Category Archives: Thinking Aloud

Not The Same As…

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Someone recently wrote:

Saying “I don’t date fat people” is the thing same as saying “I don’t date black people”.

No. No. No. And just no.

First let me state the following is how it looks from MY experiences, others may be similar, but mileage will vary. Every person has a right to date, or not date, within her/his own racial preferences. This is not about that. This is about the apple/oranges comparing/pitting one set of struggles against another. This is about how as a fat woman of color deep in the midst of both struggles, being able to say how and why they are not the same and how it affects me.

For most of history, if you dated/married fat, it was mostly just a descriptive. Yes, being fat has always had its own stereotypes, but until semi-recent times these were based more on the physical aspects of being fat, than on the intellectual or psychological state of the fat person. A simpleminded person was deemed so because of his or her behavior, regardless of size. Nowadays some will determine a person’s intelligence, or presumed lack thereof, solely based on the person being corpulent. It is as insidious as incorrect as the presumption that all overweight people are unhealthy based solely on their appearance. And all of this is regardless of race.

So let’s not ignore the elephant in the room from where a lot of this black/white nonsense springs. Regardless of corpulence, historically here in America, it was not droves of fat white people shipped over to pick cotton, tobacco etc. With our history, white dating color, but black in particular has always been fraught with issues. Some of these issues still persist, on both sides, to this day.

A few years ago, a white guy expressed his understanding of why blacks would want to date/marry white because it is “stepping up”. Conversely implying that we [blacks]-were somehow *lesser than* and should be grateful. He was not grateful for my response.

  • Is saying “I don’t date fat people” the thing same as saying “I don’t date blondes”? No, because a fat person can become blonde.
  • Is saying “I don’t date fat people” the thing same as saying “I don’t date people who wear glasses”? No, because a fat person can get contacts.
  • Is saying “I don’t date fat people” the thing same as saying “I don’t date (insert religion) or people with piercings”? No, because again these are things that can be (granted, not easily) changed, should a person so choose to make that change.

Let’s try saying “I’ll drink Cherry Kool Aid” but “I won’t drink water”. One maybe be somewhat malleable to change, the other is not. As a fat black woman I can, to a certain extent, change my flavor (my weight, my hair color, my hair, and as a person of a certain level of melanin, to some degree my complexion – my l Kool-Aid if you will). However, whether I am a glass or a pitcher, none of that changes the fact that no matter what flavors I choose, at the core I am still Black (water).

When I read someone does not want to date black people, it is a dismissal not just of the outer layer of our physical being; it also dismisses the core of who we are as a culture and as individuals. I don’t mean just the blacks the follow the Hip-Hop/Urban/R&B culture. I know blacks born and raised here in New York City who would recognize the music of Luka Šulić and Stjepan Hauser of the “Two Cellos”, but if shown pictures would have to guess the difference between T-Pain and Li’l Wayne. Neither of which would matter; to those who would not date them, simply because they are black and therefore will be immediately dismissed. Regardless of where we as blacks are on the socio/ economic/class line, it diminishes our individual experiences, our hearts, our souls, our humanity on top of what makes us black, what makes us – us.

So yes saying “I don’t date fat people” is the thing same as saying “I don’t date black people” is flippant, dismissive and frankly out right insulting.

“I may date a different race or color, it doesn’t mean I don’t like my strong black brother”
“Before you can read me, you have to learn how to see me”
/En Vogue – Free Your Mind

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Tuesday Slice of Life Challenge – Two Writing Teachers

Yes All Women

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I fully admit the character limit of Twitter and I are not the best of friends.  Still every now and then, even someone as verbose as I must concede on how much can be said with so little. If you have not joined the conversation I urge you to follow, read, absorb, think and engage in the #YesAllWomen conversation happening on Twitter.  Do not dismiss these voices as ranting and/or misandry.  Read it, not just the surface words on pixels, but the words of those who have put their stories in 140 characters or less.

Read it, not just the surface words on pixels, but the words of those, female and male, who have put our stories, our hearts for your perusal  of the female experience as it pertains to men, in 140 characters or less.

Yes, several of the stories told are tragedies, but the fact that this still needs to be a conversation in the day in age is the bigger one.

#YesAllWomen on Twitter

Bring Her Home

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The multiple hues a cacophony of color
Cascading twixt tired fingers
She sighs knowing,
She should go do something
She should go do anything,
Anything but the nothing she’s doing now
Still her fingers swirl as she lingers

Her thoughts as deeply jumbled
as the colors before her
While she ponders the fate
Of the little girl who owns them
They will be hers again she thinks resolutely
Because she cannot think of her daughter in past tense
No, she cannot think that it is already too late

This room that hurts the most to dwell
Yet her heart carries it along anyway
When to other rooms she roams
She lifts her head to sky her heart sees
Beyond the walls of the room she stands
Praying her prayers are heard,
Praying her prayers are answered

** “Hear my prayer
In my need
You have always been there
She is young
She’s afraid
Let her rest
Heaven blessed.
Bring her home
Bring her home
Bring her home”

#BringOurGirlsHome
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** Gender switching the heatbreakingly beautiful “Bring Him Home” from Les Miserables.

Today at dVerse we’re challenged to write a poem about NEWS of any type. From personal to local, national, international, past, or present news. And this just happened to be sitting around…

dVerse ~ Poets Pub | Poetics – Good News, Bad News, Your News!

300 Mothers

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People are all up in arms over the “alleged” words of Donald Sterling.  Here in New York City a mini race-riot nearly broke on a Brooklyn bus by a 60 something year old white man who single-handedly attempted to turn back the hands of time when he told a black woman she needed to move to the back of the bus and let him have her seat.  A man who, in the midst of the argument that ensued, out right says Sterling should run for president. When it comes to black and white relations, even now there are times when it all feels as though we are just one lit match from the racial powder keg. These are the things that occupy our news and social media cycles.

But what has garnered my attention the most these past three weeks are nearly three hundred mothers.  The nearly three hundred Nigerian mothers of the girls kidnapped from their school last month and the eleven more stolen from their own homes in the middle of the night in recent days.

Did you know there were more kidnappings?  Here we are three weeks after the initial kidnapping and the U.S., is only now stepping forth with “doing the best we can”. It feels all Okay, fine I’ll do it, as though our involvement now is akin to the petulant child forced to apologize to a sibling for some wrong.  It’s better than doing nothing. It is certainly better than the incompetence that has been the Nigerian Police; the same police who initially did not even want to acknowledge that more kidnappings occurred.

Is it the sense of helplessness, the “what can we do about it?” Is because it’s over there, on another continent and not in our backyards?  Is it because it is happening to Africans by Africans,  a black-on-black crime if you will?  What is at the root of this overall sense of apathetic whatever regarding it? Let’s be honest, if this were nearly 300 little white girls in South Africa, or in any other country been kidnapped as such, the immediate public outcry would be swift and deafening. Why is the world so relatively quiet for Nigeria’s little girls?  It has taken nearly three weeks of a slow building public international pressure for any course of assistance to be offered, action to be put into play. Are nearly 300  little black girls not worthy?

  • Tell that to the mothers who do not know if their girls are already dead.
  • Tell that to the mothers who do not know if their girls are alive, but already parsed out to the human trafficking / sex trade markets as threatened by the leader of the group who masterminded the school kidnapping.
  • And as more time that passes without any of the girls being rescued, tell that to the mothers who do not know if perhaps death is the better option.

This Sunday for those of you who will celebrate Mother’s Day, unless a miracle happens between now and Saturday, take a moment to remember  the nearly 300 mothers across the ocean missing their daughters and acknowledge them. Let’s continue to put pressure on our governments until each and every girl is accounted for.

300

To Be Or Not To Be Guilty…

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In the past few weeks, there seems to have been a spike of discussion online and in real life of females who have Friends With Benefits (FWBs) versus “a real” relationship and whether or not it is settling. I find this uniquely interesting as it is mostly the females who felt a sense of “less-than” or guilt for their choices. Most males do not feel any lessening of their self-worth for having FWBs, let alone guilt. So why are so many females so hung up over it. For simplicity I am going to mostly stick with the cisgender heterosexual monogamous relationships as I write, honestly because it’s easier, but the  subject crosses genders, sexualities and poly/mono -gamies.

Just as I had to work out my own issues, everyone must decide their sexual comfort levels that for themselves. I am not providing a How To on getting around/past/over said guilt. This is simply my two cents on why so many women seem to have this guilt in the first place. Your mileage will definitely vary.

I think a lot of the “guilt” some women put on themselves about sex outside of a relationship and/or marriage is rooted in the things taught to us growing up. Whether covertly or overtly a lot of it comes down do modern society’s taint that sex should be about love. In short, women should only be having sex with the person in which she shares mutual love. And if the mutual love is there then they should be married. Blame the “happily ever after” Prince Charming fed to little girls through Disney princess animations and every romantic comedy where gal gets the guy tropes as adults. Unfortunately, these far from realistic ideals of love and romance become so ingrained in our psyches, that come adulthood if it’s not Fourth of July fireworks, swelling arias, heart beat skipping breathlessness 24/7 it’s then it is somehow “less than” and is therefore settling.

Every female that reaches adulthood has heard “If you’re good enough to have sex with you then you’re good enough to marry”. While more experienced females, married or not, tend to have less of a bias on the subject, it is still very hard for most young females to work through the duality of wanting to satisfy a basic need versus “what would Mama think?” It is a grace to the modern times that couples who live together have far less of a stigma now than as few as fifty years ago. That we are now in the 21st Century has very little bearing on these core beliefs handed down to us through the ages since Adam and Eve.  And speaking of the First Couple… Compound all of the above with the thought of many religions which equate, and condemn, sex outside of the marital bed as being a sin.

The magic of the marital bed, in and of itself is funny as it does not 100% absconds one from the guilt of sex. I know many women that have been married or in long term relationships for years, but still will not have sex in their parent’s home when going for an extended family visit. I can pretty much guarantee that 90% of the time it is the female who has the hang-up about it. And 90% of that 90% is due to the fear of what their dear moms would think. These are from women who clearly did not arrive upon this earth via immaculate conception, yet the very thought of their mothers even thinking that they themselves are doing the very thing that gave them life, though they have every legal and “moral” right to as a married person, still makes them uncomfortable.

And while according to the adage the numbers of “size” doesn’t matter, oh but the number of partners a female has seem to do. Even a woman who is a serial monogamist has this magic intangible number that suddenly transforms her from  someone continually looking, but failing to find love, to becoming something…else.  A woman with one FWB is merely is not even pretending that what she is doing is about finding love and at best is “settling”, at worst she too becomes the ambiguous “something…else”. However, females happily engaging in multiple FWBs may then have wonderful pseudonyms from trollop to whore attached to their deeds as the classic double standards of the Madonna/Whore syndrome rears its nasty little head. Because oddly enough, even after all this time, since Eve said “Yes” oh so long ago, the onus to say “No”, to resist temptation – especially sexual temptation, is almost always on the female. Thus, those of us who can’t or simply won’t resist are in the wrong.

After all, we all know boys will be boys, but  good girls don’t.

When society in general has managed to create this dichotomy that glorifies and vilifies sex, even for those who have “the rights” to do it, really, is it any wonder so many women have guilt?

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That’s my two cents for today – come see how others are slicing:

Slice of Life - Two Writing Teachers

Tuesday Slice of Life Writing Challenge – Two Writing Teachers

 

Perfect Stranger

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I do love her still, for she’s still mother
Though oft she calls me by names of others
Her soft eyes remain, shining warm with care
The curves of her body, her graying hair
But her mind now slides from what’s really there

Her concave lips form that familiar smile
Like when she showed off her latest hairstyle
Even with loose curls each strand was in place
Particular to the point of basket case
Never walked out the door without her face

Made a clean home look easy to attain
My haphazard ways were always her bane
It gave her license for years to nitpick
My style she joked was an urban beatnik
But she loves my roast chicken with garlic

Her home now’s not what I thought would occur
But she’d gone beyond my means to help her
After jumping with haste to a rescue
When she tried to melt wax for a fondue
Insists utensils could be eaten too

She’s no longer the mother that I knew
Some days it takes all just to muddle through
I look at her and it’s my face I see
So it’s twice as hard when she looks straight at me,
And then asks ‘And who are you sweetie?’

That I remind her of her little girl
Who fidgets wearing pinafore and curls
She’s the woman that once knew me so well
But if she knows me at all now I can’t tell
Yet I know her deeply, and that’s my hell

Roles reversed, she’s the one whose hair I comb
When I visit her at the nursing home
“See this pin my girl gave me yesterday?”
I was a child, it’s so old in years even I cannot say
But for her, the years time has washed away

Seeing the pin makes me break down in tears
She coos “Oh miss, it can’t be that bad dear”
I fall in the familiar arms of hers
As everything becomes just one big blur
And I cry upon a perfect stranger

This Is A Beauty No One Is Sleeping On

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The upcoming Disney movie Maleficent starring Angelina Joli is already getting a lot a buzz. Clearly Maleficent is going to be to Sleeping Beauty what the Broadway musical Wicked is to The Wizard of Oz. While the movie is by no means a musical, like Wicked and The Wizard of Oz, it already has its defining song:

I first heard a snippet of this on Sunday and was completely blown away by it. This rendition is beautiful, lush, beguilingly serene and yet unnerving, haunting and almost menacing in its feel.  This is especially true in contrast to the lighthearted, gay feel of the original.

And for those who may not know or remember it, here is the original version for comparison:

Lana Del Rey’s haunting take on the classic and much beloved original is akin to hearing a siren’s song across the seas knowing you are headed towards your doom if continue to listen, yet not being able to tear yourself away.   It is absolutely perfect for Maleficent and makes me want to see the movie even more.

The Clothes Make The Man Or Woman

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So this has been making the rounds of social media:

your_body
Someone recently responded as follows:

It’s a nice idea, but in a world where “the clothes make the man (or woman)”, it’s just not entirely practical to wear whatever in the eff you want, whenever you want, in spite of how it fits or what true messages it conveys. People think they are being individualistic or letting their personality shine or showing confidence with some of the unflattering things they wear, when in reality, they are letting their clothes define them and allowing their true selves to be buried under their latest fashion concoction. In other words, if one wears things that don’t flatter them, people tend to see the clothes (or lack thereof) instead of the person. So there’s my two cents.

I agree, if you are a CEO, you will be perceived as being more respectable and trust worthy in a business suit, than in jeans and a polo shirt, even if the suit is more ill-fitting than the jeans and shirt would be. Does it change how do business if you choose to wear to work because you are more comfortable than in a suit, no. But let’s be honest, how you are now perceived in knowing your business does change and it does matter and thus the suit. Even many  of those in the creative fields, where the rules of dress are very open, will attire themselves in a way more ‘suited’ to the situation, when conducting certain business transactions. We all understand that it is not necessarily fair or practical, or that matter makes sense, it is just the way of business perception.

However, where I disagree is in wearing  what’s flattering. What is flattering on a person is akin to the adage of beauty being in the eye of the beholder. It is very subjective.

Let’s go back in time and check out Cher’s infamous feathered concoction or the swan dress worn by Bjork at the Academy Awards in different years. Both outfits were considered “flattering” to the respective woman, but inappropriate to the occasion. Uh, it was the Oscars, the epitome of the art of movie making – a place where one would think individualism and being different would be celebrated. Yet both women were mocked for being just that – different. There is some mystical point you’re “allowed’ to color outside the lines before the one’s individualism becomes something bane to the sensibility of another. But who gets to decide that line?

Using the recent mini fashion storm with Gabourey Sidibe and the gown she wore at the Golden Globe being the perfect example. Gabourey wore what she wanted showing her individuality. Some loved what she wore and said it fit well. Others hated it and said  she could have worn something more ‘flattering’.  The same arguments pro and con were made of Melissa McCarthy’s gown.   The only persons whose opinion were correct in either case were Gabourey and Melissa’s.

Here is where the point of the post would be truly tested: Lady Victoria Hervey wore a body conscious gown to the Golden Globes after party where the world could see she was naked underneath.  Now Imagine the firestorm that would have erupted had either McCarthy or Sidibe decided she wanted to wear something any where near as sheer and/or revealing. They would not do so because they are very much aware that the fashionistas and especially Twitter would eviscerate them. The issue becomes a) why they will be taken to task for doing the same and b) who are the hell are those who would take them to that task are in the first place to be able to do so with impunity?
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Verbal Diarrhea Diaries: I’ll Be Damned

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So, a guy emails me through an online dating site:

“I am going to assume that my profile is too casual/risqué for you, but I thought I’d shoot you a line anyway. (You have a fetching smile.)”

Of course I check out his profile. He states he wants a FWB, not looking for serious dating and is desirous of a woman with intelligence.

Got it – he wants a fuck, just not a dumb one.

My response?

“Hello,

My dentist and I thank you.

“Check you out!” as the kids say, throwing down the gauntlet on the opening play.

If I respond in the negative I come off as looking prudish, yet a positive one is indicative that I am open to only being someone ‘beneficial’. If I am open to such with you, who else have I been beneficial to? Providing I am someone simpatico to your intelligence and views to be worthy of said fornication.

Damned if I do and damned if I do. Fiddley-dee, whatever is a woman to do?

Oh, I can pick up that gauntlet and cyber strike you across the face with it. (Insert emoticon with tongue sticking out here.) [<– Yes, I actually wrote it out as such.]

Ya gonna take that?

Rai”

This is not to say I would or would not go for a roll –or a few- in the hay with him. He is attractive and arrogant and just the sort of ego balloon I like to stick my pins in and pop.

Regardless, one has to prove worthiness of my wrapping these thick juicy thighs around, and that ain’t the way, Bub.

Two Black Suns

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In light of the weekend’s Micheal Dunn verdict in Florida, I feel the need to bring this post to the forefront again.

NY Daily News: NYPD Allegedly Assault Staten Island Family – Killed Parakeet

I am the mother of two suns.
Two black suns.
Two black suns in this country, this United States of America.

My late-husband and I together did our best to navigate them through the minefields.

In their Sesame Street days, they are taught – this is the land of opportunity. They learn, that the color of your skin shouldn’t matter. And we said shouldn’t matter because even at that young age of theirs, neither of us as black parents could get past the ugly truth lodged in our throats and say that it ‘doesn’t matter’.

In their grade school days, they are taught – this land of the free. They learn that some of us have to work twice as hard most times to afford it. When in stores, they learn do not touch anything unless you have the money to buy it. We do not yet teach them that they are not being watched because someone might think they will break it, but because someone might think they will steal it, but they learn.

In middle and high school – they are taught this home of the brave. They learn as long as they are brave within the accepted boundaries, and those boundaries are fluid. They learn that the police officer who was their friend in day care and grade school, may not be so now that their voices have dropped and their awareness of the world at large has risen. They learn this even when sometimes that officer is an officer of color.

I am the mother of two suns.
Two black suns.
Two black suns in this country, this United States of America.

Our parents and my generation learn for the all the Martin Luther Kings and Malcom X’s there were the Emmitt Tills. That for the Rosa Parks there were the Eleanor Bumpers, for the Jesse Jacksons there were the Michael Stewarts, Yusef Hawkins and right around the corner from where my parents used to live when my sons were still children, Anthony Baez.

And as my sons made their way to manhood they learn that there are too many Rodney Kings, Amadou Diallos, Patrick Dorismonds, Abner Louimas, James Byrds, Sean Bells and now Jordan Davis.

In between what they are taught in school they are taught manners and respect and pride and faith, yes because it is the right thing to do. But they learn it may also keep them alive.

Yes, we were strict. Yes, we had rules. They learn to think of others as well as of and for themselves. They are taught responsibility and, like all children/teens/young adults, begrudgingly learn it.

They eventually learn curfews are not because I did not trust them to go out into the world, but because I did not trust the world to give them back to us. With one son sometimes too nice for his own good and the other sometimes too hot-tempered for his, if they are in the house, I am not worrying at 1am, at 2am, at 3am. I am not worrying if this will be the night, the night that the nightmare comes true and we get the call. The call that is the nightmare of every parent that must raise black boys to black men.

The nightmare that became the unfortunate reality for Sabrina Fulton and Tracy Martin – because like Stewart, Hawkins, Baez, King, Diallo, Louima, Dorismond, Byrd, Bell and Davis we know there are far, far, far too many Trayvon Martins out there never heard about in the news.

I am the mother of two suns.
Two black suns.
Two black suns in this country, this United States of America.

They were taught that red of our flag is for the valor in fighting for the right to live free; the white for the purity and innocence of our thought and purpose and the blue for the justice to protect those rights. Though as black men those inalienable rights wouldn’t be put to paper for them for another 100 years, and to some form of actuality for another 100 years hence. They learn it can also be the red of their blood on a baton, the bullet from a gun, the edge of a blade or a fist from the white-hot rage of someone having his or her worst day that encountered them having one of the worst of theirs and the blue of their body growing cold in the morgue from the result of that confrontation long before I get the call.

They learn that their All American names will get the door to open. Then they learn that their not so all American looks will sometimes have those same doors close in their faces.

They are taught that though it is certainly better than it has ever been, they learn that there is still quite some ways to go.

My suns are now adults, living their lives as men. My late-husband and I did the best we could with what we had. We got them through the minefield to black adulthood relatively unscathed. I no longer have nightmares of the call. I go to sleep at night trusting we will all safely see the morning unharmed. However, I am guessing, so did did Evelyn Lugo when chaos crashed through her door.

Things like this happen and a mother’s worry does crop up again on such occasions – after all…

I am the mother of two suns.
Two black suns.
Two black suns living their lives as black men in this country, this United States of America.

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