UMTHALO WAM UYANDISINDA

BAG LADYS

The inspiration behind this is taken from the Eryka Badu song- bag lady
This song is inspired by Ntozake Shanges’s play “ For colours girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf” (1975). The play tells the story of 7 womxn who are only identified by the colour of their dress. Each colour representing an issue like rape, domestic violence and abortion that the women may have experienced.
The imagery of bag lady in the video we can see bluntly while watching five womxn carrying bags, they are not dressed regularly with jeans and a shirt. Each one has on a certain colour wearing some sort of dress . We can see that each colour defines the women with the issue she may have.
The imagery we get when you’re not watching the video is one of a womxn carrying too many bags and going somewhere, which she probably would get there. Using the bags as a metaphor.
I have re-watched both the music video and the movie and what I was highlighted for me is that this one colour type thinking of oppression wasn’t intersectional feminism because one can experience different intersecting oppressions at once therefore one cannot be represented by one colour eg myself I have been raped, I have suffered from depression, etc. With that in mind, which colour would you give me? I exist as a collage of colours, some brighter than others at different times.
So basically I want to explore an intersectional approach of the concept behind “for coloured girls who considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf” and “bag lady”