Rue from “Euphoria”

By: Jessyka Santos

Euphoria is an American teen drama television series that started in 2019. The series follows Rue Bennett, seventeen years old recovering teenage drug addict who struggles to fnd her place in the world and follows a group of high school students through their experiences of identity trauma, family, friendships, love, drugs, self-harm, and sex. She lives with her mother and her sister, whom she loves more than anything.

Rue's skin color comes from a mixed racial of one parent who is black and another who is white. She is a skinny girl who likes eye make-up such as glitter and oversized clothes. When Black girls have rarely given room to mess up, make mistakes, and grow. Rue came to do the opposite. Upholding and challenges the at-risk stereotype of girls, representing Blackness and Queerness, she broke the "rules" with a queer teen love story. Rue, the narrator and protagonist, is a lesbian Black Girl who struggles with addiction and tells the history from her point of view, giving us the ultimate sensation of being in her shoes.

Rue is a Black teen girl. Yes, that implicates a lot for her and us in a good way, finally! Race never comes up explicitly though it indeed, but Rue is a Black Girl in her predominantly white, suburban teenage environment. Black Girls being represented as a protagonist in a show like Euphoria is a considerable advance. Black Girls are heavily predicated. When Black girls express strong or contrary views from what is "expected" from an adult point of view, it seems like an act of challenging the authority, assuming that Black Girls are just wrong. Most of the time, they are not given the space even to be girls. Rue changes a lot of the heavy stereotypes on the shoulders of Black Girls, like being hyper-sexualized from an early age; she has broken tabus by exploring her sexuality without being judged for it. Rue is a game-changing character because she is what she wants to be. Ruth Nicole Brown, in her book Black Girlhood Celebration pp.22, talks about the sexualization that Black Girls suffer. She says: "In terms of appearance, the gaze is representative of a larger culture that describes Black adolescent girlhood in terms of promiscuous sexuality and deviant behaviors," But Black Teen Girl's problems go beyond sexuality. Black Girls are often subjects of violence simply because they are Black girls. There is a substantial negative stereotype of them. Racism, sexism, and poverty are the bottom line. Black Girls are punished for failing and not participating in the "feminine" and then forced to meet different standards. Rue does not let any of these stereotypes punish her. Rue is allowed to be messed up, do not get it wrong, but Black Girls are often not allowed to do anything. Rue does not care about being "feminine" or meeting any standards; her mental illness and bipolarity battles are enough and make her stronger on her own. Rue controls the storytelling; Her strong personality breaks the bias. Her opinions and observations are new to he broad audience and fascinating.

Rue is the definition of an at-risk girl. Although, she challenges it by addressing her importance, necessity, and voice, which is not attributed to at-risk girls in the real world. Still, at the same time, Rue challenges the stereotype. In Spectacular Girls, pp.7, Sarah Projansky talks about the at-risk girls; she argues that "As many scholars have shown, the can-do Girl is usually white, while the African American or Latina girl is usually at-risk. The everyday gamma girl is generally white, but the pregnant teen is almost always Latina or African American." Rue challenges the at-risk category with prompt discourses and braveness in the total control of her narrative. Far from being anti-social, Rue is a game-changing character because she controls everything; she also narrates the other people in the show, giving her some sort of possession that makes us more involved with her character. Moreover, this is a big thing for Black Girls since the majority have no opportunity at all. These teen girls' struggles go far from the lack of opportunities; they cannot speak freely and suffer prejudice and bias whenever they express themselves.  In  "Protecting Black Girls," Monique W. Morris says that "Black feminine expression is often understood in the context of stereotypes of black girls as loud, sassy, hypersexual, or combative."

In Euphoria, Rue is herself, not afraid of being her. When real life, Black girls at risk suffer disproportionately race and gender-based oppression, including sexual victimization, violence, and biases. Rue is remarkable, especially for giving Black Girls the affirmation in the fight for equality. So they know that they are beautiful, intelligent, and most importantly, as Megan Connor said, "they are protagonists of their stories."

Rue is a teen girl who represents Generation Z. Some studies show that Generation Z is a more open mind about gender identity than any other generation before then. Under the queer umbrella, Rue is very uncomfortable around boys in sexual situations, which makes her struggle with compulsory heterosexuality until realizing that she is a lesbian. Being a lesbian of color is not easy, as it shows. That is probably why Rue is a lesbian of color since Queer people of color have way more problems with depression and prejudice than any other group. Studies show that "Experiences of racism, homophobia, and transphobia in U.S. schools are prevalent among LGBTQ youth of color. Prior research on LGBTQ youth of color, in general, has shown that schools nationwide are hostile environments for LGBTQ youth of color, where they experience victimization and discrimination based on race, sexual orientation, gender identity, or all of the above simultaneously." Black LGBTQ Youth in U.S. Schools, RESEARCH REPORT.

In fact, this is a long-term fight. Queer girls of color suffer from depression and harassment more than any other minority group. The Combahee River Collective in 1977 was very aware of how color and gender identity were a big issue as they said: "As Black Feminists and Lesbians, we know we have a very definite revolutionary task to perform, and we are ready for the lifetime of work and struggle before us."

Rue came up as a hope and a try of normalization; since it does not appear that she has issues with being a lesbian of color. Her addiction and mental problems are enough, but the show seems not to make it a problem, maybe because they want to normalize it or perhaps because they do not want to "problematize" it even more. Rue has a lot on her own. Nevertheless, she is a girl, a lesbian, and Black, showing how representations are changing. In Black Girlhood, Shireen K. Lewis says, "Black girls' stories and voices must be part of the narrative as we fight for transformational change." As a representation of all, Rue might bring better outcomes for those who see themselves in that same situation. On the other hand, Rue suffers a lot from mental illness, and Queer girls are the most tendentious to depression and anxiety. In "Sugar and Spice and Something More than Nice?" Marnina Gonick, on pp.137, says, "Queer girls encounter an inordinate amount of violence that may take many different forms including actual harm to their bodies, misrepresentations or absence of representations of their lives, psychic and spiritual damage... Queer girls' rights to safety and security have been violated. "

Because even in the LGBTQ community, being under the queer umbrella, girls of color still have a hard time finding space, the Love story of Rue and Jules is so important. Blackness and Queerness, breaking the "rules." They do not have a perfect relationship or a story tale to tell, but they open a massive door that was, until now, closed. The creator of Euphoria said that the love stories in the show as "a place where people fall in love with those who make them feel safe, comfortable, and cared for, regardless of gender." Rue is constantly fighting for her life; against all her issues, she finds a safe place with Jules.

Rue is, in fact, a representation of changing. She is a personification of gender-specific with mental health problems in Black youth. Rue represents, at the same time, challenges the at-risk girls. Her bedroom, her friends, her situation, and her life story mean one thing, but her attitudes tell us another; she is a powerful girl.  Though her a girl of color, equality, differences in gender, race, and identity are acknowledged. It is media and shows like this that encourage and give space to Black Girls to be girls, challenging dehumanizing representations and increasing visibility, ensuring that girls are seen to be knowers and narrators of their own stories. It creates space for what once was a stigma. Culturally diverse, gender-inclusive Euphoria came to change a lot for the future of Girl's culture.  Rue represents all the stigmas that are input from society, making Euphoria crucial for the next generations in terms of acceptance and inclusion. Generation Z, which is represented in the show, is more concerned with saving the world than being told what they should be. Still, Euphoria being the first teen TV drama that is centered on the life of a lesbian teenage Black Girl, has not achieved a lot of talk, which is a little frustrating, maybe because it is played by Zendaya (famous already for being on Spider-Man), but one thing is undeniable—normalizing all the stigmas surrounding young people, especially young girls, by using Black Girl as its protagonist is a significant and remarkable thing for the Black Girlhood Studies.

References

Brown, Ruth N. Black Girlhood Celebration: Toward a Hip-Hop Feminist Pedagogy. New York: Peter Lang, 2009. Print. pp.22.

Projansky, Sarah. Spectacular Girls: Media Fascination and Celebrity Culture. NYU Press, 2014.pp.7.

Halliday, Aria S. “The Black Girlhood Studies Collection “Canon: Brown Eyes, Frizzy Hair and Very Clever”: Fan Art, Fan Activism, and Black Hermione Granger” Megan Connor. Canadian Scholars’ Press, 2019, pp.274.

The Combahee River Collective Statement . United States, 2015, pp.27.

Gonick, Marnina. 2006. “Sugar and Spice and Something More Than Nice? Queer Girls and Transformations of Social Exclusion.” pp.137

Monique W. Morris “Protecting Black Girls," ASCD, 2016. https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/protecting-black-girls

Truong, N. L., Zongrone, A. D., & Kosciw, J. G. (2020). Erasure and resilience: “The experiences of LGBTQ students of color, Black LGBTQ youth in U.S. schools”. New York: GLSEN. https://www.glsen.org/research/black-lgbtq-students

Shireen K. Lewis (2020) Introduction: Black Girlhood, The Black Scholar, 50:4, 1-3, DOI:10.1080/00064246.2020.1810454

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00064246.2020.1810454?scroll=top&need

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