This mixed methods study examined how a sample audience of Black women decoded creator Yvette Lee Bowser’s preferred meanings of Living Single. The majority of previous research concerning Black women as cultural readers and audience members has focused on literature, films, music and the visual arts (Bobo, 1995, 2001). This study intends to fill the gap that has excluded Black women as television audience members.

Historically, scholars have focused almost exclusively on negative stereotypes of Black women in mass media, specifically the mammy, tragic mulatto, sapphire and jezebel. Scholars Donald Bogle (1992, 2001), Herman Gray (1995), Kristal Brent Zook (1999), Patricia Hill Collins (2000a, 2005), and Clint Wilson, II (2005) have all explored these stereotypes and their detrimental effects on society and the Black community. Minimal research has explored whether the race/ethnicity and gender of a writer and producer impacts the preferred meanings of the television program they create (Hall, 1973, 1980, 1997). While all of this research is valid to mass communication studies, it lacks breadth concerning who has creative control over these images and their interpretation by a niche audience of Black women.

Results revealed that the lived experiences and frameworks of knowledge of the participants directly influenced the way they decoded the content of the series Living Single. While the show has been in syndication for 12 years, the representation of Black women on other television sitcoms has yet to rival the Black feminist standpoint Yvette Lee Bowser accomplished in her series.