’s Latina. that also makes no sense. People will tell black women you’re a beautiful black woman (I’ve been told that), why can’t I just be a beautiful woman? A black man can be with a white woman but let a black woman be with a white man, all hell will break loose. That’s just the way it is. Black men praise non-black women publicly (just like in this article) for having the same attributes, and assets (pun intended) that black women have had for a millennium. But let a black woman rock a weave, they’re ratchet but a white, Latina, Asian girl can rock a fake butt and “she’s fine”. Go figure…Got a little off topic, but it’s all true. 🙂

  2. The above is very true. I’m a Hispanic make and I once dated a beautiful African American female and All Hell Broke loose with her, no one said anything to me.

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