On Friday, Mo’Nique unknowingly started a contentious internet debate that would rage on for several days when she uploaded a video that encouraged young Black women to refrain from wearing bonnets, head wraps, slippers, and pajamas in public. At the start of the video, she touched on her “auntie” status in the Black community and let her followers know that she had felt obligated “to talk to her babies and say some real sh*t.”
Throughout the video, Mo’Nique criticized Black women who she has seen in airports, grocery stores, and gas stations wearing things like bonnets and basically not looking “presentable.” “I’ve been seeing it not just at the airport. I’ve been seeing it at the store, at the mall,” the comedian says. “When did we lose our pride in representing ourselves? When did we slip away of let me make sure I’m presentable when I leave my home?”
Elsewhere in the video, Mo’Nique says, “I’m not saying you don’t have pride but the representation that you’re showing someone will have to ask you to know if you have it. It’s not to get a man … it is just your representation of you, my sweet babies.”
Of course, she was met with backlash following her attempt to enforce respectability politics, but several fans also have agreed with her statement and come to her defense. Now, days later, Mo’Nique has returned to Instagram to defend her original video as well.
On Wednesday, Mo’Nique responded to the backlash with another video on the topic, and she started her caption with an all-caps, “UNAPOLOGETIC.” She continued her caption by writing, “Hey my beautiful babies. I’m okay with some of you being in your feelings. I LOVE YALL & SOMETIMES THAT LOVE AINT EASY. I am here for the CHALLENGE. And ain’t NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO STOP ME FROM LOVING YOU.”
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In the video, Mo’Nique begins her response by saying, “The post that I did Friday in reference to us being the best us that we can be, it rubbed some people wrong, but I want to share this with yall. There were two people in my life that had I taken a different attitude, I could have felt they was rubbing me wrong. But I’m glad I took the attitude of appreciation and gratitude because they tapped me. And that was Patti LaBelle and Margaret Avery.
“I’m glad those two women love me enough that they would go out of their way to talk to me in a way that aunties, mommas, big sisters talk to their little sisters, nieces, grandbabies, [and] daughters,” the comedian and actress continues. “I was grateful for that because it allowed me to [feel] about things differently. Never once did I think those women were trying to be offensive, nasty, or mean. I thought it was nothing but love.”
Hammering home the fact that her original Bonnett video was rooted in love, she says, “So for you babies that have taken offense to what I said, I’m okay with that… And when yall say, ‘We will cancel yo a**.’ Well, they’ve tried that, and I’m still here to let yall know I love you and ain’t nothing you can do about that.”
What do you think — is Mo’Nique right or wrong about this entire bonnet fiasco?
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