June 2025: The 92% in Reflection and Reinvigoration
In the final stretch of the 2024 election cycle, the phrase “92 percent” became both a data point and a declaration. Ninety-two percent of Black women voters cast their ballots for Kamala Harris. When the results didn’t reflect that collective effort, the response was not shock, but soul-deep exhaustion.
Social media campaigns bloomed overnight: #92Percent. Not to celebrate. But to reclaim.
Now, as we move through the first half of 2025, the 92% is less a statistic and more a symbol—of rest, recalibration, and a quiet revolution unfolding behind the scenes. Black women, long expected to be the backbone of democracy, have stepped into new rhythms: not retreat, but recalibration. The 92% is present, but not performing. It’s a movement of visibility on our own terms. Choosing when and how to engage, and refusing to be defined by the gaze or demands of others.
The 92% is still here. It’s just not always seen.
In this moment, rest is resistance. Self-care is strategy. And the 92% is reclaiming its power not in the streets, but in the sanctuary of our own lives—through art, ritual, community, and the quiet work of healing (Floyd, 2025, O’Neal, 2025, Yarbrough, 2025).
Aesthetic Trauma, Political Burnout & the Black Female Nervous System
The days that followed weren’t just politically fraught. They were physiologically demanding. Many Black women reported symptoms of decision fatigue, disillusionment, and a familiar, ancestral ache: being hyper-visible only in times of crisis and wholly neglected otherwise.
These feelings of emotional fatigue, aesthetic pressure, and deep bodily exhaustion? They’re not imagined They’re now backed by science that tells us what our bodies already knew:
- A 2021 brain imaging study found that when Black women are repeatedly exposed to racialized beauty microaggressions—the subtle but constant messaging that their features, skin, or hair are “less than”—the brain’s threat detection center (the amygdala) goes into overdrive. Meanwhile, the part of the brain responsible for emotional regulation and decision-making becomes strained. This combination creates a cycle of hypervigilance, emotional depletion, and chronic stress.
- Another study introduced what’s now called the Black Feminist Model of Body Image. It shows how living under the weight of Eurocentric beauty ideals—thinness, lightness, “polish”—can cause a specific kind of trauma. This trauma doesn’t just live in the mind; it registers in the body as elevated cortisol, fatigue, and long-term imbalance in the nervous system.
- And then there’s the myth of the Strong Black Woman—so often used to celebrate resilience, but rarely to protect the woman herself. Researchers now confirm that this pressure to always hold it together, to care for everyone else, to stay composed—silences emotional expression and contributes to physical symptoms like high blood pressure, migraines, and emotional shutdown.
This isn’t just burnout. This is neuropolitical collapse.
92% Became a Mirror
The 92% moment was never just about the vote. It was about the aesthetic cost of laboring under someone else’s narrative.
To be “seen” only when it serves the system.
To be praised for strength but penalized for rest.
To be the savior, but never the subject.
Black women were called to organize, to uplift, to convince others to care. And then, they were expected to do it again without recognition, without rest, and without reciprocity.
In 2025, many said no. They chose disengagement not from community—but from performance.
They turned toward mutual aid, somatic therapy, art practice, and ritual. Not retreat. Recalibration.
Why This Matters in Lifestyle Medicine
In neuroaesthetic terms, this is more than a cultural moment. It’s a sensory survival response. A shift from symbolic overexposure to intentional internal repair.
As a physician and neuroaesthetic strategist, I teach my clients that chronic misrepresentation—visual, verbal, social—leaves marks on the nervous system. These include:
- Suppressed dopamine in the nucleus accumbens, reducing emotional reward
- Elevated cortisol, increasing inflammation and adrenal fatigue
- Fragmented self-concept, impairing interoception and identity regulation
The 92% became a neuroaesthetic inflection point. Black women collectively said:
“I will no longer participate in systems that don’t reflect me. I will design my restoration.”
Five Restorative Practices for the Overseen but Undervalued
1. Design a Visibility Fast
Step away from performative visibility. Limit social platforms that demand you show your pain or productivity. Replace with private rituals of expression—painting, movement, journaling.
2. Curate a Symbolic Mirror
Create a self-portrait or collage that reflects your emotional truth—not how others see you. Use texture, shape, and shadow. Reclaim visual language as personal, not political.
3. Replace Praise with Presence
Reject strength as currency. Invite softness, tears, or nothingness. Let rest be the ritual. Let quiet be the revolution.
4. Decenter Crisis in Community
Gather with others not to mobilize, but to metabolize. Share food, scent, silence. Let your community become a space for co-regulation, not constant reaction.
5. Anchor Identity in the Body, Not the Feed
Use essential oils, breath, and color therapy to root your sense of self in sensation—not validation. Ask: What does being feel like, when I’m not being watched?
Final Word
We are not here to be seen when the world is crumbling. We are here to see ourselves in wholeness, in rhythm, and in reclamation.
The 92% is not a statistic.
It’s a mirror—shattered, yes, but now reshaped.
Into new rituals.
New vision.
New embodiment.
Let the reflection be your own.
—
Dr. Stacey Denise
Board-Certified Physician | Neuroaesthetic Strategist
Founder, The Color Reset Method™
www.drstaceydenise.com
