I realized that many of our young people use shade to engage each other because many of them have been kept at a distance by people in their own lives. In a Huffington Post blog from 2013, titled “ Tongues Untied: Shade Culture - Throwing Shade, Reflecting Light,” Wade Davis wrote: “What breaks my heart is that shade seems to come easier than love for some. I ask these questions not to shame and problematize those who find enjoyment in throwing shade, but rather to interrogate the source of this pleasure. That urge of wanting to react in a very specific way, though, led me to question our real desires when throwing shade. Imani Williams, is “the ability to check a person with deft precision, whether it’s in person, through text, or via social media.” It’s similar to shade, think of it as a first cousin, as they are both comparable response tools. I laughed at some - because I love, can take, and can dish out a good joke - but others made me consider retreating to a place where my response was either shade or a clapback. The most popular one, among them, compared me to a gallon of milk others were extremely bigoted and hate-filled. Initial thoughts ranged from, “Damn, has my picture landed on The Shade Room” to “Why can’t people just let me live?” Though the photo never appeared on TSR - the gossip site that regularly posts side-eye-inducing stories about black people - it did materialize as both a topic of discussion and a source of comedy on Twitter and Facebook timelines. ![]() But this would all fade away days later when I received various messages asking me if I’d known that people were resharing my picture across different social media sites. It was an exciting moment: family members journeyed up from Atlanta to New York and were extremely proud. I was wearing a white, shoulder-less dress and a graduate cap to commemorate and celebrate the completion my Master’s program from The New School. In late May, I uploaded a picture to Instagram. I later freed myself from this armor because it began to feel toxic - it wasn’t healthy, even in instances when I used it to defend myself. But I can’t recall it ever being a fun thing to do. Its armor protected me from bullying and the harsh realities of gender-based violence and body shaming throughout middle school, high school, and my early years of college. I never fully participated in those spaces for obvious reasons, but shade was once a badge of honor that I took pride in wearing. It felt familiar to the kind of joking - or “joaning,” as we call it in the south - that took place on the back of school buses, in black barber shops, black hair salons, and black churches. I hadn’t yet seen Paris Is Burning, or attended a drag ball, but, coming into gayness, I had learned about shade as a cultural phenomenon. It was a way to engage and challenge the vapid heteronormativity surrounding me, and anyone else that threatened my livelihood. ![]() When I first invited the world into who I was, many moons ago, I learned shade as a defense mechanism - a counteractive mode of communication, a way of being, and a survival method. Given all of this, why are we so obsessed with throwing shade? And when did it become cool to do so?
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