Less is More, life without the fake fix

Dear BFDiary,

I’m a young woman whose starved herself through struggles between slim and sexy. You pick up enough Seventeen and Cosmo Girl magazines as a preteen and you find yourself ingesting all kinds of crap. When I got to college and realized that some people thought I was small and it wasn’t a good thing, as in it wasn’t the sexy thing to be for a black girl, my self-image brow-beating started all over again. In a college town 10 minutes away from the middle of nowhere with no dependable black stylists in sight, a chick had to depend on her curves to do what her budget wouldn’t allow in the way of fabulous clothes, routine mani/pedis, and awesome tresses fried, dyed, and blow-dried into perfection.

Now if you know me or if you’ve read more than a couple blog posts, you know that I’m not totally absorbed in my looks (I have a brain, I use it, I’m proud of it). You also know that I’m real, and a girly-girl. I’m also a sista, and looking good no matter what the cost (yikes, it hurts but its so true) is pretty much inscribed in our DNA. So, take these words for the greater meaning at hand, which I’m getting to soon.

I’ve done yo-yo dieting, one major “lifestyle change” at 16 that I still don’t think my parents realize did more harm than good (no 125 lb. girl should have to calorie-count between third and fourth period), and spiritual fasts like lent that truly brought me closer to God (on my 5^th consecutive day without chocolate and magazines I had no choice but to pray if I wanted to make it to day 6 with my sanity). All these experiences were active moments of self-denial, miserable means to achieve a greater, longer-lasting end. If I wanted to drop 10 pounds, I needed to drop the snickers. If I wanted to hear from God more clearly, I needed to stop listening to the Weezy and R. Kelly that somehow got on my iPod.

My fasting and even my crazy diets taught me an important lesson about the power in resistance. Every second of our lives someone or some ad is telling us one more thing we need to be happy, to be whole, to be better. No ad talks about being better, by having less. Being better, by not consuming. Being better, by resisting.

A recent incident that my bestie brought to my attention got me thinking about how us strong black femmes can be tricked into thinking that we’re weak. How women who are astronauts and mothers and CEOs and executive directors and teachers and department chairs and presidents and scholars and students all while managing to look as good as we do and be so many things to so many people can be tricked into thinking that in spite of all that, we just won’t be right without that fix. A fix could be the new bag and booties we can’t afford (guilty), the momentary pleasure of letting someone get too close too soon (guilty), or the 5th, 6^th, and 7^th chips ahoy cookie (guilty, guilty, and guilty).

Can you imagine conning and tempting Oprah with $100? It’d never work. Can you imagine tempting a strong woman of God with a man not worth the ground he walks on? Works all the time.

If I can survive cramps through an 8-hr work day and manage not to give everybody attitude, if I can put up dry wall and insulation in heels, if I can burp the baby with one hand and prepare dinner with the other, if I can be on the Dean’s List and be the head of two student orgs, if I can party in Paris and chill at the church picnic, if I can dazzle my boss and my colleagues, if I can do all this and still wake up the next morning to do it all again, I am phenomenal.

When we put it like that, ladies, we realize no short-term guilty pleasure can begin to really satisfy us. Our contentment comes from within

Chocolate City Housewives...not so chocolate-friendly

Dear BFDiary,

How real can the Real Housewives of D.C. actually be when only one of the housewives hailing from "chocolate city" is actually, well, chocolate. I'm officially unimpressed. Knowing what we know about our nation's capitol, not even the new wave of black and brown faces in the White House could land us fair representation in this supposed reflection of life in one of the most powerful cities in the world. And of course, since most of the housewives are white, most of their friends, are also white. At this point I'm wondering if Stacie (the token black woman) would've been better left outside this tea party.

For one thing, her most of her cast members have no idea how to interact with her, and probably wouldn't make it through a dinner with any black folks. At housewife Mary's birthday dinner the hostess "diplomatically" seats Stacie next to the other black guy at the dinner (who happens to be a celebrity hair stylist). All Mary can talk about is how much she thought they'd get along (because black people can't make it through nice dinners without moral support from our race brethren). Then, the chick, a grown woman, gets tipsy and starts talking about how we need to integrate hair salons. Ummmm what you talkin' bout Mary?

Oops, almost forgot, there was another black man at the party. Given his flawless blue-black complexion and his height and the fact that all anyone can ever talk about is how big he is, you can imagine why I almost left him out. Lynda, the cast member who totes the much younger "darkie" round on her arm (he's supposed to be her boyfriend) even describes this man based on how big he is. It's that classic king kong caricature come to life.

But back to our girl Stacie. As if this white girls party couldn't get anymore uncomfortable she invites the housewives over for a cooking demonstration with Janet Jackson's chef. And all Catherine (the new girl in town from England) can talk about is how much she thinks Bush is a better man than Obama (her husband is currently employed by his administration) and proceeds to do a finger-snapping neck rolling impression of Tyra Banks, who she also hates. I've never seen Tyra do either one of those things on her show. As a matter of fact, I've seen her bring new light to subjects that young people aren't really discussing otherwise.

Stacie, after this first episode I'm not sure how you made it through an entire season. I admire you for being the beautiful unapologetically black and successful woman that you are.

Bravo, do better!

Do You Have Enough Green to Go Green?

Dear BFDiary,

A couple years ago I took a very general Global Issues course where I learned all of the bad things going on in the world that scholars were actually talking about (of course this left out a lot that black and brown people deal with on the day-to-day). The hot topic by the end of the course wasn’t how Wal-Mart was putting whole goods manufacturers out of business and creating a new major retail model strangled the middle man and kept their truck drivers from doing natural things like going to the bathroom when they (I know, that’s what’d you’d want to talk about too right?!). Rather we spent a couple days on the gorgeous green grass outside the ivory towers (I HATED when professors chose to hold class outside on the ground, I mean what is it with some people and nature?) discussing how everyday people in the U.S. could minimize their carbon footprint.

When we started to talk about solutions to problems like severe consumerism and deadly chemicals that have so conveniently been worked in to the maintenance of our everyday lives. Then all these ideas about rules, like requiring everyone to shop organic, get rid of their vehicles and drive Prius’. The first thing I thought was how wasteful it would be for people to go green in the way that some of my peers were suggesting. I mean, they’d be tossing functional goods, to buy more goods, that would have to be produced using methods that we’re trying to get away from. Then I started thinking dollars and cents.

I thought about my grandmother whose paralyzed on one side of her body and buys things for practical functionality, how much would it cost her to buy all organic goods, and how much time would it take her to find a store in Saginaw (a town where I’m pretty much related to everyone) that actually sold said goods. Then I thought about the people who drove minivans because they needed the space and wouldn’t be able to afford a Prius. And what about the people who already have to pass 20 McDonald’s with 20 items under two bucks to find a decent grocery store with fresh over-priced produce. How were they supposed to care about this mysterious ozone layer when they’re block is a target for environmental racism. I’m just saying…we all don’t have enough green to go green. And for some of “us” a few things fall a bit higher on the list than global warming.