Patricia Hill Collins in her article Get Your Freak On: Sex, Babies, and Images of Black Femininity discusses the history behind the word "freak". In the nineteenth century, “freak” was a description for people who were perceived as different, far from what the mainstream conceived as normal, and who were displayed in circus sideshows, such as in the famous story of Sarah Bartmann. Bartmann was a part of a medical experiment that "illustrate[ed] how Western sciences constructed racial difference by searching the physiology of Black people's bodies for sexual deviance" (Collins 120). Now the word "freak" is being redefined into a new way of understanding. Artists such as Missy Elliot and Rick James use this word to mean "the kind of ‘kinky’ sexuality... [as] boundaries of race, gender, and sexuality soften and shift, so do the meanings of freaky as well as the practices and people thought to engage in them" (Collins 121). The term "freak" categorizes with such terms as “nigger”, “bitch”, etc., which are being used in everyday speech as a form of resistance to their original meanings. Collins also distinguishes between class differences and how these terms are used differently in the African American community. For example, the working class could use the term “bitch” to mean being "aggressive, loud, rude, and pushy" (Collins 123), whereas women who are represented as being a "Black Bitch [who is] super tough, super strong… are often celebrated" (Collins 124). Some African American women rappers take words such as "ho" – which is considered the language of racism, sexism and heterosexism – and redefine it by the female sexuality. In the African American community, such words as "ho" could be represented as "female sexuality [which is] part of women's freedom and independence" (Collins 127). The social construction of beauty has changed throughout time, allowing Black women to appear more beautiful, such terms used are now reconstructed and now modified into a new meaning.
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