30 Years of 'Waiting to Exhale'
The iconic film based on Terry McMillan's best-selling novel remains a timeless classic for Black women who choose sisterhood when the dating pool isn't enough.
I’ll never forget Christmas 1995 at the movies. I was 10 years old, and my cousins and I went to see Jumanji. My parents, aunt and uncle saw Waiting to Exhale. The kid movie ended first, and we sat quietly waiting in the theater lobby, as we had been trained. But the moment the adults walked out of Waiting to Exhale came an explosion of excited sounds. We all piled into my mom’s Chevy Astro van to go home, and I can’t recall which parent started it or even what exactly they said beyond the general sentiments of This movie was Black-male-bashing trash! or This movie was the absolute gospel truth! All I know for sure is that it was a straight gender split: my dad and uncle vs. my mom and aunt, against and for the movie, all the way turned up. It was the most epic Battle of the Sexes I had ever witnessed.
The debate didn’t end when we got back to my house, and because we kids were “too young to be in grown folks’ business,” they sent us upstairs to play our games while they played theirs. Enthralled, we disobeyed, sitting on the stairs listening to them go at it about who was right and who was wrong and who ought to be ashamed. My youngest cousin recorded it all on her TalkGirl (a time capsule I’d give anything for her to find right now!), and we laughed and laughed anytime one team scored a point against the other. Eventually, the cousins grew weary and went upstairs, but I stayed, my face squeezed through the bars in the staircase, fascinated not just by the conversation but that a movie could make people (my parents!) act like this.
I couldn’t wait to grow up and find out what all the fuss was about.
Dec. 22 marks 30 years later, and Waiting to Exhale is still an undeniable (if not controversial) classic—from the iconic Babyface-produced soundtrack to the all-star cast. Starring Whitney Houston, Angela Bassett, Loretta Devine and Lela Rochon as four 30-something, business-savvy best friends with horrible love lives, the film adaptation of Terry McMillan’s best-selling book showed how exhausting and depressing life can be for Black women who center relationships with men. The women captured the still-palpable tension, anxiety and stress of holding your breath until you finally feel safe enough with a man to exhale.
As more American women give up dating men this year (Pew Research says only 38% of single women are in the dating market compared to 61% of single men!), Waiting to Exhale remains the blueprint for the grand release that awaits us on the other side when Black women decenter relationships with men, build communities of women, and finally choose ourselves.
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