The Root: Stop Blaming Black Women's Success for Black Men Not Marrying

“Why are you single?”

It’s the single’s girl most hated question. It’s usually asked as a sort of a backhanded compliment, a way to acknowledge that the person asking acknowledges her awesomeness and is stumped as to why she hasn’t paired off. But it often comes across as a sideways accusation that sounds like, “You seem normal, you look attractive. What’s wrong with you that I’m unable to detect at first glance?” It leaves a woman either debating whether to unload her life story in a stumbling rant or repressing the urge to start screaming with rage.

It seems that the tables are turning and men are starting to bear the burden of this question, too. It’s—honestly?—kind of nice to know that the guys are getting a taste of the bitter medicine so often served to women. It holds the promise that since they are beginning to know how intrusive and belittling that question is, maybe they’ll stop asking and find a better way to acknowledge a woman’s awesomeness. (Hint: “I think you’re awesome”—period—will work fine.)

Apparently writer Terrell Jermaine Starr has been on the receiving end of the “Why are you single?” question enough times himself. In the essay “Well-Traveled, Intelligent Black Man, 34, Seeks ‘Sista’ OK With Him Making Less  Money,” written for The Root, Starr—who sounds like a pretty interesting guy (yes, I looked up his picture; he’s attractive)—laid out his complicated story: “[M]y income isn’t as high as many would expect, and it makes me feel insecure about how women may view my current professional station in life.”

I applaud his honesty about his perceived shortcomings. I wish he had stopped there. Or, at least, continued to explore that thought. Our culture judges a man’s worth less by who he is and more by what he earns. It’s oppressive to men in a similar way that it’s oppressive to women that culturally, we judge them solely by their looks and ignore everything else they bring to the table. I wish Starr had gone more in the direction of exploring his own issues instead of blaming women—and reaching far to do so.

In addition to his own insecurity about his finances, Starr relies on the go-to argument for why he’s single: by blaming black women’s professional success. He speaks of his circle of six-figure-earning friends and their perceived reluctance to date a man who, at 34, is just getting his résumé together (despite the informal poll he took on Twitter, where most women said otherwise). I respect his perspective, but from mine as a dating and relationship coach, it just doesn’t add up.

To start: Where are all these six-figure-earning people coming from? An individual earning $100,000 or more outearns 92.6 percent of Americans, according to a 2012 analysis released by the Social Security Administration. In fact, just 20 percent of American households bring in $100,000 or more in income. Six-figure earners of any race are an extraordinary minority, and while they absolutely exist among black women, they are an even smaller percentage than in the population at large.

Just from Starr’s essay, it sounds as though one of the compelling reasons he is single—in addition to his insecurity, which is the prominent reason—is that he is limiting his dating prospects to outliers, all of whom he perceives as finding him undesirable. That’s simply not the case for every high-earning woman.

There are definitely women in that group who want a man who is their financial equal or better. I respect their preference. But there are also plenty of women in that group who want a man who loves them hard, communicates well and keeps the bed warm (or hot!) at night. Those are the women I hear more from in my line of work.

Not that this would address the core issue of Starr’s insecurity—that’s an inside job best managed between him and his therapist—but perhaps he would be better-suited dating women who are more aligned with where he is financially. Surely there are fellow writers and editors, social workers, nurses, teachers, etc., that would be happy to combine salaries with him or have a man who brings more to the financial table than they do.

Maybe he might be best-served not to focus so much on the salaries of women he encounters but, rather, to seek a like-minded woman who shares his passion for writing, travel, languages and education. (Yes, such women exist, and yes, among black women.) I wish him the best in finding her.

Read Original story: here 

RHOA Reunion: So About That Bravo Brawl...

 

Hand me a late pass. I finally watched a clip of The Real Housewives of Atlanta reunion episode. (Sorry, since starring on reality TV, I stopped watching it.) Yes, the one where cast member Porsha Williams hit her co-star Kenya Moore over the head and dragged her across the floor by her hair like the wife of some cartoon caveman.

It—along with Williams’ post-fight reaction—was worse than any of the preshow rumors or even anything described on social media. Black women in ball gowns brawling—again. A similar scene played out in season 1 of Bravo’s Married to Medicine—it was beyond disturbing (as was Williams’ post-fight tantrum).

Civil rights group ColorOfChange.org thought so, too. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the organization released a statement calling on Bravo’s parent company, NBC Universal, to address the “troubling pattern of violent, stereotypical portrayals of black people across Bravo’s black reality franchises.”

As someone who’s been on reality TV and subjected to its editing—and who’s also been the target of an attempted attack by a cast mate—portrayals of black women and, more personally important to me, the safety of the cast are great concerns as I consider whether to participate in another season of reality TV. (In my case, a co-star tried to break down a door to assault me and another woman. We ran to avoid fighting on TV.)

But back to that RHOA fight that everybody’s still talking about, and the vigorous debate about whether Williams was wrong or Moore had it coming. There’s really no way around it: Williams was dead wrong for putting her hands on Moore in any way. And Moore was dead wrong on that stage, too, for antagonizing Williams.

Since joining the RHOA cast in the fifth season, Moore has based her entire character around menacing her cast mates, particularly Williams. She talks a lot of crap. But hitting, dragging or otherwise laying angry hands on someone who antagonizes you is one of those things that even the most upstanding folks daydream about—or so I heard. Everyone on that reunion stage, except maybe host Andy Cohen, had fantasized about dragging Moore at some point, but no one lost control enough to do it, except Williams.

As wrong as Williams was, she is a victim, too. The reunion set was what ColorOfChange.org called a “staged hostile environment.” Moore repeatedly flicked a scepter in Williams’ face and called her a “dumb ho” on a bullhorn while she sat just a few feet away. (To be fair, Williams also throws her fair share of jabs at Moore—Moore just knows how to take deeper digs.) The bullhorn set off Williams, who admittedly behaved out of character when she confronted Moore and assaulted her.

Read more at The Root.

Why All the Anger Over a Breast-Feeding Photo?

 

When breasts are propped high in Victoria’s Secret ads or the pages of King magazine, or an A-list star wears a dress cut to her navel or maybe a R-related movie shows women flashing them freely, few people seem to have a problem. Maybe some advocacy groups for teenage girls and their self-esteem, maybe some feminists. But overall, there’s rarely a peep about a set being flashed across a TV or movie screen or in a magazine ad. As a culture, we consider breasts tantalizing, alluring and sexy, and they are shown constantly in varying degrees of modesty to none at all.

But attracting attention, turning people on or serving as a backdrop to shilling products that rarely have anything to do with bras is not the primary function of boobs. A quick refresher: The biological purpose of breasts is to feed babies. That some find those same breasts alluring does not negate their primary purpose.

So why am I telling you this?

Because last week, a picture that was posted on Instagram by Ashley Nicole, a new mother and girlfriend of Miami Dolphins’ Phillip Wheeler, went viral. Nicole, a svelte model, posed for a picture with her baby latched to her nipple, breast-feeding. What was exposed of her breast was akin to what we’ve all seen in a lingerie ad. The caption read, “Was on the way out the door but then mommy duty called ...  Everything stops for him! #breastisbest #natureisbeautiful."

It was a sweet mother-child bonding moment and a nice endorsement for breast-feeding to black moms and would-be moms, especially when black mothers are underrepresented when it comes to breast-feeding. Research finds that just 54 percent of black mothers attempt breast-feeding, while the national average is 73 percent. Experts say that one of the reasons black women fall behind in breast-feeding is that women just don’t see women who look like them doing it.

“You don’t desire something you don’t see,” Micky Jones of La Leche League, an organization that encourages moms to breast-feed, told USA Today. “In the black community, you don’t see a lot of black women breast-feeding.”

Nicole, whether she intended to or not, could have been making a statement and a difference. But many found the picture “vulgar,” “attention-whoring,” “inappropriate” or “disgusting.” The backlash for the picture got so bad that Wheeler came to his girlfriend’s defense, telling TMZ, “I wish everybody would just leave it alone.”

He also noted how the reaction to his girlfriend’s picture was much different from the praise heaped on supermodel and NFL wife Gisele Bündchen when she posted a picture of herself breast-feeding her daughter as her glam squad pampered her. Wheeler didn’t understand why his girlfriend wasn’t receiving the same love.

To be fair, Mrs. Tom Brady did get her fair share of criticism. However, much of the negative feedback Bündchen received was about the lack or realism depicted in the photo—I mean, how many working mothers have a glam squad to make them more beautiful?—than the appropriateness of the image. Nicole’s criticism seems to be largely about decorum or the lack thereof.

Read more: here

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.

Ask Demetria: Do Scandal & Being Mary Jane Condone Adultery? (Sigh...)

“Do you think shows like Scandal and Being Mary Jane are condoning adultery or man-sharing to black women? It’s strange that the only two noticeable scripted shows about black women show them as ‘the other woman.’ I see so many women rooting for them. Is adultery ‘in style’ now?” —Anonymous

There have always been, and always will be, adulterous relationships—on TV and in real life. Adultery has also always been a staple of any dramatic series because of the messiness that is a natural byproduct of toying with emotions and betraying bonds. There is no recent study that points to a rise in adultery in the real world, especially not as attributed to these two TV shows.

That said, I’ve never understood the long-standing “Scandal condones adultery” argument, and I don’t understand the more recent assertion that Being Mary Jane does, too. I watch (and live-tweet) both shows, and I’ve never seen more miserable women. If anything, Being Mary Janeand Scandal show the downside of being the other woman.

Scandal’s Olivia Pope is emotionally tortured by her involvement with a powerful and married man. She gets stolen moments with him and some backroom romps. She’s constantly having to keep up appearances by downplaying or hiding her relationship, and as much as her lover insists that she’s his No. 1, Olivia “plays her position” as second fiddle whenever his wife is around.

Olivia is a powerful presence in every other occasion, but she is ashamed and embarrassed in the presence of her lover’s wife. She also operates almost entirely on her lover’s schedule and whims. Sometimes he’s into her; sometimes he’s discarding her. At the start of the third season, the affair was made public, and she nearly lost her business when all of her clients bailed and most of her money was spent. Nothing about her adultery seems glamorous.

In the case of Mary Jane, the ramifications of adultery look even worse. She’s confronted by her lover’s wife at her job and asked humiliating questions about her sexual practices with the wife’s husband. While she experiences emotional highs when she’s with him, when she’s without him—which is most of the time—she’s self-loathing.

In the most recent episodes of the show, her brother, who knows of her affair, goads their long-married mother into discussing adultery. Mary Jane squirms as her mother unknowingly describes her daughter as vile and incapable of “cultivating a man.” As the episode closes, Mary Jane is home alone and manically texting her lover, who doesn’t answer because he’s having sex with his wife. The next morning, he still hasn’t bothered to respond.

What’s so glamorous about that?

Read more: here