America's Next Top Model Auditions

A good friend of mine asked me to accompany her today to America's Next Top Model auditions here in chicago.

shes a huge fan of the show, and can pretty much tell you everything you want to know about all 12 cycles. shes also always wanted to be a model... and since this cycle is focused on petite women (5'7" and under)... it seemed like her perfect chance...

i tend to be pretty shy and private, so i've never had any desire to be a model at any point in my life. but... recently i've been working on being more adventurous and expanding beyond my own worldview... and i wanted to support her... so i decided to tag along...

so this morning she picked me up at 5:30am and we headed off to auditions... when we got there... what seemed like thousands of girls were already there (turns out it was only 699 lol).

we stood outside in line for about an hour before we headed inside to get checked in.

the plan was that my girl would get her audition time slot and then we would go get breakfast, she would drop me off at home and she would come back later with our other friend who was auditioning as well...

but when we got inside, we found out that we were not going to be allowed to leave the building, apparently due to the large number of girls lining up around the building, the police demanded that the producers contain the girls (this of course was due to safety issues).

so... there i am... being handed a number and a wrist band... and being ushered into a huge ball room where hundreds of girls where already waiting...

It was a surreal experience... some of these girls travel from one reality show audition to another.... a sisterhood of the traveling reality shows so to speak.... this is what they do with their time and lives... preparing themselves and planning their lives around when their "next big audition" is...

for others this was a dream unfulfilled... this was their chance... short girls of all shapes and sizes who had been told all their lives that they... for whatever reason... were to deficient to be viewed as beautiful by the world...

there was something tragically heartbreaking about it... how desperately these women needed to be labeled as beautiful by these arbitrary male producers.... it was ironic as well... tyra banks... a self-proclaimed advocate of young women's self esteem and self love... was the one responsible for these thousands of young women across the country rangling themselves like cattle to be poked, proded and looked over....

so there i was... trapped between a young woman who wanted this so bad she was physically shaking.... my girlfriend who wanted me there for support... and surrounded by young women who hadn't eaten (to look smaller that day? or because they rushed out the door?) who were daydreaming about ribs, waffles, and the sustenance of being the one in a million who is picked from the crowd of girls...

i was indifferent about the experience until it came time for us to actually "audition." which quickly turned into one of the most demeaning experiences i've ever had the misfortune of being a part of.

there i was... a black feminist, activist scholar, a second year doctoral student, daughter of a haitian freedom fighter and civil rights era black feminist... lined up against a wall with 50 other girls as a man asked us to say our name and age "with as much personality as we could muster," while he walked up and down the line evaluating our bodies.

it was scarily reminiscent of the auction block. i couldn't help but be consumed with thoughts of how black womens bodies are continuously offered up for purchase. there we were... offering up our sacred bodies as material objects, to be evaluated, bartered and sold...

ultimately... 40 of the young woman walked away from the experience dejected and cast aside... their dream of being labeled as beautiful, and therefore worthy, once again trampled by a structure dictated by white normative cultual values that continues to find new and unique ways to strip them of their dignity...

peace.

Let's All Point & Laugh at Rihanna

I have to be honest...

Over the last couple of days I have been deeply disturbed...

On Sunday night we all learned that Chris Brown and Rihanna would be absent from the Grammy's due to an alleged episode of domestic violence.

As the days followed, those rumors have been confirmed, with details that described Rihanna's injuries as horrific.

So what followed? An outcry from the community against the devastation that domestic violence causes in all of our lives? A denunciation of Brown's heinous acts and calls to boycott his music? Or even... a small expression of concern for the health and safety of this young woman?

Not at all...

Instead what followed was shameful...

Yesterday I was struck by the many facebook status' of friends and acquaintances, most poking fun at the situation, some asking what Rihanna had "done wrong," and many men (jokingly?) ascribing to the belief that this type of behavior is not only normal... but acceptable...

Some went so far as to make a photoshop picture of what Rihanna "might look like" after the beating...

The radio had caller after caller all saying the same thing... "well... i love chris brown, so... i'm going to go buy his album anyway... its not that big of a deal"...

And I found myself paralyzed with nothing else on my mind but... WHAT THE HELL?!

When probed, most of the authors say that they are just "joking" and of course domestic violence is terrible or... "damn why you gotta take everything so seriously?"...

But I take it seriously... because... shockingly... a woman being beaten within near inches of her life is serious... a country that is so desensitized to violence against women of color that all we can think to do is laugh, is a life-threatening matter.

Black women are actually 3x's as likely to experience domestic violence than any other sub-group of women, they are also substantially less likely to report it.

And why should they report it? In a country where the criminal justice system is ill-equipped to do anything at all about domestic violence, and where police officers are hesitant to get involved in "domestic disputes," it can seem almost fruitless.

But even more significantly, even if the police and the court system do take a woman's complaint seriously... often times, a womans own community will not. Like reports that alledge the reason for the fight between Chris and Rihanna was because she gave him an STD... to frequently we blame the woman for the altercation and ask, "what did she do?"

We ignore rampant physical and sexual abuse of black women and girls in our homes and the homes of our neighbors and family members all for the same reason... at the end of the day... we believed she deserved it... or even worse... we believe that its "none of our business..."

But that's just it... it IS... our business... it is our business to create a climate where women young and old know that domestic violence is NOT their fault... where women and girls believe that they will not be ostracized, blamed or made fun of for speaking out against their abusers... where women can know that if they seek help they will RECEIVE it...

Each and every one of us has to take responsibility for the reality that today, most women of color do not feel comfortable, let alone safe, taking action against their abusers. It is the fault of every last one of us... it is our words and our actions that have created that reality... it is our refusal to fault the men who engage in this pervasive violence that has allowed this problem to take root in our community...

So today I urge you all to take responsibility for the impact you have in your neighborhood, school, business or "social network".... pick your words carefully and thoughtfully and pause next time before you make that "domestic violence joke."

peace.

(Picture Courtesy of Vivre Magazine.Com)

what am i supposed to do with all of this hair?!

a couple of months ago i saw a blog entry that completely summarized the evolution of my relationship to my hair:

there was a point in my life where i made the simplistic assertions that if you straightened your hair as a black woman than you hate yourself and by extension your blackness.... while i sincerely believe there is immense meaning in the way we as black people approach our hair, i find greater meaning in the hierarchies of blackness erected by self-righteous folks who in whatever covert/overt way make the assertion that folks who sport dreads or fros are in some way more enlightened

I have had long straight hair, fire-engine red hair, fire-engine red locs (can u tell i like the color red? ooo-oop! *smile*), sisterlocs, traditional locs, big afro's, little afro's, twists, plats, braids, and a fade.

yet and still... most folks continue to make completely generalized assumptions about the type of person i am, my politics, the music i listen to and even the food i eat (apparently i am a militant, erykah badu listening, radical liberal who doesn't eat meat.... whether those things are true or not, is so not the point! *smile*)

... of course all of the bangles, the birkenstocks and big hoop earrings i rock probably don't help...

but the point is.... india was right! i am not my freakin hair!

so that leads me to the point of this post.... now that i have [temporarily] taken out my locs... i am completely at a loss about what to do with my hair and am seriously considering taking a hot comb to all this hair!!!

because regardless of what anybody thinks... i did not get a fade or locs out of some radical rejection of black cultural values of beauty... i did it because i 1. thought it would be attractive, 2. was tired of spending money on getting my hair done and 3. i am probably the laziest person you will ever meet when it comes to expending energy on things like hair/makeup/clothing.

this isn't to say i don't have an opinion about what black people do and do not consider beautiful... it just means that my hair isn't the way i choose to articulate those opinions...

so the question of the day is...

what do i do now?!

peace.