Writes the Times, “When Shonda Rhimes writes her autobiography, it should be called How to Get Away With Being an Angry Black Woman. Ms. Rhimes has embraced the trite but persistent caricature of the Angry Black Woman, recast it in her own image and made it enviable. She has almost single-handedly trampled a taboo even Michelle Obama couldn’t break.”
Furthermore, the piece calls Viola Davis, who stars in How to Get Away With Murder, “less classically beautiful.”
“As Annalise, Ms. [Viola] Davis, 49, is sexual and even sexy, in a slightly menacing way, but the actress doesn’t look at all like the typical star of a network drama,” the articles says. “Ignoring the narrow beauty standards some African-American women are held to, Ms. Rhimes chose a performer who is older, darker-skinned and less classically beautiful than Ms. [Kerry] Washington, or for that matter Halle Berry, who played an astronaut on the summer mini-series Extant.”