Serayah’s Breakup Reveals This Double Standard [Op-Ed]

Serayah just did something a lot of women in the public eye know all too well: she sat down and wrote a full statement explaining why her engagement to Joey Bada$$ is over, then noted she’d only be addressing it this one time. Not because she owes anyone an explanation. Because apparently, that’s still the unspoken toll for being a woman whose life is public.

She closed it with a line already living in everybody’s Notes app screenshots: “This chapter didn’t end the way I prayed it would. But endings can also be beginnings.”

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Beautiful. Poignant. But also, why did she have to say any of it at all?

This isn’t new territory for Serayah. In July, she sat across from Jason Lee on his show and was asked point-blank why things ended with her ex, Jacob Latimore. She laughed it off, explaining that after four years of dating, she didn’t have much-needed clarity on where the relationship was headed. 

Here’s the double standard nobody names enough…

Men in these same situations rarely get asked to narrate their heartbreak for public consumption. They get to just… move on. Meanwhile women, especially Black women, are expected to perform closure like it’s a press run, packaging their grief into something digestible enough that strangers online will stop speculating.

And it’s not just the explaining. It’s what gets buried underneath it. 

From her breakout on Empire to roles in BMF, Kingdom Business, and Ruth & Boaz, Serayah has built an incredible body of work….