Robinson states that, "A Mammy was a woman completely dedicated to the white family, especially to the children of that family. She was the house servant who was given complete charge of domestic management" (51). In other words, she was a surrogate mother to the white children. .
Mammy was also seen as the counter part for the other African American female stereotype, the Jezebel. The Jezebel was promiscuous while Mammy was maternal, virtuous, and highly devoted. In the article "Male Mammies: A Social-Comparison Perspective on How Exaggeratedly Overweight Media Portrayals of Madea, Rasputia, and Big Momma Affect How Black Woman Feel About Themselves," authors Gina Masullo Chen, Sherri Williams, Nicole Hendrickson, and Li Chen, all professors at Syracuse University, state that "The Mammy is usually a grossly overweight large-breasted woman who is desexualized, maternal, and nonthreatening to White people but who may be aggressive towards men" (116). The role of Mammy, in a way, tried to legitimize slavery by allowing African American women to be close to the white standards of motherhood. Robinson continues to talk about the evolution of Mammy and states,.
Yet as the mammy stereotype evolved, it became an even more important symbol of how black women were sexualized. Jezebel permitted the sexualized abuse of black woman as chattel slavery, but mammy, re-proportioned them into the ideology of white culture, as it humanized slavery. Ironically, mammy's licit sexuality upheld, and even perpetuated, the institution of slavery itself (51). Most of what we know about the white perception of Mammy surfaces from the postbellum South. Many white southern authors use the name Mammy when referring to a black woman who would serve white families as a nanny and would commonly overlook childcare. They were always called Mammy by the white families. Once they became a Mammy, they lost who they were before.