come fly with me

karnythia:

racismschool:

thegoddamazon:

daniellemertina:

eclecticspectrum:

jumpstart-therevolution:

z1r0:

Womankind is beautiful. Black women are beautiful. So, then, I posed the following questions to many black women on my campus today, and received various answers… I was not satisfied. 

Maybe tumblr can answer better.

If you are Black and Proud, why then do you endure the painful chemical straightening of your hair to achieve a European standard of beauty? This means, you are Black, but not proud of your natural hair.

If you are Black and Proud, why, then, do you allow your beautifully curly hair to be braided to your head, only to have someone sew another woman’s dead hair to your head, to achieve the affect of straight European hair?

If you are a “real woman,” why then, do you pay Korean or Vietnamese women to place Polymethyl methacrylate acrylics or a “light or shatter-resistant alternative to glass” over your nails to give the impression of long, healthy nails, instead of growing your own?

If you are “secure” or “confident” in who you are, why then, do you wear push up bras, spanx, or high heels to alter your appearance?

P.S.: If you say anything like, “Its what men want,” then you aren’t true to self. 

I await valid logical answers.

It’s all about acceptance. It’s all about wanting to be able to feel comfortable in a society that has deemed the characteristics of the black man/woman as unfit. Period.

t’s called choices. What’s wrong with spanx? I don’t wear them but why is that wrong? Why does a woman who relaxes her hair, wears spanx, etc become less of a black woman? Why?

Please stop policing black women, how we dress, how we style our hair. Black people are not a monolith. Do women try to exemplify a euro-aesthetic? Yes. This is problem that all WOC deal with.

But doing so doesn’t make you less than. Does my relaxed hair mean that I spit on my Ghanaian name, language and heritage? 

Someone please explain to me what black is? Black is a million and one different things. I am so sick and tired of this Black and Proud theology. If you’re proud you won’t straighten your hair. If you’re proud you won’t do this or that. 

Get over yourselves. I am sick of this obsession of what our beauty is supposed to be like. I am tired of physical beauty being so damned important to people of all colors. Beauty is only important because of the other things we ascribe to it: niceness, intelligence, anything positive.

You say you love black women, yet you are shaming the ones who deviate from YOUR perception of what a black woman is. If a man is going to judge me as not proud of who I am and wear I come because I relax may hair, and occasionally wear a push up bra then he can get the hell a way from me.

Because that man is pretending to be a faux-revolutionary. Black women are diverse. Some have dreads, some are blad, some are tall, some are short, some relax, some texlax, some die their hair, some wear wigs. I believe all of that is okay as long as we understand that how we are before we do all that extra stuff is beautiful. 

I was gorgeous before I relaxed my hair (inside and out) and I’m gorgeous now (inside and out.)

And nothing pisses me off more than women who jump up and down when men make these statements about their love of black women. You are endorsing the monolith. You are engaging in the shaming. Think about that before you shake your head and cluck your tongues about someone not being proud. 

Willie Lynch Syndrome is as strong as ever. 

^ Thank you. All of the above.

AND

I got a question for the OP: if you respect black women why are you insinuating that the only real ones are the ones who look like your idea of ideal womanhood?

Quite frankly, I’m a natural haired, no make up wearing black woman and that decision has nothing to do with being a “real woman” or anything else. And it has nothing to do with my racial pride either.

And I do not care for black men or anybody else trying to tell me how I should look. I don’t know why a man’s perspective matters.

When ya’ll address how you practice patriarchy like white folks, why you have white man economic and social ambitions and sell out like Clarence Thomas, when ya’ll address the rates of sexual abuse black women deal with at the hands of black men (that don’t sound like racial pride to me) … then we can talk about who is black & proud.

Just because ya’ll don’t get perms en masse don’t mean ya’ll aping after white folks any less.

Another dumbass prefacing his dumbass policing with the “You are a queenmotherearthgoddess” tripe.

Save it.

If you respect Black women, you won’t try and force them to fit your idea of what Black women should be. Sit down, you condescending douche.

Just so I’m clear, is this fool saying that in order to TRULY be “Black and Proud” and a “Confident” woman, you have to agree that the ENTIRETY of your identity is wrapped up in your hair and your ass? Is that about it or….? 

It’ll be a cold day in hell before I give a fuck about what some Faux Afrocentric shit head has to say about how I wear my hair or what I do with my body. Y’all keep throwing pearls in front of swine like this if you want to, these days I’m all about making bacon.

how this muhfucka gon preface his shit with “lol black womyn are beautiful” and proceed to be condescending, presumptive, and entitled in demanding explanations from complete strangers

(and btw if these black womyn he polled on his campus were strangers, i’m surprised no one knocked his ass to the ground..)

about personal decisions they make about their own hair, their own bodies, and how they choose to present themselves to the world? that’s some straight up comedy.

coming from a black womyn with natural hair who will probably never go back to straightening it, FUCK. YOU. black womyn do not owe you any explanations about their own embodied decisions. how DARE you try and tell us what our hair means?? are you for real right now? do you think we’re too dumb to notice your condescension and implication that we all must live up to YOUR standards of what black womyn are/should be?

how about you take a fuckin seat?

karnythia:

I just had a convo with a parent at my son’s school about how she has to straighten her hair to keep her job. Like her white boss actually came to her & said her kinky hair is not professional enough. I told her what I could about resources for fighting back, but we’re in an at-will state & she’s a black single mom. I doubt she’ll try to fight it since I’m sure she doesn’t have the resources to be out of work & in any kind of protracted legal battle. Today is not a day to talk to me about white privilege or demand that black women be nicer to people who just want to learn/touch our hair/make demands about our bodies. I might make you cry.

how about, instead of talking about how black people in the US have no fight, we instead discuss what kind of fight it has taken to survive this long in a heteronormative white supremacist patriarchy that literally tells someone that their hair (not dyed or cut dramatically, the actual basic texture of their hair) is unsuitable for/incompatible with professionalism and the work environment. let’s talk about how black people in the US are still plugging, still fighting when they can, and still surviving, still. after 400 years of this bullshit every fucking day.

she shouted and gave me a huge hug and told me how pretty i am. and then proclaimed to all of her friends how pretty the two of us were.

and then she told me how much she needed to run into me. she didn’t have to say why.

i didn’t have to tell her i felt the same.