Dear Yoga Girl, You Know That Most Black Girls Don't Envy Your Shape, Right?

 

I debated  whether to weigh in on this XO Jane story , "It Happened to Me: There Are No Black People in My Yoga Classes and I'm Suddenly Feeling Uncomfortable With It."

In case you missed the hoopla, a self-described "skinny"white girl went to a yoga class in NYC, saw a Black girl in her class and wrote the most narcissistic, projecting essay I've read in a really long time. The only thing I can think of that tops it is that infamous (and fake? And equally delusional) essay from a white woman explaining why Black men prefer white women. #womp

Here's a selection from Yoga girl's essay. Try not to laugh:

"A few weeks ago, as I settled into an exceptionally crowded midday class, a young, fairly heavy black woman put her mat down directly behind mine. It appeared she had never set foot in a yoga studio...

"Because I was directly in front of her, I had no choice but to look straight at her every time my head was upside down (roughly once a minute)... At that moment, though, I found it impossible to stop thinking about this woman. Even when I wasn’t positioned to stare directly at her, I knew she was still staring directly at me.

"Over the course of the next hour, I watched as her despair turned into resentment and then contempt. I felt it all directed toward me and my body. I was completely unable to focus on my practice, instead feeling hyper-aware of my high-waisted bike shorts, my tastefully tacky sports bra, my well-versedness in these poses that I have been in hundreds of times. My skinny white girl body. Surely this woman was noticing all of these things and judging me for them, stereotyping me, resenting me—or so I imagined."

Are you laughing yet? It gets worse:

"I thought about how that must feel: to be a heavyset black woman entering for the first time a system that by all accounts seems unable to accommodate her body. What could I do to help her? If I were her, I thought, I would want as little attention to be drawn to my despair as possible—I would not want anyone to look at me or notice me. And so I tried to very deliberately avoid looking in her direction each time I was in downward dog, but I could feel her hostility just the same."

Really, lady?

Lawd, how I wish someone could track down the Black girl in the yoga class for the ultimate response piece. I really want to know what she was thinking. It was probably, "Can I live?"

White Yoga Girl is currently being dragged for entire life across the Internet. There are many great retorts, but the best response came from KazzleDazz.com where writer Kadia B. substituted yoga for twerking and read Yoga Girl from the complete Encyclopedia Britannica:

"A few weeks ago, as I settled into my crowded evening class, a young, fairly thin white woman took her position right behind me. She appeared to have never set foot in a twerk-out studio before..

"Because I was directly in front of her, I had no choice but to twerk in her face. I found it impossible to not think about this poor woman behind me. Even though I wasn’t positioned to stare directly at her, I knew she was still staring directly at my ass. Over the course of the next hour, I felt her despair turn into resentment and then contempt. I just knew for sure, it was directed toward me and my booty.

"By the time Juvenile’s “Back That Ass Up” came on, I was completely unable to focus on my twerking.  Instead, I was feeling hyper-aware of my spandex booty shorts, my sexy tight tank top, my well-versedness in dropping it like it’s hot. My heavy-set black woman body.  Surely this skinny white girl was noticing all of these things and judging me for them, stereotyping me, resenting me – or so I assumed. However, I’m pretty sure I was right. How could I be wrong?"

Like I said, there have been so many great satirical and intelligent responses (honorable mention), I feel like I would be re-inventing the wheel to do add one of my own.

There is, however, one point that I have not seen in the many great responses, a nuance that NEEDS addressing:

*ahem*

SOME white ladies need to know that really, it's only thicker American Black girls who were raised in or only operate in white environments who have any envy for the "ideal" skinny white girl shape. Skinny Black girls have the same shape, usually with some ass, and they're not trying to exchange it for long back or noassitall.

In general, Black girls don't get the size 0/ size 2 with absolutely no curves thing that SOME white women cottage cheese, lettuce and yoga their way through life for. We flip through "mainstream" magazines and look at the clothes on the skinny models that reflect the white ideal and think, "that might look like something if she had some shape, but her shoes are cute though."

Think I'm playing? Look on Twitter at the reaction to the  size 2 Beyonce' that showed up at the Grammys Sunday night.

This may cause some alarm for white folk who think they are the center of the universe, but those particular white folk do need to know that Black folk have their own standard of "ideal" beauty. It involves curves in the "right" places-- kinda like what Bey had pre-Blue or like the woman in the picture at the top of this page. And there are black girls aplenty trying to get that shape, narrow waist, wide hips, thick thighs and plump ass mandatory. When most Black women exercise, we're mostly trying to cardio off mid-sections and keep everything else curvaceous so we can "fill out" our clothes, ironically enough, just like Beyonce' sang about on "Jealous". Milkshakes bring boys, of all colors, to the yard.

Lastly, Black women really don't spend that much time thinking about white women. We go through life thinking about, you know, ish that matters-- when is Scandal coming back, how long it's going to take to pay back Sallie Mae loans, if the Rabbit has fresh batteries, etc. Random white women only pop on our radar when one of them does something wildly offensive or asinine... like write a masturbatory essay about how a Black woman minding her own damn business in a yoga studio must envy or hate her  for being thin and white.

And then? Well then, you get dragged.

The Root: Beyoncé Can Do Whatever She Wants

UPDATE: In the hours since this post was originally published yesterday, British newspaper UK Metro referred to America's Queen of  Pop as "Whore Beyonce'" for Sunday night's Grammy performance.

C'mon, son. It was a risque performance, no doubt. Extra? Perhaps. Sexy? Yes, gawd!  But for Yeezus's sake, she's a pop star.  This is pretty much in the job description and compared to say, Miley Cyrus at the 2013 VMA's, it was pretty tame. Let's be reasonable here. A married woman grinded on and writhed  for her husband. Miley Cyrus twerked, wagged her tongue, rubbed someone else's ass, humped a "We're #1" fan sign then bent over in front of someone else's husband and didn't even get called a whore.

A whore?!

Over on My Black Baby, writer Denene Millner was rightfully fit to be pissed over the w-word. She wrote:

Whore?

Now mind you, these are the same people who would turn a blind eye to racist “art” depicting a white woman using a naked Black woman as a chair and applaud Miley Cyrus using Black women’s asses as props in a bizarre, crotch-grabbing, chicken-twerk dance at the VMAs, but have a conniption when Beyonce straddles her phatty across a chair and sings about making love to her husband. They’re the same people, too, who would giggle about how adorbs Justin Beiber looks in his DUI mugshot but would nod their heads furiously in agreement when fellow Tweeters call pro NFL player Richard Sherman a thug and ape and nigger for expressing his emotion after a game-changing play that sent his team to the Super Bowl. And you best be clear that these same people probably wouldn’t have said a peep when a major media outlet referred to then-9-year-old Quvenzhane Wallisas a cunt on the biggest night of her life, but probably had to be buried, resurrected and given a bushel of throat lozenges to get over seeing Janet Jackson’s boob tassle in the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show. Did any of those women call Pink a whore for showing off her Brazilian bikini wax during her splits and sexy curtain twirling at Sunday’s Grammy performance? No?

See the pattern?

I’ll tell you this much: I’m done—done—with all this righteous indignation over the baring of Black bodies and the demand that Black artists color within the lines of respectability drawn specifically for us. (I’m tired, too, of Black folks who quickly co-sign this foolishness by dragging Beyonce for looking sexy while daring to sing about explosive sex, complicated relationships, the beauty of motherhood and finding her voice as a woman in a sexist world, or dogging out shows like Being Mary Jane and Scandal for showing the less-than-perfect, complicated lives of single Black women.)

#welp.

Original post

When it was announced that entertainment’s “it” couple, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter and Jay Z, would be performing at the Grammys—the opening act, no less—I knew it wasn’t going to go well. They were undoubtedly going to perform their latest hit, “Drunk in Love,” an ode to liquor and the joys of marital sex, replete with raunchy innuendo. Everyone would tune in, and there would be a mega backlash.

There’s been a lot of fuss over the song. Over at the Huffington Post, Frances Cudjoe Waters took issue with Beyoncé’s admission that she’s a 32-year-old woman who drinks, but the song’s most troubling lyrics came during Jay Z’s guest verse. In response to his trash-talking wife, who is boasting of her sexual prowess, he slickly—or sickly, depending on your perspective—says, “I’m Ike Turner turn up/You know I don’t play/Now eat the cake, Anna Mae/Eat the cake Anna Mae/I’m nice.” Le scandal.

Jay Z’s allusion to the Tina Turner biopic What’s Love Got to Do With It—particularly the scene where Ike Turner (Laurence Fishburne) smashes a slice of cake into the face of wife Tina (Angela Bassett)—has been repeatedly (over) analyzed. It’s been called evidence that Bey and Jay Z condone domestic violence and proof of the couple’s insensitivity to Turner, with whom Beyoncé has performed in the past.

Because there have been so many essays taking Jay Z to task since Beyoncé’s album was released in December, I’m well-versed in the argument that his lyrics, joking or not, go too far. But the hype is just that.

Jay Z is in no way condoning domestic abuse on that verse. He’s drunk-talking—hence the song’s title—to his wife, who has been playfully trash-talking to him. By the middle of the verse, he, too, is talking trash about what he’s going to do to her sexually—and, most important, with her consent. I mean, she’s drunk-giggling in the background of the video as he talks drunk mess on a song called “Drunk in Love.” If his wife is fine with him talking about rough sex, what is the problem here?

Is an Ike Turner allusion the best choice? No. But in context, there’s nothing to see here, folks. Drunk married people are playfully saying drunk words to each other—he even says, “I’m nice,” i.e., drunk—right before they “surfboard.”

I know that drunk Beyoncé is a little jarring for some, but at 32, if she wants to get drunk and then be “filthy” with her husband, that’s her adult and wifely right to do so—and her prerogative to sing about it, even at the Grammys, because she’s a “Grown Woman.”

Over at Colorlines, Akiba Solomon seemed fine with all this but believed that Beyoncé should have stayed silent about that “eat the cake” line:

At least one radio station—in the U.K.—blurs out this part of the song because it’s a jokey joke reference to physical abuse. So last night when Jay got to the “eat the cake” line, I thought maybe Queen Bey would stay silent on it. Instead she puts bass in her voice and chants along with her husband, “Eat the cake Anna-Mae!”

That Tina Turner is supposed to be one of Beyoncé’s idols makes this even worse ...  I’m disappointed in Beyoncé. I wish in this moment she could have been more Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and less “Cater 2 U.”

Read more: here