I’ve always had an affinity for girl groups, ranging from the inner spice of Spice Girls to the spunk of TLC and to the beautiful, angelic voices of Destiny’s Child. Hearing their music and watching their old performances felt like watching power in motion. Different personalities, different looks, and different voices, but all standing together, taking up space. It made confidence feel collective, like something you didn’t have to carry alone.
And back then, it felt real. Like everybody had a place.
But somewhere in the 2010s, that feeling started to crack. On the surface, girl groups were “thriving.” Fifth Harmony and Little Mix, to be exact. The hits were there, the visuals were polished, the branding was tight. But if you really paid attention, especially as a Black girl, you started to notice… not everybody was being held the same, specifically the Black women in these groups.
With Little Mix, Leigh-Anne Pinnock didn’t just talk about feeling overlooked; she talked about the emotional weight of it, the kind that follows you off stage. She’s openly shared about how fans would bypass her at signings, how comments online constantly questioned her worth, her talent, and even her place in the group. It wasn’t always loud, headline-grabbing racism. Sometimes it was quieter, but just as cutting, being the least followed, the least defended, the one people felt most comfortable ignoring. And sometimes it was loud, outright racist messages, slurs, and harassment that she had to absorb while still showing up smiling in interviews, still harmonizing like everything was equal among her bandmates, when the reality she was facing was far more tragic than theirs.
Then there’s Fifth Harmony and Normani Kordei Hamilton. What she faced wasn’t subtle at all. During the height of the group’s fame, she was targeted with racist abuse across social media so severe that she temporarily stepped away from all her social media platforms just to protect her mental health. People weren’t just critiquing her musical abilities; they were attacking her identity, reducing her to stereotypes, flooding her mentions with hate, and trying to shrink her in a space where she was already fighting to be seen. What’s even worse in Normani’s case was her bandmate, Camila Cabello’s, own fans leaving her awful racist imagery via social media, and it not only took Camila days to even acknowledge the abuse, but even then she responded in a vague way, not outright addressing the awful and disgusting racial abuse her fans were directing at her own bandmate. Normani spoke about how this, in particular, made her feel unseen and unheard, and heartbroken that her own bandmate wouldn’t stick up for her when she needed it most. What made this worse was how normalized it felt, how often it was brushed off as just “fan behavior,” like that kind of cruelty is part of the cost of being visible and Black in the public eye.
And now, with KATSEYE and the conversations circling Manon Bannerman possibly leaving or allegedly being “kicked out” of the group, you can feel those same patterns trying to resurface in real time. The quickness to criticize, the uneven support, the way scrutiny seems to land heavier depending on who you are, it’s subtle to some, but obvious if you’ve ever seen it before. It’s not always about one big moment; it’s about accumulation, little comments, repeated narratives, who gets grace and who doesn’t. What’s been especially loud in the discourse around Manon is the underlying idea of replaceability, like certain members are always one “wrong move” away from being seen as optional. Even when there’s no official change, no confirmed decisions, fandom spaces can start building these narratives on their own. Suddenly it becomes speculation dressed up as certainty, who is deemed “safe” and who is deemed “expendable.”
This kind of framing hits differently when seeing how often Black girls in girl groups get treated as the most scrutinized link in the chain. It’s not usually stated outright, but it shows up in the way people talk around them, how quickly praise turns into conditions, how fast confidence is reinterpreted as attitude, how mistakes are amplified instead of absorbed with grace.
So even without anything official happening with Manon and KATSEYE at the moment, the conversation itself starts to feel heavy. It hits me that it’s not just about one group or one member, or even one moment of fandom discourse. It’s about a pattern that keeps repeating itself in pop music history, especially when Black women are part of these spaces. With groups like Fifth Harmony, watching Normani navigate the constant scrutiny and uneven support made it impossible to ignore how differently Black women are treated, even when they are clearly some of the most talented people on the stage. With Little Mix, Leigh-Anne speaking about invisibility and bias showed that even success doesn’t always come with equal recognition or protection.
That’s the part that sticks with me the most, how Black women in pop girl groups are often placed in cycles where they are celebrated for their talent but still not fully protected within the systems and fandoms that profit off them. They’re visible enough to be watched constantly, but not always supported with the same softness, patience, or grace as their bandmates. In each of these women’s cases, that imbalance builds up over time until it starts to feel like a pattern instead of a coincidence.
So when I think about girl groups now, I still think about sisterhood, harmony, and confidence, but I also think about responsibility, about how easily fandom culture can reproduce the same inequalities it claims to love diversity in, and about how many Black women have had to carry not just their part in the music, but the emotional weight of being constantly evaluated through a harsher lens.
”Black women have had to carry not just their part in the music, but the emotional weight of being constantly evaluated through a harsher lens.”
Danielle Okogho
Maybe that’s why I still care so much. Because girl groups, at their best, are supposed to be about shared light. But history keeps showing that for Black women in pop, that light hasn’t always been evenly distributed, and calling that out is the only way for the next generation to have a chance to experience something different. Loving girl groups now feels complicated. I still will always have a soft spot in my heart for Fifth Harmony and Little Mix, they were a part of my childhood. I still feel admiration and nostalgia while listening to their music, but now I also have awareness.
Black women haven’t failed pop girl groups. Pop girl groups, and the cultures around them, have too often failed Black women. Naming the truth isn’t tearing anything down, it’s how things begin to change. If it isn’t called out, it keeps repeating. The next generation of Normanis and Manons deserve more than just visibility; they deserve to be fully seen, fully supported, and allowed to shine without any conditions. Here’s hoping, in the future, for real change within pop girl groups.