You Have To Show Strength An Exploration of Gender Race and Depression

"You Have to Show Strength": An Exploration of Gender, Race, and Depression
Author(s): Tamara Beauboeuf-Lafontant

Source: Gender and Society, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Feb., 2007), pp. 28-51
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27640945
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"YOU HAVE TO SHOW STRENGTH"
An Exploration of Gender,
Race, and Depression
TAMARA BEAUBOEUF-LAFONTANT
DePauw University
Investigating the possible overlap between depressed and presumably strong Black
women, this article maintains that women's experiences of depression are both gendered
and raced. A review of clinical and popular literatures examining Black women 's experi
ences of depression as well as findings from an interview study with a nonclinical sample
of 44 Black women suggest that the discourse of being strong may normalize a distress
inducing level of selflessness and powerlessness among such women. Implications of this
study include the need to consider the racially specific ways in which women are placed
at risk for and experience depression.
Keywords: Black women; gender; depression; race; voice
Women'sdepression
overrepresentation
has led to interrogationsin experiencing
of the gendered facets of and
mental being treated for
distress. Particularly highlighted have been societal perceptions of women
as irrational and biologically predisposed to particular mental problems
relative to men (Busfield 1996; Chesler 1982; Martin 1987), the gendered
expectations attendant on being a so-called good woman that may place
women at increased risk for such distress (Crowley Jack 1991; Nazroo,
Edwards, and Brown 1998; Walters, Avotri, and Charles 2003), and gender
norms that generally encourage women to express discontent and strain
through help-seeking rather than acting-out behavior (Falicov 2003). This
work links depression to disempowering gendered social relations.
The bulk of theoretical and empirical sociological work on depression has
focused on the experiences of white, middle-class women (Brooks-Bertram
AUTHOR'S NOTE: The author would like to acknowledge the thoughtful and construc
tive feedback from the anonymous reviewers and the editor, Christine Williams, as well as
the ongoing encouragement of Dr. Thomas S. Dickinson.
GENDER & SOCIETY, Vol. 21 No. 1, February 2007 28-51

DOI: 10.1177/0891243206294108
? 2007 Sociologists for Women in Society
28
Beauboeuf-Lafontant / "YOU HAVE TO SHOW STRENGTH" 29
1996; Brown, Brody, and Stoneman 2000; Cannon, Higginbotham, and Guy
1989). However, sexism is only one of many structural risk factors for
depression, which include poverty, low education, racism, immigration, and
exposure to violence. Thus, less structurally empowered women?poor
women, women of color, and immigrants?largely experience depression at
rates equal to or in excess of their white, middle-class counterparts (Barbee
1994; Edge and Rogers 2005; Schreiber 1996; Schreiber, Noerager
Stern, and Wilson 1998; http://orwh.od.nih.gov/pubs/wocEnglish2002.pdf).
Approximately one-quarter of American women will experience depression
in their lives, and about 9 percent are depressed at any time. Although 20 per
cent of depressed Americans receive treatment, as few as 7 percent of Black
women do so (Mitchell and Herring 1998, 4). Such findings suggest the need
to investigate depression as a gendered as well as a raced phenomenon.
To understand the sociocultural context surrounding Black women and
their experiences of depression, this article draws on two literatures?a
feminist, conceptualization of depression as a sustained experience of silenc
ing thoughts and desires deemed at odds with normative femininity, and
Black feminist critiques of "being strong" as culturally specific feminine
expectation placed on Black women. The article then reports on a qualitative
study undertaken to examine the possible continuum between "normal" and
depressed Black women. The research specifically explored how being
strong encourages the embrace and reproduction of particular attitudes and
behaviors among Black women, and the signs of self-silencing that many
interviewees revealed as they struggled to adhere to the mandate of strength.
A FEMINIST CONCEPTUALIZATION OF
DEPRESSION: THE SILENCING PARADIGM
Seeking to explain the fact that women are overwhelmingly the victims of
depression, feminist theorists and researchers have argued that its incidence is
tied to normative femininity rather than to aspects of women's biological
makeup as the medical model asserts (Crowley Jack 1991, 1999a; Schreiber
1998, 2001; Schreiber and Hartrick 2002; Stoppard 2000). While not denying
a biological basis to depression, feminist scholars focus on the social realities
that have largely been underappreciated and undertheorized in the etiology of
such mental distress. Thus, in the silencing paradigm, much attention is placed
on prevailing standards of feminine goodness. That is, normative expectations
for women insist that they be overly attuned to others' needs, often at great
cost to their own goals, desires, and feelings. In the process of living up to
these cultural images, women may engage in self-silencing as they keep
30 GENDER & SOCIETY / February 2007
important aspects of their experiences hidden from those around them. They
fear that significant others will not accept their discourse-discrepant feelings,
thoughts, and needs (Crowley Jack 1991, 1999a, 1999b).
The silencing paradigm maintains that depression is a psychosocial
process in which women "mourn" a self that has become "submerged,
excluded, or weakened" under relationships that they are socialized to view
as central to their social acceptance and critical to their personal well-being
(Crowley Jack 1991, 30). The paradigm further asserts that while standards
of goodness "vary by gender, ethnicity, and social context," they typically are
drawn from cultural discourses that, once internalized, exert a moral force
that judges and condemns those thoughts and feelings that women experi
ence as authentic and grounded in their actual experiences (Crowley Jack
1999a, 223). The onset of depressive episodes, then, is essentially a period in
which women become voiceless or fractured (Schreiber 1998) from doubt
ing and repressing private thoughts that are at odds with the forms of femi
ninity that they are pressured to take on to be considered good women
(Crowley Jack 2003). Within the silencing paradigm, recovery from depres
sion becomes a process of r?int?gration, redefinition, and resistance during
which women critically sift through cultural messages to determine which
they will embrace and which others they will reject as "the not me" (Schreiber
1996). Mental health and Wellness therefore depend on a woman's realizing
that the discursive sociocultural representation of her womanhood fails to
incorporate her reality. Although largely developed from the accounts of
white, North American women, the silencing paradigm of depression pre
sents a trajectory from normative womanhood to mental distress that could
incorporate a diversity of gendered experiences. To this end, the next section
identifies the discourse of "being strong" as a potentially critical component
of how Black women experience gender and depression.
CONTROLLING IMAGES OF BLACK WOMANHOOD
The dominant society has never viewed Black women as sympathetic

or normatively feminine figures. Instead, it has created several "controlling
images" (Hill Collins 2000) or unidimensional representations of Black
womanhood to naturalize their social subordination. Stereotypes of sharp
tongued, easily dismissed Sapphires; large, asexual, all-giving Mammies; or
lazy, fertile welfare queens, among others, have sought to undermine the
humanity of this group and thereby minimize attention to the inequalities it
experiences (Gillespie 1984; Hill Collins 2000; hooks 1981). Despite being
socially pervasive, these fabrications are largely renounced by contemporary
Black women and viewed, correctly, as hegemonic ruses for limiting their
worldviews and life chances (Hill Collins 2000; Mitchell and Herring 1998).
During the past 30 years, the concept of a strong Black woman has gar
nered attention among Black feminists as yet another problematic controlling
image that, unlike the others, has high status within both Black communities
and the larger society (Gillespie 1984; hooks 1981; Irvin Painter 1997;
Morgan 1999; Scott 1991; Townsend Gilkes 2001; Wallace [1978] 1990).
The idea of strength is typically viewed as an honorable alternative amid the
denigrating stereotypes generated by the larger society. Foregrounding Black
women's survival of enslavement and continued socioeconomic marginal
ization, the strength discourse gathers its authority not from empirical inves
tigation but from contrasting Black women to normatively feminine, white,
middle-class women. In this contrast, historical figures such as S?journer
Truth and Harriet Tubman, as well as Black women generally, acquire an
iconic quality in lay and academic imaginations.
I argue that the construct of strength is rooted in a set of problematic
assumptions: that strong Black women are the stark and deviant opposites
of weak and appropriately feminine white women, that strength is a nat
ural quality of Black women and a litmus test for their womanhood, and
that being strong accurately characterizes Black women's motivations and
behaviors. To question strength as a social construct is to investigate
whose interests it serves, to ask what other qualities may co-exist with it,
and to be open to commonalities among as well as differences between
Black women and women from other ethnic groups. It is to explore the
social processes that often depict Black women as liberated from tradi
tional white norms of femininity while such women continue to experi
ence poverty, violence, and illness at rates that exceed those of their
so-called fragile white sisters.
Despite often trenchant critiques of the image and discourse of strength
(Gillespie 1984; Morgan 1999; Neale Hurston 1937; Wallace [1978] 1990),
little empirical work exists that identifies the impact of these expectations
on contemporary Black women. Significantly, however, a growing clinical
literature describes and implicates strength as a problematic discourse of
gender within its accounts of depression among Black women.
BLACK WOMEN, DEPRESSION, AND BEING STRONG

Blues about stress and strain could be the Sisters National Anthem. The
only time some of us take a break is when we break down.
?Taylor (2002, 9)
The past decade has witnessed a growing autobiographical and clinical

literature focused on the experiences of depressed Black women. This
literature has taken both medical and psychosocial approaches to concep
tualizing depression among Black women. Significantly, across these the
oretical frameworks, being strong consistently emerges as a culturally
distinctive aspect of Black women's experiences of depression (Boyd
1998; Clark Amankwaa 2003b; Danquah 1998; Greene 1996; Jones and
Shorter-Gooden 2003; Martin 2002; Mitchell and Herring 1998). Despite
the insights of this work, left relatively unaddressed is whether and how
being strong operates as a critical link between normative and distressed
Black womanhood.
Within the autobiographical literature, strength is likened to a perfor
mance and a fa?ade rather than an honest reflection of Black women's
experiences. Depressed women describe their strength as a "masquerade"
that they come to believe is "real" (Taylor 1995, 58). Habitually "don[ning]
our 'strong Black woman' armor" (Taylor 1998b, 107) belies their exhaus
tion, frustration, anger, and eventual depressive episodes. As a perfor
mance, being strong encourages Black women to adopt an extensive and
potentially self-negating caretaking role to others. As one author asserts
regarding her own bouts of depression and those she has witnessed in other
accomplished Black women, depression is a selfless end to "lives so filled
with doing1 we don't notice the growing emptiness inside until it overtakes
us" (Taylor 1998a, 71).
Voicing a similar concern for the often hidden, overwrought, and crum
bling inner world of depressed Black women, authors Charisse Jones and
Kumea Shorter-Gooden (2003, 124-25) coin the term "Sisterella Complex"
to dramatize the capacity of the strength discourse to mask a loss of self
under extreme other-directedness: "Sisterella suffers quietly. ... If you're
trying to identify depression in Black women, one of the first things to look
for is a woman who is working very hard and seems disconnected from her
own needs." Such caretaking extends beyond immediate family, to include
kin and coworkers, and is rooted in the view of Black women as "mules of
the world" (Neale Hurston 1937) who can and should endure more strain
than, and for, others.
In addition to the dissembling and heavy caretaking expectations of
strength, clinician Marilyn Martin (2002, 86-87) draws attention to the
assumption that struggle must contextualize and validate Black women's
lives.
For many of us, life is similar to doing hard time. Like prisoners on a chain
gang, day in and day out, we are driven by raw survival. We saw our mothers
and grandmothers do their time, and believe our lot will be the same. No
hope for release now, no hope for it later.
Doing hard time requires a lot of toughness, and we imagine that we
have plenty of that. Aren't we all Super Black Women? But that image, as
I've said, is as much a curse as it is a blessing. It drives us to meet our oblig
ations and to produce, but along with keeping us busy, it keeps us numb
enough to shut out the inner voices of pain, rejection, and rage.
Martin suggests that aspiring to be strong or a superwoman emerges as a cop

ing strategy for managing unmet childhood needs. It is reinforced by com
munity "myths" that maintain that Black women do not get depressed and do
not require assistance to manage their difficult lives. In a similar vein, psy
chotherapist Julia Boyd (1998, 7, 23-24) concludes from analyses of her own
experiences of clinical depression and those of her clients that "the majority
of our personal and collective validation is related to our need to be perceived
as strong . . . [and] we become so used to putting on a brave front that we've
honestly forgotten how to evaluate the quality of our lives based on anything
other than the level of struggle we have to deal with every day."
Writers and social researchers maintain that in addition to these internal
ized beliefs about self and living that both encourage and mask depressive
episodes, Black women must struggle against the racialization of depression
as a white illness (Boyd 1998; Clark Amankwaa 2003a), even as they are
encouraged to racialize struggle as a central manifestation of being authen
tically Black. Meri Nana-Ama Danquah (1998, 20) shrewdly analyzes this
intertwining of the strength and depression discourses that left her, a
depressed Black woman, a literal contradiction in terms: Unlike white men,
whose depression is often "characterized... as a sign of genius"; white
women, "who are depicted as idle, spoiled, or just plain hysterical"; and
Black men, who are "demonized and pathologized", when a Black woman
suffers from a mental disorder, "the overwhelming opinion is that she is
weak. And weakness in black women is intolerable."
Such intolerance to seeing strong Black women as having needs
(read weaknesses) surfaced when Danquah (1998, 19-20) discussed her
depression with others. From a white woman, she received the "sarcastic"
response, "Black women and depression? . . . Isn't that kinda redun
dant? . . . Don't get me wrong. . . . It's just that when black women start
going on Prozac, you know the whole world is falling apart." Claiming that
Black women are the last defense against human (read white) suffering and
therefore the least entitled to fall apart, this racist response was paralleled by
the lack of acknowledgment Danquah received from members of the Black
community: "'Girl, you've been hanging out with too many white folk';
'What do you have to be depressed about? If our people could make it
through slavery, we can make it through anything'; 'Take your troubles to
Jesus, not no damn psychiatrist'" (1998, 21). Thus, the discourses of
strength and depression?the first emphasizing Black women's distinctive
ness from white women, the second constructing such distress as largely a
white women's problem?reinforce each other to deny both the existence
and experience of depression among Black women.
Taken together, these accounts strongly implicate the sociocultural dis
course of being strong as setting the scene not only for depression but for
its denial, and as occasioning a denial not only in the Black community
and the larger society but among Black women themselves. The linking of
depression with the discourse of strength resonates with feminist asser
tions of the continuum between emotional distress and normative white,
middle-class femininity. However, as suggested earlier in this article, lit
tle empirical work?beyond analyses of personal experiences?examines
the normative ideals of Black femininity to reveal how being strong takes
form in the lives and minds of Black women. In an effort to examine the
possible continuum between normative and distressed Black femininity,
subsequent sections of this article report on a qualitative study focused on
exploring the presence and implications of the strength discourse in a non
clincal sample of Black women.
METHOD
To investigate the possible relationship between constructions of strong

Black womanhood and the experiences of silencing and selflessness sug
gested in the clinical literature on women's experiences of depression,
I undertook an interview study with a nonclinical, convenience sample of
44 working- and middle-class Black women between 2000 and 2005.
Advertised as an investigation of the meaning of womanhood and beauty
for Black women, the study recruited interviewees via flyers placed in a
university in the southwestern region of the United States and by word of
mouth shared through work and social networks in midwestern and south
eastern communities. Interviewees ranged in age from 19 to 67, with a
mean of 35 years. Lasting between 30 minutes and 2 hours, interviews
were audiotaped and transcribed.
As a Black woman sensitized to the fact that controlling images rather
than accurate understandings of Black women's lives are prevalent in the
sociological literature, I expressed to the women that I viewed them as
experts who could inform me about how Black women experience their
lives. Consequently, I took an "active" and "Socratic" approach to the
interviewing to "uncover assumptions, to make explicit" their viewpoints
and knowledge (Bellah et al. 1985, 304, 305). Despite my shared racial
designation with the women, I still encountered some hesitation among
them as they spoke about the painful and hidden aspects of living up to the
image of strength. However, a few women noted that what they did share
with me was due to our common experiences as Black women.
The interviews began with the women discussing the first three traits
that came to mind when thinking about being a Black woman. Subsequent
interview questions inquired about whether they had heard the term
"strong Black woman" and what it meant to them, how they were viewed
by others and how they reacted to those perceptions, and how they defined
depression and whether it was an experience that Black women had.
Because I took an open-ended approach to interviewing, most questions
were follow-ups to the traits, metaphors, and experiences the interviewees
associated with being a Black woman.
While not generalizable to the population of Black women at large, the
data gathered resonate with many of the themes regarding strength noted
in the clinical literature, suggesting that the discourse of strength is in fact
a prominent aspect of Black women's individual experiences of gender.
Moreover, in the course of the interviews, women made reference to the
existence of a strength mandate within the lives of women kin and friends,
further pointing toward strength as an expectation found throughout social
classes and age groups of Black women.
In collecting and analyzing the data, I was interested in several ques
tions: whether being strong was shorthand for gender socialization, how
strength might encourage the embrace and reproduction of particular atti
tudes and behaviors among Black women, and the extent to which indi
vidual women evidenced distress as they sought to adhere to the mandate
of being strong. Thus, I employed both grounded theory and voice
centered tools of data analysis. Drawing on grounded theory methods
(Glaser and Strauss 1967), I engaged in multiple readings of the transcrip
tions to ascertain whether commonalities existed in how the women
described their experiences of gender. Moving from the generative open
coding to the more focused axial and selective codings, I found that the
concepts of strength and being a strong Black woman were evident across
the sample. Furthermore, two core categories of strength emerged: hard
ship as a cornerstone of Black womanhood and the intensification of fem
inine demands to be selfless caretakers of others.
Once the data suggested that the discourse of strength was a recognizable
sociocultural expectation among the interviewees, I sought to ascertain
how the women positioned themselves in the narratives of strength they
told. That is, to what extent did the discourse of strength suffice as an
explanatory mechanism for the women's individual experiences of gen
der? To this end, I drew on the Listening Guide, a feminist, voice-centered
analytical tool (Brown and Gilligan 1991; Gilligan et al. 2003). Through
a set of guided readings, the Listening Guide focuses attention on both
the content (metaphors, recurring images, narratives) and the format of
speech (disavowals, changes in volume, and contradictions) to identify
how individual speakers mark their proximity to and distance from cul
tural discourses. This aspect of the analysis led to the finding that many of
the Black women interviewed struggled to embody strength in their inter
actions with others in their homes, in their communities, and in the pub
lic sphere. As a result, their words, shifts in topic and pronouns, and
hesitations revealed a gap between social expectations and their desires.
Attending to this gap helped me to see that "internalization" was a process
several named for their attempts to hide strength-discrepant realities and
feelings to maintain their standing as good and strong Black women.
According to the women, internalization took form in behaviors, includ
ing overindulging in eating, shopping, and drinking, as well as in physical
and mental distress, namely, hypertension, heart disease, stomach ills,
respiratory difficulties, and depressive episodes, often referred to as ner
vous breakdowns. Such a two-tiered method of analysis was especially
helpful in pointing toward the disparities that exist between social dis
courses and individual needs, disparities that were often difficult for the
women to explicitly acknowledge.
FINDINGS
Within the interviews, the women used the term "strength" in various
ways?to describe their personal capacities to focus on goals, assert their
independence, and demonstrate moral character. However, in addition to
these individual definitions was a consistent use of the term for two
thirds of the sample (31 out of 44 interviewees): to represent a pervasive
social and cultural prescription that affected both working- and middle
class Black women. Yet while not conclusive, two other qualities appeared
to distinguish the group of women who struggled with the discourse from
the minority who did not: First, they tended to view themselves or were
viewed by others as important caretakers, whether of their own children,
aging parents, financially vulnerable kin, or coworkers; second, and
related to the first point, they were largely in the childbearing and child
rearing years of mid-20s to mid-40s. To provide some context to quoted
material, I identify the women by social class, age, and caretaking
responsibilities.2
The Centrality of Struggle

The discourse of strength emphasized particular gender performances
for Black women: one's persistence through demonstrable struggle and a
presentation of self as unaffected by the human experiences of fear, need,
or fatigue. In common with women in general, the interviewees spoke at
length about their caretaking responsibilities; however, it was their dis
cussion of struggle as omnipresent and relentless that seemed to specifi
cally reflect their racial identity as Black women.
And I think that strong woman idea has been planted in my head, too. That
you're supposed to be able to, you know, just muster through this, and, you
know, make it without scarring or whatever. (29, divorced mother)
A strong Black woman is someone who endures a lot. ... A strong Black
woman would be like, "Oh, well, you know, that's what's given to me, and
I'm going to endure. And that's what makes me strong." (21, single, no
children)
To be a strong woman means that she can kind of handle things. Like you
can take care of probably anything, because in life you're going to have a
lot of situations, and a lot of blows, and a lot of changes and stuff, so you
just kind of have to be strong enough to get through it. (32, married mother)
Strength was a cultural mandate that provided Black women with clear
guidelines for their behavior and operated as a "tyranny of . . . shoulds"
(Horney 1950) in their lives and interactions with others. Like other gen
der discourses, strength talk incorporated moral language, as it defined
good, acceptable, and desirable Black women by a selflessness and defer
ence to others (e.g., children, partners, extended family, coworkers).
These interviewees experienced being strong as an imperative to
exhibit an automatic endurance to a life perceived as filled with obstacles,
unfairness, and tellingly, a lack of assistance from others. Drawing on the
historical reality of slavery and the continuing economic and political

marginalization of African Americans, this imperative has much merit: It
foregrounds daily struggles for security, health, Wellness, and agency,
which too easily are forgotten or minimized in mainstream discourses of
a post-civil rights United States. However, the consequence of living
under such a mandate is that struggle can overdetermine a woman's life,
particularly when bearing up to unremitting adversity is viewed as an
essential aspect of demonstrating one's authenticity as a Black woman.
Women without observable adversities were viewed by family and peers
as "weak," not Black, or "white," in ways that suggested each was an
equally negative association for Black women. Although only one woman
explicitly linked having a life of relative ease with being white, her rea
soning is consistent with that of most other interviewees discussing the
strength discourse. She related how her cousin, a successful business
owner, is seen by family as "livin' the white life" and is consequently called
"white girl" because her life is at odds with what "being a Black woman
means, you know: You're at home, you struggle, you get out once in a
while, and that's supposed to be meaningful to you" (29, divorced mother).
Identifying similar intimate connections between Black womanhood and
struggle, another woman states, "We're always doing it alone, and the men
can't come through, and now I'm strong. But how many women whose
husbands come through are strong? ... I'm saying the definition of
strength within the Black paradigm, includes lack of self-care and lack of
a partner. It's difficult to assert yourself as a married Black woman in a sta
ble relationship, as a strong woman, unless you have an abundance of kids
or something where you work two or three jobs" (MC, 32, single mother).
In voicing a critique of the struggles viewed as essential to being strong,
the interviewees were not denying the material constraints in many Black
women's lives. In fact, most had been raised in working-class families and
had witnessed mothers and extended family toiling in underpaid, economi
cally vulnerable jobs, and their own social mobility was typically the result
of perseverance through adversity. However, the concern evidenced by the
women centered on the extent to which Black communities and the larger
society had embraced such constraints as preconditions for a way of life
seen as authentically Black and female and were thus incapable of recog
nizing other, more realistic, and varied formulations of Black womanhood
(Chisholm 1996; Greene 1996).
The strength discourse focuses on a Black woman's outward behav
ior, ignoring her actual emotional or physical condition. Being strong is
essentially about appearing so, affecting a persona and performance of
managing a difficult life with dignity, grace, and composure. This "cool"
(Majors and Billson 1992) fa?ade includes an element of restraint and takes
the form of rarely, if ever, showing any discrepant emotions, even to inti
mates. Rather than the active bravado and confrontation seen among some
Black men who present an attitude of toughness, the cool of these strong
women entailed a stoicism, a quiet acceptance of what they could not
change. A repeated refrain in the data was that the women rarely saw the
strong Black women in their families cry or fall apart. As one said of her
mother, "You know she maintains a certain kind of decorum, and a certain
kind of outward togetherness. Even if inside, she's conflicted or she's hav
ing a nervous breakdown or she's depressed or anxious or whatever . . .
nobody else knows (MC, 35, single, no children). Being strong induced a
lack of self-care because strong women were trying to be "this heroine, this
woman that can take care of everything" (MC, 30, single, no children); con
tinuously "help[ing] people work through their problems as opposed to tak
ing time out and working on ourselves" (MC, 25, single, no children); and
unable to say, "I need help. I need assistance. Or, I need support" (WC, 31,
single, no children).
From their girlhoods, these women recalled being expected by the
strong women in their lives to present themselves with a cool fa?ade.
Dwelling on pains and fears was seen as weakening a woman and making
her less than capable of surviving the battle that her life was supposed to
be. In particular, these women were raised to present an encouraging face
to others in their care.
We were taught that you really didn't show your feelings that much. You
kind of kept things inside and dealt with them. . . . [The] main thing was
taught that, whatever it is, overcome it, deal with it, and go ahead on. . . .
Once you're a mother and you have children, you have to show strength.
Because if you show weakness, then they will like, oh, give up and won't
even try to succeed. And so, we were just taught to automatically, you just
pick up the strength. You get into yourself and, you know, if you have to go
into your room and just, pray and talk or whatever, you deal with it. (43,
divorced mother)
In addition to the battles occasioned by racism and poverty inflicted by

the dominant society, a few interviewees spoke about women's struggles
that were tied to sexism in Black communities. While rarely described in
detail, perhaps reflecting the sensitivity of the topic, these women connected
being strong to being vulnerable to manipulation by men. Remaining
committed to philandering or abusive husbands?"taking all kind of stuff

off of men" (36, single, no children)?was noted as evidence that a woman
was strong because "she held onto her marriage" (29, divorced mother).
Under such expectations, it was sometimes difficult for a strong woman to
rally the support of family for a divorce or to critically examine the physi
cal, economic, and emotional costs of "keeping your head above water . . .
regardless of what your husband or boyfriend is putting you through" (36,
widowed mother). A commitment to the discourse of strength and its atten
dant construction of a good Black woman thus could mask over realities of
infidelity, marital disappointment, and being "treated . . . like dirt" (MC, 39,
single, no children).
Because assistance was associated with weakness and therefore was an
invalidation of one's claim to an authentic Black femininity, the discourse
of strength emphasized women's need for self-reliance. A divorced mother
and full-time working student stated that her family and friends typically
responded to her strength-discrepant behaviors with statements such as,
"What the hell is wrong with you?" and outright rejections of her feelings
of being overloaded, confused, or in need of assistance. Understandably
and significantly, she likened the discourse of strength to "a Black Jesus
girl thing":
So, I'm supposed to figure it out, and really that's what I've been doing. I've
been forcing myself to figure out how I'm doing what I'm doing. Because
people expect me to be this person, you know, I'm not. If I was to, say, for
instance, lose my apartment. Or if I was to lose my car. Or my lights went
out. My people would freak out. Because that's not supposed to [happen].
I'm too strong for that. And, you know, I have this, all this power to make
things different. And I'm not supposed to suffer like other people. (29,
divorced mother)
As a result, this woman felt and was often described as being "emotion
less" because she did not express disappointment or fear in public and
would self-protectively "just break down in the corner in the closet by
myself." It was not atypical for the women to speak about the discrepancy
between their perceptions and others' expectations: "I don't think I'm as
strong as people see me" (36, widowed mother).
Given that mustering through adversity was so critical to earning of the
badge of a "real" Black woman, many interviewees were hampered in
their abilities to openly discuss injustice in their lives and take action to
challenge those conditions that were unfair but deemed as inevitable. Not
validated by the discourse of strength, such strains were consequently
minimized as an unremarkable aspect of living life as a Black woman.

Enduring struggle, however, was only part of the strength mandate. As
discussed in the next section, the traditionally feminine expectation that
women should take care of others was typically expanded to include fam
ily and community to the point that strong women experienced extreme
difficulty caring for themselves.
The Intensification of Caretaking Responsibilities

As family pillars, community servants, and often token employees, many
of the interviewees suggested that Black women experienced a degree of
acceptance that grew in direct proportion to their support of others. The
strongest women were also the ones who were expected to give the most of
themselves to others. As one interviewee noted, being called strong by white
coworkers was often an "excuse" for them to mistreat her: "I get so tired of
hearing, 'You're a strong Black woman, so we can heap some more stuff
on'" (WC, 47, married mother). A young woman in her early 20s observed
how her strong mother was taken advantage of by extended kin: "And when
people say you're strong because you're working three jobs, and you take
care of this house and you take care of that house, sometimes those are the
people, that's making that comment, who are the ones that you're helping."
The labor expected of and exhibited by these women was gendered in that
such women were obligated to carry the responsibility of nurturing others,
of being, as one noted, "the titty of the world" (LMC, 36, single, no chil
dren). The caretaking and endurance of strong Black women was not
focused on their own achievement but was largely directed toward the well
being of others. As a 36-year-old widowed mother explains, those who
"always view me as a strong person ... are the ones that are coming to me
for things."
Such emphasis on taking care of others was reinforced by an internalized
concern that many of the women expressed?that they not be viewed as
selfish by those around them. In line with its justification and mystification
of inequalities, the controlling image of strength asserts that a weak Black
woman either buckles under pressures or is unduly focused on herself.
Taken together, the emphasis on mustering through adversity and support
ing others leaves virtually no room for a strong woman to spend any con
sistent or quality time on herself. As one woman revealed about the logic of
the strength discourse: "It's fine to have a dream as Black woman as long as
it's being deferred. You can have all the dreams you want?'Girl, when I get
on my feet, I just can't wait until I can get me some rest.' You can have all
these dreams, but it can't be actualizing, or you've neglected someone else"
(MC, 32, single mother). The discourse of strength asserts that when struggle
is so omnipresent and needs so profound, how can a woman?in good
faith?focus on herself? Self-knowledge, joy, and creativity are not part of
the experience of being strong, as such activities are often seen as selfish
and "superfluous" (MC, 32, single mother) for taking time and energy away
from a Black woman's being of use to others. As a 36-year-old single
woman and confidant of her ailing mother poignantly stated, "[To be a
strong Black woman] you have to die to yourself. And let everybody else
live. And help them live. That's what our community tells us."
Equating strength so closely with ever-present struggles and the needs
of others tells a woman that there are always larger, more meaningful con
cerns than what she is feeling inside. It convinces her to defer her dreams,
out of the fear that pursuing them will make her appear weak and selfish to
those around her. With tears and a quivering voice, the single woman
quoted above described her own mother's extreme identification with the
role of nurturer, to the point of selflessness: "I think the way my mom lived
her life, and it's probably the time she grew up, her life belongs to her fam
ily. And it's not really her own, in a sense. . . . She is completely self
sacrificing. To a point where, to a certain extent, that's a part of her that I
don't want to be. Because, even when she's sick, I mean, deathly ill, she's
still giving. She doesn't know when to stop." Other interviewees demon
strated a similar discomfort with the mandate of strength as they discussed
the consequences of being strong on the lives of women in their families
and friendship circles. However, more common than outright critiques of
strength were discussions of the strategies the interviewees and other Black
women used to keep up the fa?ade of being capable and unflappable.
Internalization Strategies of Strong Black Women

Despite the pressures to be strong, the women interviewed did talk about
a self apart from their roles and responsibilities. They desired acknowledg
ment for their personal accomplishments: "Sometimes, I want to be like,
you know, patted on the shoulder or something." They also wanted recogni
tion for the difficulties they faced: "And sometimes I'll be like, 'Damn, my
life is not so great. I'm having a hard time'" (36, widowed mother).
Differentiating "a real me" from what others saw was not uncommon across
the women. "I consider myself strong on the outside. I don't think people
see the real me . . . which is, 'Phew, I'm losing it. Like I can't, I can't take
the world. It's too much.' . . . And I know that's not what the 'strong Black
woman' should say, but... I want, you know, a companion" (22, single, no
children). This inner world was, however, largely invisible to others, who
evaluated them on how well they appeared to be managing their responsi

bilities. Consequently, discussions of their strength-discrepant experiences
typically emerged deep in the interviews and were described in a quieter
voice, one that suggested that the ideas were more commonly silenced and
not brought to the fore of discussions of self.
Saddled by the shoulds and have-tos of strength, such women felt com
pelled to develop an "exterior wall" (MC, 39, married mother) to keep up
the appearance of meeting others' expectations. While such walls hid
strength-discrepant emotions such as pain, vulnerability, and exhaustion
from others, they did not do away with them. Rather, maintaining these
walls required the use of what several women called "internalization" prac
tices, such as eating, shopping, and drinking to excess. Over time, the mis
match between fa?ade and reality could become embodied as physical and
psychological distress, which the women named as "stomach problems out
the wazoo" (MC, 40, single, no children), displaced anger, heart attacks,
high blood pressure, difficulty breathing, and tellingly, depression. In the
words of a mother and returning student in her mid-40s, "We're always on
the surface saying, 'Okay, yup, I'll do it. I'll do it.' And then in our rooms
by ourselves, we're like, 'How the hell am I going to do it,' you know. But
you figure out a way, but then, you don't let those feelings out to anybody,
so eventually, it's just a time bomb waiting to go off. So, and the heart attack
rate's high in the Black community."
Several interviewees noted the prevalence of "breakdowns" among the
strong Black women they knew and admired. These indefinite periods of
retreat took the form of leaving home for hours or days, staying in bed, com
mitting suicide, and dying in one's sleep. As with the overall discussion of
internalization, most women did not dwell on these examples and simply
noted them in passing. As one stated with little affect, "My mother had a
nervous breakdown. My grandmother had one before her, and I think her
mother had one before her" (MC, 35, single, no children). Only two inter
viewees mentioned diagnoses of depression for women in their families. Yet
more striking than talk of diagnoses was the sympathy with which such
women were viewed: In the eyes of the interviewees, they were not weak or
bad women; rather, they were simply overwhelmed with "so many trials and
tribulations that they just cannot deal" (WC, 57, divorced mother). There
was little surprise or outrage about these instances of depression. For the
interviewees, these and other examples of emotional and physical shut
downs appeared to be an unremarkable, understandable, and not uncommon
occurrence among good, strong Black women.
Several of the women readily acknowledged the existence of depression
among Black women generally but were hesitant to focus on such distress
in personal terms. As one working-class 22-year-old, single mother related,

among her peers she sees "depression, big time. Denial. A lot of denial.
Denial about who you are. Denial of what you 're capable of." As with other
women who spoke of depression within the Black community, this inter
viewee's evocative imagery about the distress strongly suggested that she
was speaking from personal experience: "I think they know, deep down
inside, that they're incapable of just, day-by-day doing all this, and that one
day, the egg is going to crack, you know. And the ball is going to drop, but
they don't want to come to terms with that. . . . You revert to drinking or
smoking or screaming or yelling, or, you know, other things to kind of
cover up what really is going on inside. . . . The depression just grows and
grows." A mature student spoke of her stifled frustration as "a time bomb
waiting to go off" (40s, mother), and a middle-class teacher expressed con
cern about "letting [yourself] go by not taking care of yourself emotionally,
spiritually, professionally." This lack of self-care was often related to fam
ily norms that "put all the work on the females" (36, widowed mother) and
was viewed as a common practice that few could change or directly chal
lenge without incurring the disapproval of others.
Only one woman in the sample volunteered a diagnosis of clinical
depression, although several noted in passing periods of physical and
emotional crisis that could have been depressive episodes. She clearly
connected her distress to the same cultural expectations of enduring strug
gle and extensive caretaking that others noted, and was ambivalent about
following up on the diagnosis made by her physician. Having lost both
parents within 18 months of each other, this woman attributed her depres
sion not primarily to grief but to criticisms from older Black women in her
community who accused her of not measuring up to their views of what a
strong and dutiful daughter should do. To live up to their expectations, she
was compelled to single-handedly take care of her dying parents, despite
the fact that she had three brothers, some of whom lived in the area.
Remembers this woman, "I could almost feel myself shrinking. So that
was really, hard, that was really hard, and I still remember it today. There
was always little comments like that, letting me know that I wasn't living
up to these women's definitions of being strong. Of being, you know,
being able to take care of things" (WC, 35, single, no children). This
woman agonized over "continually trying to meet everybody's expecta
tions and demands" so that they would not "have a negative image or bad
image of me." She explained that despite her distress and internal conflict,
she maintained a convincing appearance of being unshakable to others:
"And in fact, if you talk to people here today, no one ever knew there was
anything wrong with me. Not anyone. I kept the fa?ade up; I really did.
[But in the process] I felt so smothered. And I didn't feel like, it wasn't as
if I didn't want to take care of my parents, because I did. But, I, I also
wanted help. And I expected that people would help me, and I didn't get it."
Although this interviewee was unique in openly discussing her clinical
depression, her talk of its genesis and existence in her life overlapped with
the extremes of strength behavior noted by other interviewees. Such women
spoke of the risks of being too strong?a woman who "forgets her self. You
know, and she puts so much of her into her environment and her family and
her entourage, that's when it would become a weakness, because then the
person has forgotten who she is. Where her needs are" (WC, 39, single, no
children). Selflessness was the logical end to a complete identification with
being strong?"you just block everybody out. You can block your needs
out" (WC, 57, divorced mother). Thus, the woman who attempts to be a
"24-hour woman" (WC, 24, single mother) and "do everything and any
thing .. . [will] die at the age of 40" (WC, 31, single, no children). For these
women, then, depression can be understood as the result of such denial and
the attendant discrediting of those thoughts, concerns, needs, and aspects of
self outside of the strength mandate.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
The discourses of depression and strength limit attention to the experi

ences of depressed Black women. Common characterizations of depres
sion as a gendered illness typically fail to incorporate the ways in which
gender is embedded the oppressive realities of racism and classism. As a
result, prevailing notions and investigations of depression as a woman's
illness should be understood as focused on the experiences white, middle
class women and not necessarily representative of the ways gender dis
courses inform the lives of women of color and working-class women.
To examine gender through the existence of controlling images is to
realize the existence of femininities, each contextualized by the social his
tory and social location of the women examined. While dependence on
men may be traditional to white, middle-class women, this pattern is less
central to the feminine strength that has long been upheld within Black
communities. Thus, this study pushes researchers to investigate as an
empirical question the specific constructions of gender that may place
Black women at risk for depression.
In addition to the discourse of depression that conflates the distress
with a dominant, but not representative, femininity, the discourse of
strength obstructs an understanding of depression among Black women.

Because it views Black women as either subhuman or superhuman, it
neglects the reality of their individual lives. In particular, the discourse
fails to consider their human vulnerabilities and limitations. Given the
assumptions of both the depression and strength discourses, Black women
experiencing or at risk for depression exist in a conceptual void.
The strength discourse normalizes struggle, selflessness, and internal
ization strategies that compromise the health of Black women. If, as the
silencing paradigm suggests, depression is the result of a socially and cul
turally sanctioned self-silencing, health researchers should cast a suspi
cious eye toward the observed use of being strong as a healing mechanism
among depressed Black women (Clark Amankwaa 2003a; Schreiber,
Noerager Stern, and Wilson, 1998, 2000). Specifically, the findings of this
study suggest that being strong would entrench Black women in the famil
iar social expectations that render them unable to voice critiques of their
environments, ask for help, and take their own feelings seriously. Thus,
embracing the same behaviors that occasioned the depressive episode
would lead not to healing but to a "pseudo recovery" characterized by pre
senting an image of composure to others "in an effort to keep things sta
ble and familiar" (Schreiber 1998, 276; see also Edge and Rogers 2005).
Such masking through strength would encourage women to lose a dis
cerning stance on their experiences by giving into the discourse and essen
tially denying the reality of the conditions and expectations fueling the
distress. By highlighting the discourse of strength, then, this analysis sug
gests that researchers should interrogate the rhetoric of being strong and
empirically investigate whether or under what circumstances it becomes a
productive way of managing life and emotional distress for Black women.
In addition to these conclusions, the study identifies a few areas for fur
ther research on Black womanhood and depression. Associating strength
with struggle and selflessness was a dominant theme in the data; however,
about one-third of the sample did not feel pressured to embody this for
mulation of womanhood to the exclusion of their own ideals. These find
ings suggest that some other factors may render the discourse of strength
less focal for certain groups of Black women. One explanation may hinge
on the women's age: These women were in stages of the life cycle (early
20s, early 60s) with few caretaking responsibilities. Consequently, they
may have had the opportunity to be more self-focused without attracting
the attention and condemnation of others. Some support for this specula
tion comes from research that finds depressive episodes to be highest for
Black women between the ages of 18 and 45 (Robinson Brown 1990, cited
in Barbee 1994). This suggests that as with other women, Black women
experience caretaking expectations that can submerge their abilities to
voice a range of emotions and nurture themselves. However, unlike white
middle-class women and perhaps like working-class women (Scattolon
2003), Black women have fewer structural resources for avoiding or chal
lenging a life overdetermined by such inequality.
Other researchers have posited supportive female networks as critical
to Black women's well-being and survival amid adversity (Hill Collins
2000; Stack 1974). However, the interviewees spoke rarely of their dis
tress in their closest women networks and then only tangentially
addressed their frustrations. Interestingly, those who had had open con
versations with their mothers noted these as being recent occurrences that
typically followed a serious breakdown in the elder's emotional or physi
cal well-being. The relative silence of interviewees on the subject of sup
port from other women suggests that such networks may help women to
manage their struggles rather than question their loads. Because a major
ity of Blacks associate depression with moral weakness, Black women
may experience shame when divulging their depressive realities to kin and
friends (Clark Amankwaa 2003a; Danquah 1998; Schreiber, Noerager
Stern, and Wilson 2000). Subsequent research might examine the opera
tion of Black women's networks specifically around the cultural mandate
of strength and the reality of depression.
One might expect that women who are racial minorities, working class,
and/or single mothers would experience more depression. Among the
interviewees, only one mentioned a diagnosis of clinical depression. The
low number could be an artifact of the nonclinical nature of the sample or
a phenomenon tied to the underreporting of mental distress among African
Americans due to perceptions of depression as a sign of moral weakness.
In addition, the discourse of strength could co-exist with other under
standings of self that offer some protection against depression. The fact
that a majority of the women voiced some criticism of the strength dis
course but still identified proudly as strong Black women suggests that
they may have other culturally based resources for managing their lives.
However, for the majority of the women interviewed, being strong is a
significant and compelling sociocultural contribution to distress. By nor
malizing struggle and heavy caretaking while censuring women against
acknowledging strength-discrepant experiences and needs, being strong
denies real inequities in a woman's life. And as suggested in this article,
the eventual cost of being a strong Black woman may be depression, char
acterized as a silencing of a range of her human needs.
NOTES
1. Throughout the quoted material, text emphasized in the original is set in italics.
2. Social class designations were self-reported and were not gathered in earlier
pilot interviews. Thus, in some cases, only age and caretaking responsibilities are
noted. In excerpts, working class is designated by "WC" and middle class by "MC."
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Tamara Beauboeuf-Lafontant is an associate professor of sociology and

education studies at DePauw University. She has published articles on
women teaching for social justice and is currently investigating the embod
iment of strength among Black women.

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"You Have to Show Strength": An Exploration of Gender, Race, and Depression

Author(s): Tamara Beauboeuf-Lafontant

Keywords: Black women; gender; depression; race; voice

GENDER & SOCIETY, Vol. 21 No. 1, February 2007 28-51

CONTROLLING IMAGES OF BLACK WOMANHOOD

The dominant society has never viewed Black women as sympathetic

BLACK WOMEN, DEPRESSION, AND BEING STRONG

The past decade has witnessed a growing autobiographical and clinical

Martin suggests that aspiring to be strong or a superwoman emerges as a cop

To investigate the possible relationship between constructions of strong

The Centrality of Struggle

historical reality of slavery and the continuing economic and political

In addition to the battles occasioned by racism and poverty inflicted by

committed to philandering or abusive husbands?"taking all kind of stuff

minimized as an unremarkable aspect of living life as a Black woman.

The Intensification of Caretaking Responsibilities

Internalization Strategies of Strong Black Women

evaluated them on how well they appeared to be managing their responsi

in personal terms. As one working-class 22-year-old, single mother related,

The discourses of depression and strength limit attention to the experi

strength obstructs an understanding of depression among Black women.

Barbee, Evelyn L. 1994. A Black feminist approach to nursing research. Western

Tamara Beauboeuf-Lafontant is an associate professor of sociology and

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