“It’s My Body and I’ll Show It If I Want To”:
The Politics of Language in the
Autobiographies of Dorothy Dandridge,
Diahann Carroll, and Whoopi Goldberg
Whoopi Goldberg opts for a descriptive discussion of scatology,
feminine hygiene, and sex in her autobiography Book (1997). Along the way,
Goldberg sprinkles in delightful vignettes about her family and home and
provocative political insights as well. Goldberg selects, so to speak, a ^spreadeagled” approach, exercising a kind of agency in relation to her body, given that
her body represents at least a potential source of pleasure for her. Book is a
politics of language, and it compares interestingly to the tantalizing language
used by Dorothy Dandridge and Diahann Carroll in their autobiographies
Everything and Nothing: The Dorothy Dandridge Tragedy with Earl Conrad
(1970) and Diahann! with Ross Firestone (1986). Goldberg’s politics of
language claim a powerful stance in linguistic territories set aside for men.
Generally, “locker room” talk, for example, is in the exclusive realm of the
masculine wherein men generally brag to each other about their sexual prowess
and exploits. Goldberg’s celebrity autobiography jockeys for a space of
linguistic equality as she moves her text into a landscape reserved for men.
Comparatively, Goldberg, as a star, challenges Hollywood’s
prescription for stardom and this challenge complements, if not explains, her
performative autobiographical text. Black women who desired stardom in the
film industry no doubt had to fit a particular idea established by it. As film
historian Donald Bogle notes, the 1940s and the 1950s ushered in an era of
glamour. "During this era,” he states, “Hollywood had very set notions about
beauty standards, to which all female stars were expected to conform. It became
almost a generic beauty loo k. .. ” (Bogle, Dorothy Dandridge 122). This
“generic beauty look" became a mainstay and still operates, though modified, in
contemporary entertainment culture. Popular White actresses such as Greta
Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Jayne Mansfield, and Marilyn Monroe dominated the
scene and set the standard for the White screen goddess as contemporary White
actresses Nicole Kidman, Kate Hudson, Charlize Theron and, more recently,
Scarlett Johansson do today.
Any Black woman in entertainment desiring stardom has to emulate the
industry’s "set notions about beauty standards.” Dandridge embodies the star
image in the 40s and 50s and Carroll carries it through to the nth degree in the
1980s. Whoopi Goldberg, however, slashed Hollywood's standard look in the
1980s and 1990s and, in its stead, offered up to the public a personality and star
image that Audrey Edwards, editor-at-large of Essence magazine, termed as
“[t]he dark-skinned, dreadlocked, gap-toothed, hoodoo-acting woman . .." (58).