Not Fast, Just Failed

They didn’t protect us. They labeled us.

And then blamed us for surviving in the only language we were taught—
a language where worth sounds like whistles, attention looks like danger,
and your power is tied to how many people want to consume you.

📉 Let’s Get the Facts Straight

• 1 in 4 Black girls will be sexually abused before the age of 18.
  (Source: Black Women’s Blueprint)

• Black girls are viewed as less innocent and more adult than white girls by the age of 5.
  (Georgetown Law study, 2017)

• A study from the NAACP showed that Black girls are 5 times more likely to be suspended from school for “disruptive behavior”—aka, simply existing in their bodies.

We weren’t “fast.”
We were hyper-judged. Hyper-exposed. Hyper-policed.
We were taught our hips were dangerous. Our thighs were weapons.
And our silence? Expected.

📺 Pop Culture Been Knew

Let’s talk about how pop culture made this mess look normal:

• Kelis was 17 dating Nas, a man in his mid-20s.

• Aaliyah was 15 when R. Kelly married her—and the industry covered it up.

• In Baby Boy, Jody’s toxic masculinity is romanticized—and Yvette becomes the blueprint for struggling Black love.

• Even Beyoncé, our queen, didn’t escape it—her grown-ass relationship with Jay-Z began when she was just 19 and we clapped instead of asking questions.

And today?
We got artists like Ice Spice, Sukihana, and Sexy Red reclaiming sexual power, but still constantly reduced to “ratchet,” “nasty,” or “doing too much.”
Meanwhile, white counterparts like Doja (pre-cancellation) and Kim K get labeled iconic, liberated, and sexy in control.

So let’s be clear—hypersexualization is not empowerment.
It’s colonized perception mixed with internalized survival.
And when we don’t interrogate it, we perform empowerment instead of actually feeling safe in our erotic expression.

Full Circle: Reclaiming Our Image

So what do we do now?

We name the truth:
That we were shaped by silence. Blamed for what happened to us.
We reclaim our sensuality not as performance—but as presence.
We stop laughing off trauma and start saying:
“I was never fast. I was failed.”

And then, we teach the next generation:
Your body is yours.
You don’t owe anyone sexy.
You don’t need to be palatable or pretty or polite.

You need to be free.