The fourth season of Iyanla Fix My Life gets real, real quick.
Not only does the show come with the weighted theme “House of Healing—The Myth of the Angry Black Women,” it also comes with one very important house rule—no sex whatsoever.
“Sex is the way we dull our senses to escape the physical sensations in the body,” Vanzant explains as she addresses her House of Healing, which brings together eight women who have once been labeled as “angry Black women.” “No sex with each other, yourself or any body else.”
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The first half of the new season of the enthralling series eliminates sexual satisfaction to focus on something far deeper—the cleansing of mind, body and soul in order to understand the root of emotional aggression.
Vanzant, who refers to herself as a minister, priestess and medicine woman, reveals that she got the theme idea for her upcoming season of “Fix My Life” from the way First Lady Michelle Obama was once described.
“I don’t do television news necessarily,” Vanzant began. “I still do a lot of internet stuff. Wherever I find myself. I opened up a page on the internet and there was an article where they had called my first lady, Mrs. Obama, an angry Black woman. She was called an angry Black woman and that hurt my feelings.”
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Another encounter during which her 20-year-old granddaughter was addressed in the same manner triggered a moment of clarity—something needed to be said and done about the way Black women, both in and out of the Black community, are labeled.
“I think the myth of the Angry Black Woman came first of all from society because it’s how they shut us up. It’s how they diminish us. It’s how they dismiss our concerns. I think it was a way to misrepresent our passion,” she went on to explain. “Some of it is cultural insensitivities, cultural anger, cultural ignorance, but we do have emotions and feelings that we really don’t know how to deal with.”
The new season of Iyanla Fix My Life airs Saturday, September 10 on OWN at 9 p.m.