Last night I spent 90 minutes of my life laughing, saying a few “amens” and gasping with my mouth lingering open and jaw almost to the floor. The long anticipated and doubly hyped Being Mary Jane premiered on BET. At first glance, the promos left me with no clue as to what the film is about. All I knew, I was hearing the tune of “I’ve Got a Man” by D.C.’s own Maimouna Youssef and the few seconds of the segment was showing a fierce and troubled looking Gabrielle Union. Little did I know the treat that was waiting to quench the thirst of many in a dessert where images of black women are skewed and one-dimensional. As fellow journalist (and Ward 7 resident) Lottie Joiner points out; Being Mary Jane presents a character with complexities that can resonate with a large number of black women.
Joiner writes:
“The new BET scripted series Being Mary Jane starts off with the much-quoted statistic that 42 percent of African-American women are single, but before you roll your eyes, you should note that it quickly says this is only one woman’s story.
Gabrielle Union plays the lead character, Mary Jane, a beautiful, successful, well-educated single woman. She drives a fancy car, lives in a beautiful home, and has a great job as a news anchor. But we soon learn her world is not perfect—far from it. Indeed, one minute Mary Jane is laughing with her gay best friend and the next she’s sitting on the edge of her tub crying her eyes out.”
Being Mary Jane is from the writer and producer Mara Brock Akil, best known for her work as the creator of the TV sitcom Girlfriends. Girlfriends centered on four female friends – Joan, Maya, Lynn and Toni – in their late 20s to early 30s and their honorary “girlfriend” William living their lives in Los Angeles. The sitcom presented varying degrees of dynamics between and within each character that made them funny, smart, quirky, honest and loaded with flaws, but likable even though their flaws may have tested your patience. The fan base was sad to see its abrupt end and still vie for its return. While Akil has moved on to have other successful hits in TV and film, including the dramedy The Game, we (black women) have been crying out for more images and stories of us and not just the hum drum of being fallen by the wayside. Yes we have our girl Olivia Pope and even the 2011 release of the film Pariah provided a missing voice from the LGBT community, but we need more. And as if on cue, Akil brings us Mary Jane Paul.
To start, I will say I was fussing a bit with BET for airing the movie at 10:30 pm. – why so late? However, after the first scene kicked into high gear with Mary Jane letting in her drunk booty call, I understood this ain’t no prime time flick. As the movie went on there were some very raw and honest scenes. A few of them had my Twitter timeline jumping.
Scene 1: Mary Jane is sitting on the toilet, presumably taking a dump, but she is fiddling with her phone and makes a call to a friend.
Scene 2. The “ho-bath” scene: In which Mary Jane is in the ladies room of her job “freshening up” her private areas and such in preparation to meet up with a fella she’s been avoiding, but is letting her emotions get the best of her and she caves to go see him. Within this same scene, she pops out a vibrator and there’s a mild masturbation scene, or as we call it in the dating world, she was pre-gaming. Pre-gaming is taking that edge off before going on a date so you don’t end up sleeping with a person you know you have no business being caught horizontal with.
Scene 3. The cliff hanger scene: In which she really gives into the guy she had been avoiding only to do the ultimate deceptive move of …..using a turkey baster.
Yet these are only parts of Mary Jane Paul. You see her interact with her family and how dysfunctional situations are when it concerns her relatives. Like so many black women, Mary Jane is the glue that is trying to keep things in tact. She has an ailing mother, a brother that is essentially freeloading and another brother with a pregnant teen daughter. In the midst of this, Mary Jane has her own desires of having it all. She has the material wealth, but no husband or child of her own. In a word, it boils down to Mary Jane just wants that one man to LOVE her and her only.
While a lot of the scenes hit right at home for me, there is one in particular that really sent me over the moon and I appreciate it so much. Mary Jane is a TV news anchor. There is a scene when she is talking with her editor, who is a Latina, about the assignments she’s been getting and ones she’s pitched and has been rejected. Mary Jane in a sense stood up to her editor in fighting for stories that matter. As a black female journalist I KNOW first hand how hard it is to get a story told; stories that are so passionate to me, especially ones that concern the black community and even more so… the black community in local D.C. I’ve heard the same sentiment shared from fellow black journalists (print and broadcast). It’s a tough world to push our stories through, especially when we want to share and inform from the point of view of our community that is only seen in one or a few shades and not in many shades as possible. It’s so hard, but we fight on.
For the duration of the movie I saw my friends, associates and strangers chime in on social media that they are Mary Jane in some form or manner. I know which parts of me I saw in Mary Jane. I saw my old self and parts of me that has grown up. While I’m not married nor do I have the material wealth; I am well into my 30s, a mom and for the past six years been in a committed relationship. Yet, sometimes I wonder if I’m in a safety net when it comes to my relationship, because being completely single and dating is tiresome. The dating world seems like it’s a minefield. You have to be cautious about contracting a STD, who is telling the truth about their marital status, who is telling the truth period, who is only out to hurt you, and etc. etc.
When I read the damning articles that paint this Armageddon-like world for the successful black woman that hasn’t settled down and hear fleeting stories of another’s experience I breathe a sign of relief and ponder could I really hack it out there alone. I’d probably just live my life in abstinence and force myself to be non-sexual as possible (OK…joke.) My 20s were rough enough, especially when men were thrown into the mix. I don’t want any of that to carry over into the now.
For the most part, most of my close friends are married or in some kind of long term relationship. Yet, when a single friend shares some heart breaking experience or her worries, I try to ease her pain by reminding her to enjoy life as it is and let things happen naturally when it comes to guys and eventually having a baby. Then seconds later I want to eat my words, because it feels easy to say such when I not only have someone, but I have my kid. I know the pain of wanting that one special person to love you and making the wrong person be that special one and having it all go to hell. I know the struggle of fighting off lustful desires. I know and have repeated the conversation inside of my head and on the outside with others the concept of “having it all.” I’ve driven myself crazy wondering if I’m really the marrying kind at all and trying to figure out what exactly do I want. But here’s a thought, what if we thought we knew what we want only be shown and given something or someone much more grander than our thoughts could even conceive?
I’ve long since stopped reading the articles that spew statistics and have a “woe is the successful black woman” tone. I think most of my friends have too. While the struggles and pain of the single life still roll on, I think most of us allow the lessons we get from each experience, have a cry or two followed by laughter, good food and cocktails with our friends and continue to live on.
Though the movie aired last night, Being Mary Jane the TV series is set to air in January2014. I’m not quick to call Mary Jane Paul the black Bridget Jones or Carrie Bradshaw, but she does speak a universal language that’s share by her fellow fiction characters. It just so happens that she’s speaking it from gorgeous brown skin.
Mahoganie: Musings East of the Anacostia River 
Renee
July 3, 2013
Excellent review, can’t wait to see it!
Krissy K.
July 28, 2013
I love your style of writing!