After Hattie McDaniel, Hollywood producers loved to wrap bandanas around dark and hefty mammies in a parade of films in the mid-twentieth century. The stereotype masculinized Black femininity while emphasizing the ultrafemininity of the Black characters’ White counterparts on the screen. Light-skinned Black women saw either exotic or tragic mulattoes on movie screens. These characters failed to be assimilated into White womanhood, and failed to seduce White men.
