Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Kirsten West Savali: Is Paula Patton a Black Trophy Wife?




By: Kirsten West Savali, Your Black World

If I were Paula Patton, I would be embarrassed.
In an exclusive interview with Essence Magazine, the Mission Impossible 4 actress’s husband of six years, Robin Thicke, managed to not only divulge intimate details of their sex life, but to paint his wife as nothing more than a hyper-sexual, replacement mommy-figure who introduced him to the world of Blackness.

Patton, through no malicious—but still very purposeful—intent of her husband’s, was cast as the Black Trophy Wife, valued because she grants him an authenticity, an entree’ into the world of soul, funk and R&B that he would not have been granted otherwise. He maneuvers her from her rightful place at his side, and pushes her to the front of his agenda to seduce the Black community into accepting him as our own —that is, when his “mojo and swag” aren’t being occupied giving Patton “double-digit” orgasms.

He also reveals in the interview that she calls him ‘Daddy’ and he calls her ‘Mama’ because their respective parents didn’t play important roles in their lives, so they became each other’s replacement. For some reason, he doesn’t seem to realize that when compounded by race in a traumatized society his words are toxic. Their twisted dynamic is eerily reminiscent of a slave-owner/Mammie dichotomy and co-dependency—exacerbated by racial stereotypes—is neither attractive, nor romantic.

I enjoy Robin Thicke’s music, but I have no illusions that he will ever be Donny Hathaway or Marvin Gaye, or even Eric Benet or Rapheal Saadiq. Then again, neither does he, because according to him, his contemporaries are “Drizzy Drake and Chris Brown.” He doesn’t even take himself seriously.

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