Twerking, Trauma & the Timeline: What’s Really Behind the Digital Image of Black Women?

Scroll through your favorite social media platform—Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, or X (formerly Twitter)—and chances are it won’t take long before you see a Black woman twerking, engaging in hyper-sexual content, or being showcased in a way that leans more toward voyeurism than empowerment. And it’s not just young girls—elder Black women are increasingly joining the digital stage, often reflecting the same provocative patterns.

So, what’s going on? Is this self-expression? Liberation? Or have we been programmed to see ourselves through a distorted lens—one that favors clicks, controversy, and commodification over culture, healing, and wholeness?

Let’s break it down.

🧠 Cultural Expression or Social Engineering?

Twerking is nothing new. It has African roots, deep within the dance traditions of West Africa, where movement was spiritual, communal, and sacred. But once filtered through the lens of Western media and capitalism, it has been reduced to sexual spectacle—a currency used to buy attention, validation, and sometimes survival.

What once honored the body now sells it.

The same goes for other imagery: explicit dancing, exposed bodies, viral “challenge” videos, and content that links Black femininity with violence, chaos, or hypersexuality. Many argue this is just “fun,” “freedom,” or “expression.” But when we dig deeper, we have to ask: Who is benefiting from this imagery—and who is being exploited by it?

📲 The Algorithm Rewards Dysfunction

On most platforms, the algorithm is king—and the algorithm rewards extremes. It amplifies content that triggers quick emotional reactions: lust, anger, shock, or outrage.

What gets promoted?

• Fights in the street

• Women undressing or twerking

• Domestic arguments broadcasted for likes

• Explicit thirst traps under the guise of “self-love”

Meanwhile, content centered around Black wellness, healing, motherhood, education, or spiritual growth is often buried, flagged, or seen as “boring.”

This isn’t an accident. This is programming.

📉 The Devaluation of Black Womanhood

Both young and elder Black women are being caught in a system that places more value on their bodies than their minds, their sexuality than their stories. It’s deeper than social media—it’s centuries old.

• Slavery: Black women were bred, displayed, and assaulted for labor and entertainment.

• Minstrelsy: Caricatures like the Jezebel and Sapphire shaped public perceptions of Black women as wild, angry, or sexually insatiable.

• Hip-Hop Media (in its most exploitative form): Often reduces women to props, background, or performance.

  
  

So when a 50-year-old woman goes viral for twerking in a thong, or a 13-year-old posts a dance to a sexually explicit song, we must ask: Are they truly free—or just playing roles that were designed for them long ago?

🔁 Generational Echoes and Desensitization

There’s a painful reality happening: Black girls are being sexualized before they even hit puberty, while grown women are feeling pressure to stay relevant by mimicking youth culture. It's become a cycle.

Social media, in its current form, has blurred the lines between adult content and everyday behavior, between performance and identity.

When violence and sexuality become normalized imagery, the community becomes desensitized to its own pain. We laugh at trauma. We repost dysfunction. We clap for brokenness.

And while we debate empowerment vs exploitation, tech companies continue to rake in billions off our bodies and brokenness.

🔍 So... Is It All by Design?

To many, the answer is yes. Digital colonialism is real. We may have more freedom to post, create, and share—but that “freedom” is often shaped by:

• What goes viral

• What gets monetized

• What gets censored

• What gets praised vs ridiculed

  
  

We are being programmed in plain sight. Not by one person or a conspiracy theory, but by a system that profits when Black women are seen as bodies, not beings.

✊🏾 What Can We Do?

The goal isn’t to shame or silence. The goal is to reclaim our image, our narrative, and our power.

Here are a few steps:

• Support platforms and creators that celebrate Black wholeness

• Teach young girls that their value isn't in their likes or bodies, but in their brilliance

• Call out predatory content without amplifying it

• Create spaces for elder women to lead, teach, and uplift—outside of the algorithm

• Hold platforms accountable for what they choose to promote

💬 Final Thoughts

Twerking isn’t the problem. Expression isn’t the problem. The system behind what we see and what we celebrate—that’s the issue.

Until we unlearn the programming, we will continue to trade our power for popularity. But the truth is, we don’t have to perform to be seen. We don’t have to strip down to be valuable. We don’t have to go viral to be worthy.

We are the culture. It’s time we own it—and protect it.