That's not ladylike no. 1

That’s not ladylike, no. 1 portrays a preadolescent girl navigating coming of age. She looks challengingly at the viewer with a self-confident expression and hands on her hips, fingernails painted red. Deborah Roberts has described her ongoing commitment to depicting Black girls between the ages of eight and eleven as motivated by a belief that this threshold is when girls develop their own sense of style and voice, but also start to garner unwelcome attention from men. In her collages, Roberts conjures children in ways that are never saccharine or sentimental, instead capturing their simultaneous vulnerability and empowerment.

Combining popular culture motifs (Hello Kitty) with art historical iconography—cats and cherries are symbols associated with female sexuality—That’s not ladylike, no. 1 asks us to consider how long Black girls are allowed to just be children and what cultural and societal expectations are placed on them.