Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Spritzheads and Their Baby Boys

Jesus, will women stop treating their boy babies like they are the best thing to ever be associated with a vagina please? I don’t think that this tendency is super concentrated in the southern united states, but given my status as an outsider, and the LOADS of free time that I have on my hands I’ve begun to see the basis of this. I was riding my bike when I saw an absolutely gorgeous but terribly frazzled looking black woman walking to her car holding the hand of a 4-6 year old little brown boy, telling him fervently that he could have absolutely any “cold drink” he wanted when he got to the store before whatever game he had that day. Children in general are a) stupid, b) obnoxious, and c) annoying enough anyway but to make matters worse, this little boy was wearing a shirt that proudly proclaimed “Stud In the Making”. Although I realize that the crisis of masculinity affects male bodied folks in profound and stifling ways, there is ABSOLUTELY NO EXCUSE to dress your child as if he shits out gold nuggets purely because he was born with a sex organ more than ¾ an inch in length.

As if this did not make me want to grab the nearest Hothead Paisan Spritzhead Beating Bat there was a little girl behind this woman, no older than 3, carrying all of the bags and tottling as quick as her fat little toddler legs could carry her to keep up with her mother and older brother. I am sure that she was not offered any soda she wanted for taking on the official role of the girl child/ adult personal assistant so common in black homes. I felt especially bad for her in light of the fact that every little girl ( I assume this is not exclusive to black folks) knows that the glimmer in mommy’s eye changes when she finally fulfils the ultimate woman goal of shooting something out of her cooch that has a ballsack attached to it.

Don’t believe me, look at your local grade schools PTA dinners. Women will make the crrazziest excuses for their little boys poor behavior both black and white (he don’t sleep enough at night, he’s just bored, he’s too smart for the class, he’d rather be in gym) when all my bitter ass hears is “ how could you NOT love my little boy? I mean, little boys are a mothers gift! And he has a penis, that means that he could be the president, love him LOVE HIM YOU LITTLE BITCH!!!”

And of course, mothers love their kids in general, but when’s the last time you heard little Shanice, Susana, or Suzy’s mom defend her with these sort of wholeheartedly loving gems. No when a little girl fucks up in school… it must be because of a boy “ Oh Shanice just can’t stay away from those boys, I tell her to keep her head in the books but her fast ass just wont listen.” Yes, people seem to convince themselves that girls fuck up of their own volition and someone is out to get ever little boy on the planet.

Studies show that this sort of mollycoddling is bad for both boys and girls. Time Magizine called it the "soft bigotry of low expectations". The low or nearly non existent expectations of boys may be what accounts for both lower rates of college admission and higher rates of violent crime. So before you go all Spritzhead on little Stud Man Guy Jr. with "Iluvsmyperfectlittleboy"
  1. please note how stupid you sound
  2. remember that you may be hurting him by letting him do whatever stupid shit popped into his little egg head
  3. read a book
This black dyke will thank you

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Fuck Nina Garcia

“tight, short and shiny are the quickest ways to look cheap”-Nina Garcia

if you know me, you could easily assume that right now i am wearing

a) booty shorts in an ostentatious color that fit me like audrey hepburn’s black elbow gloves (tiiiggghhhttt and riiiiiiggghhhtt, baby!)

b) a top that may or may not scoop down between my non existent titties

c) biiiiigg black boots

d) every black woman’s crowning glory; a nappy, curly, sweet smelling halo of hair

this is how ive looked since i found my body under 70 pounds of weight lost in a way that almost killed me. my booty shorts are a litany of survival. they’re a reminder that the human body ( and the goddess) can take more abuse than you ever though it should and still look damn good, baby! getting dressed every day is a celebration, and a confusion for men who see me storming down the street.

one would think that i dress this way because it makes me feel sexy. those who make that assumption are completely wrong. the way i dress has a great deal to do with the length of my browner than golden brown thighs and calves; a height that turns pants into capris, skirts and shorts into everything mini- and actually minis into, well….headbands.

call me what you like, but this is the first time in my life where i rarely cringe when i look into shiny things.

*amendment* yes this post was once called "fuck michael kors" I then realized that Nina Garcia said the quote in question, although neither seem like veritable feminist icons to me anyway.

Sunday, July 20, 2008

are we not femme? an elegy


I swear to god i was a feminist once. at 11,14,even 16 pre-bulimia breasts proudly proclaimed that this cafĂ© au lait skin, kinky curly hair, and white woman stickin’ white boy ass kickin’ shiny black combat boot combination was exactly what a feminist looked like. of course, the shirt was babydoll pink for retention of that idea of femininity and didn’t come any larger than a medium so it did not hug my frame, it squeezed and bulged and was completely unflattering. i had ordered the shirt from NOW because it just looked so becoming on the model, a girl of about my age with curly brunette hair, not like mine, staring in mock defiance towards the camera; her pale complexion and even paler blue eyes washed out by the lights and the computer screen. Even then I was bitter “what in the motherfuck does she have to be so angry about?” i pondered silently to myself in the darkness of my living room, for once free of the taunts and homophobic chatter of my mother’s oft violent boyfriend.

I swear to god i was butch once. soft butch. liquid butch. and goddamnit i fucking owned that shit. but in all honesty its hard to understand marginal femininity while only dating 86 pound blonde waifs in a town full of 86 pound blonde waifs. No i didn’t have money for a brand spanking new stud wardrobe, i had rent to pay, but i found every last flannel my mother’s first wife left in boxes and wore them well, although they reeked of attic water and spousal abuse. I tailored my own pants. I wore suspenders. I did my best. there was nothing mysterious about the way i had to act, it is no different from my attitude now. it was firm, direct, straightforward, confrontational, tender and usually aching in silence. but then someone told me that i wasn’t doing it right. its not like i never owned a skirt or something, i was exactly what i was, a liquid butch who sometimes wore skirts. a kiki. a switch. even a stem at times. my exit from whiteland purchased me a school full of studs who instantly coded my body, my movements, everything i did as femme. i didn’t care enough to think about what they were saying. if loving to wear skirts because they kept my coochie from getting hot, well then i was femme. it didn’t seem to matter that much.
i swear to god i was a femme once. ruby red lips shining on perhaps the most liberal campus in America. shiny white teeth. check. winsome smile. ill work on it. enough money that buying “femme” coded shit isn’t a problem . uh, ill work on it? perceived invisibility… hell the fuck no. im a fucking jersey girl, my moms a fucking jersey girl you cant ignore me if you were blind and crazy, shitttt. oh yeah and im black you know, like not a person of color, like nigger. like ms. nigger. i cant hide in a crowded room because i promise that room will be full of gaggles of white women squabbling about anything but the tuition and talking about passing and i cant pass for anything but another kind of black. but quietly i resigned myself to the philosophy of not needing a terrible amount of overlap to connect. i mean, were all queer, were all femmes. right guys…right? solidarity, completely based on convenience did not come when femmes would only refer to their lovers as “my black boyfriend”or when the other femmes of color or femmes with lovers of color did not check that choice of language. it did not come when i thought that i would have to swim out of the room on a wave of disarming white woman tears. in fact it just plain didn’t come. if that is what a feminist looks like. if that is what a femme looks like, or sounds like. if that’s what solidarity feels like i hope that i am not a femme.

I caught myself today, thinking about that woman from the Now website that i credit with making me realize that my experiences were womanist experiences rather than feminists experiences. i wonder if she was a femme. i wonder if she worried if strangers on the street thought she was straight. i wonder if she would have unwittingly shown me the door in a space that i was willing to fight for with a wicked combination of white skinned privilege and glib self interest. and to this day i wonder what it means to be invisible when one is silent.

silence is voluntary invisibility

Saturday, July 12, 2008

lament

more cordial than ice water in a southern gazebo on the 18th of July
i
have approached thousands of
shiny white women in crowded parties ripe with the scent of black friends.
in homes that i mistakenly thought were my own
ever offering them
round brown booty in a take home bag
at half price
i have spent years sitting on the couches of family
remembering white last nights
that expand into sponges of weeks months worth their weight in sugary stupidity
rarely morphing finally into the castrating ecstasy
of exit