30 years ago, 'Waiting to Exhale' was the blockbuster Hollywood didn't anticipate

""I haven't gotten to the point where I'll take whatever I can get,""

""There's a big difference between being thirsty and being dehydrated.""

""we understand that mainstream media has never rendered our segment of the population faithfully out of habit, as readers of mainstream texts, we have learnt to ferret out the beneficial and put up blinders against the rest.""

""social phenomenon,""

Predominantly white critics were unimpressed when Waiting to Exhale opened in 1995, yet audiences made it one of the year's most profitable blockbusters. The Los Angeles Times labeled it a "social phenomenon," and the NAACP awarded it multiple Image Awards. The film was a major studio adaptation of Terry McMillan's novel and offered a rare Black women's ensemble a decade after The Color Purple and before later hits like Girlfriends and Girls Trip. The narrative centers on four successful, single Black women navigating romance and ambition, while viewers practiced negotiated reading to find faithful representation and resist mainstream misrendering.

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