The Women of the Diva’s DISH, from left, Ellen Gee, Brooklynn Parker, Erricka Bridgeford, and Aneesah Morine.
In February 2013, four Baltimore women teamed up to create the Diva’s DISH (discussing important situations honestly) podcast. Tackling a diverse range of topics, including relationships, health, systemic racism, and sexism, the women of the DISH bring a mature perspective to their discussions, informed by their varied experiences and personalities.
The Diva’s DISH is the brainchild of Ellen Gee, the show’s producer and the creative force behind the Evolution of Perspective radio show on Blog Talk Radio, as well as the Perspective Rap Sessions, a series of discussion groups that grew out of the radio program. Diva’s DISH became the outlet for pursuing an all-women discussion platform.
Gee is joined by co-hosts Erricka “E. Wonder” Bridgeford, Aneesah Morine, and Brooklynn Parker. Bridgeford, also referred to as the Hood Philosopher Diva, was raised by her Black Panther father to be socially aware and engaged. She is the group’s political and social conscience, bringing her experience as a mediator and community activist to bear on the group’s discussions.
Morine, whom the others call the Network Diva for her boldness in making new connections for the group, is its spiritual shepherd, the one responsible for leading prayers and calling everyone back to their respective centers.
Brooklyn is the Research Diva, and is in charge of the group’s efforts to create awareness about everything from National Bike Month to breast cancer. Her work informs many of the group’s recorded discussions.
One of the recurring themes in the group’s podcast is relationships, a topic on which they emphasize the need for women to be accountable to themselves for the decisions they make, a lesson learned from personal experience. “ realized the hard way that all of these issues I was having with people and men, I was the common denominator,” said Gee about the turning point in her own thinking.
The divas are about empowerment, and they do not shy away from female-centric terminology that may make some uncomfortable in a society dominated by misogyny and general squeamishness about the body, especially the female one. They have nominated 2014, ‘The Year of the Vagina,’ and are holding a series of discussions under that banner that focus on women’s issues.
Another topic regularly tackled is body image, subverting a mainstream narrative that carves Black women out of discussions on this issue. Body image is also closely tied to another phenomenon that the women challenge, the defining of women in terms of sexuality, a practice that simultaneously sexually objectifies them yet punishes them for any sign of embracing their sexuality. “If you listen to our podcast, sometimes you can hear us struggling just with where we are in terms of what is, because one minute we’re like, ‘Yeah, we should be free to do whatever we want to do,’ but then it’s like, ‘You don’t want to be sexually irresponsible either,’” said Gee.
The women stress that what matters is self-confidence and esteem, and that as long as one’s expression of their sexuality comes from a place of ownership, the form of that expression is not opinion fodder for anybody else.
All four of the divas are juggling myriad projects and career paths, something they say is necessary in a social context that often looks to both limit the horizons of Black women, and to define them exclusively in terms of the men who have been, or may still be, in their lives. This, they say, is a practice that combines sexism (defining a woman by way of a man) with systemic racism (since Black men are often excluded from meaningful social and economic opportunities).
“We have to go after our dreams. We come from a place of ‘wow, I’m oppressed.’ I’m loving this man, I’m holding onto this man, but this man gets killed in our streets, this man gets jailed randomly . . . if I don’t know who I am, and have my dreams, and am chasing them every chance I get, then all I’m ever going to be is a product of what society wanted me to be,” said Bridgeford.
