dream a little dream

Obama, that is,  although I think she has almost reached one name status.

I do, though, love the fashion stories – I know it’s reductive, that they often focus on her looks and what she is wearing instead of her intellect and personal achievements, and so on, but still… I love them. I even have been seeking them out, now that she’s doing the overseas thing, just to see what they are saying about her.

It’s not, mind you, that I care much about fashion and style – I don’t. I’m a jeans and t-shirt person myself, whose hairstyle can best be described as “no style at all” and while I might slap on a bit of lipstick before leaving the house (if I can find it), that’s about the extent of it.

It’s just that… well, it’s like my feeling about the new (one of these days?) Disney movie with finally a Black princess. If I was making it, that little princess would be as girly as could be – treasured and coddled and full of lace and ruffles and girlitude because, for our girl babies, in the view of some in the wider world, that IS the fairytale.

That little Black girls can be princesses instead of baby hos. Or that they can dream of gardens full of flowers and butterflies, singing birds and talking trees instead of hopped up cars and malt liquour and booty shaking.

I guess what I’d really love is for our girl babies (of color and not) to have a model – a bunch of real person or animated models, but not only actual runway type models – of coddled, pedastaled, pure and innocent, even helpless Black femininity to rebel against, as well known and accepted, expected by society as the Jezebel, Mammy or brute beast models of Black feminity are.  I don’t think the other images will ever be replaced- and I’m not sure they should be, as all those personalities and more exist within all cultures and societies, in females and males and they are not shameful in themselves, just when used as weapons.

That’s why I want a strong, valorous, straight backed, stern chinned, hero-complexed Black prince, too, but that’s another story.

Anyway, all the hoopla over our Black first lady’s fashions, looks, statuesque bearing and height and yes intelligence, grace and all of that, on a worldwide stage, is just one more step towards that fuller, complete image of Black womanhood and, I’m sorry Mrs. Obama, but I welcome each and every story about that. For now.

Update: Okay, I lied. This is too much even for my newfound love of fashion news. It is rather hilarious, though.

Although I may have missed some interactions somewhere (not an impossible thing) I don’t really see the need for a treatise like this – IF, as it seems, it relates to the lives and writing of various women of color online. Who knows, maybe it’s talking about something else, but I’m going to work under the assumption that it’s referring to different women of color bloggers. Unnamed, of course.

There seems to be some ongoing strategy, an attempt at silencing, at being dismissive, starting (or at least when I first noticed) with a white woman writing on her blog something to the effect that she doesn’t link to some women of color because they are “drama queens”. There is, of course, a backstory and a history there, between this white woman and some women of color and being called on privilege and racism, etc, but anyway… this, also combined with the ongoing fallout from the mess Mandy/Brittany dumped on woc, seems to be hardening into some sort of belief that angst, self-reflection, self-determination, taking care of one’s own self and those  you care about somehow makes you a “drama queen” or that you are curling up into a “fetal position sucking my thumb in defeat” becoming an eternal victim.

This is simply not true. Couldn’t be farther from the truth.

We all have our ways of navigating whiteness, of being in this world and keeping our sanity, our dignity and working towards our hopes and dreams, but there is little more subversive than telling a world that discounts you that “I matter”.  Look at me, see me – I exist – I hurt, I bleed, I cry, I rejoice, I reject you, I accept you and I matter. More than that, I matter on my own terms.

What ever in the world of social justice has gotten done without people who are willing and have the courage to hold their battered hearts out and say, see? look what  you’ve done?

That is a gift not everyone is willing to give. It’s a gift not everyone is willing to receive. But it’s a vital component to getting stuff done and to effecting change. Always has been, always will be.

Sure it makes people uncomfortable – some would rather look away, would rather discount it as excessive drama (why can’t they control themselves and all be like us!) , or an unnecessary unveiling or whatever – but others take that person’s heart to heart – not because they are sorry for a victim, but because other worlds and vistas have been opened up to them, and they are willing and anxious to explore areas they never realized existed before.  Indeed, there are those consider themselves blessed to have been allowed access.

I don’t see this as any less important and fruitful than kicking down doors, knocking on doors or ignoring doors completely – we need it all.

Well, unless you are singing the blues – then it’s okay. It’s good, in fact, because that produces something I can use and enjoy. Otherwise, though – keep it to yourself, hide in the closet–

–  you remember those old movies? I used to watch them on the Late, Late Show. She’d recline in her peignoir, stand gazing at the train, look over the city from the penthouse suite, clutch the railings of the bridge, drop a flower onto the grave, place her hand on her child’s fevered brow –

and we felt, felt, felt (or were supposed to) her pain, her sorrow, her bravery as the clean, pure tears welled up in her beautiful eyes until there was no more room to contain them and they had no other choice but to tumble out and fill our hearts and minds with the realization that this matters. These are Very Important Tears, any place, any time.

Keep your chin up, don’t embarrass us, save it for someone who cares, take it like a man –

– or she’d be waiting nearby, stoic and silent, her child’s fevered brow a distraction, the grave forgotten until such time as it was permissible to remember, her gaze lifting above the debris to the penthouse suite, where there must be a handkerchief at the ready to wipe away the Very Important Tears – after which it’s okay to go into a corner or weep into your cookpot. Just don’t disturb anyone with your emotionalism -

– you’ve seen the newscasts? Surely. She’s fled something – chopped off hands and feet, daily rape, babies buried under mudslides, bayoneted by little boys with guns bigger than they are, forced from home – can’t stand in the way of progress or business – sometimes she’s holding a weakly crying, dying baby, stroking its fevered brow, while she sits numbed, stoic and silent, by all that’s passed, she certainly can’t care as much as we do–

We sometimes have to look away from all that emotionalism.

” Why are you focusing on hurt”

Because no one else does.

A not so simple answer to a simple question.