Mary Jane Paul (of Being Mary Jane) is the worst kind of person. She’s selfish. She doesn’t respect the boundaries of relationships. She treats her family and friends like trash. She treats her significant others like trash, too. And it’s fantastic. It’s refreshing to see a Black woman on television to embrace the dark side of human nature.
Too long have we held Black women in TV up to impossible standards. They’re either the one dimensional sassy Black friend, the one who has the perfect career but can’t find a good man, or the Magical Negro whose only purpose is to solve white people’s problems (quite literally in the case of Bonnie Bennett in The Vampire Diaries).
But Being Mary Jane brings in a new breed of Black women on television: the self-motivated, self-centered Black woman. Mary Jane is willing to throw any and everyone under the bus for her own gain. And she is unapologetic about it. She has no problem telling off anyone who inconveniences her, whether they’re in the wrong or not.
How can I praise this “negative” portrayal of a Black woman, one may ask. Eschewing character flaws from the portrayal of Black women does them a disservice. We dehumanize them when we confine them to those certain “positive” stereotypes. They end up being flat characters that we grow tired of.
I hope Being Mary Jane sets a precedent that it’s okay to have a deeply flawed Black female character, one whose flaws don’t center around men. Flaws breed conflict, and conflict make for good television. We see flawed characters in ourselves, and that makes us root for them.
The season finale of Being Mary Jane airs tonight on BET.
