AWKWARD BLACK GIRL (Are you?)

Me and one of my favorite girlfriends have this thing we do. We don't see each other all that often but we try to meet up at least once a month or so at Barnes and Noble. I won't say which one but it's our favorite one. It's in the middle of a lot of great stuff. We meet, stake out a table collect arm-fulls of magazines and books chat and laugh and catch up and discuss for hours while drinking tea or coffee or root beer and sometimes a slice of cheese cake. We're nerds so we like nothing more than to sit in a bookstore and chat about books and magazines while flipping through books and magazines and journals. Let's not forget journals. We have an unhealthy love for journals and paper goods. I am not exaggerating.



As a proud young black woman my friend is very much into finding ways to improve her health and positively evolve and expand her consciousness and after discussing the assault of predominantly white images of "beauty" in the first one hundreds pages of every fashion magazine on the table, she turned me on to some positive media that were geared more towards women who looked like us. One of those things was the Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, a mini webisode on youtube produced, written and directed by a team of black actors. She let me watch a couple of episodes on her iPad and I nearly died laughing!!! I'm not sure how to describe it except to say that the things which the main character, a black woman named J. deals with daily in her workplace, the power dynamics, micro management, dealing with ignorant behavior and just plain absurd work situations were for me just so close to home, it was such a relief for me to watch and not feel like I'm totally fucking crazy. I'm sure this kind of thing takes place in the minds of a lot of working class woman of color.  And White America, this is just the tip of the iceberg. I guess the closest thing I can compare it to is BBC's "The Office" which I am a diehard fan of. Love the American one too but Gervais will always win point with me for not selling out to comfort levels for ratings. His "Office" made me cringe.

 I wish that if they actually got a network spot that this show would stay as it is but I just know they would have to take all the spirit out of it to get it up to some insidiously dishonest code so that it becomes a shell of itself. Maybe something like this could air on HBO but primetime will never want this. Well, it's only seven episodes on youtube and I really resent being left hanging on episode seven so I will do my best to support this project so that it has the chance to carry on and I can see what happens next!  If you like it and you're awkward like J. I hope you will to.

: )

Hair Media

See, this is what I love about youtube. Videos like this make me really happy youtube exists because it lets me know, "Oh shit! I'm not the only one who thinks about this!" My friend Khalilah sent me this video last night. This is the sort of thing I would have really appreciated even when I was in high school when my best friend and I were transitioning from straight hair to locks. What I love about it it, is that I feel it really does what I feel advertising does best but in the reverse. Instead of promoting the same old, self  hating, "you're not good enough" tactics that we are all susceptible to, it puts spin on having natural hair as if that is a revolutionary idea. And at this point in time, maybe it is. I'm not saying that is completely successful. It uses the tools that exist and the tools of the enemy have the messages of the enemy embedded within. It's a good beginning though. Like my mom always says, "They may mean it for evil but I mean it for good." I wonder if "good" can start to be redefined in advertising, not simply as an idea but an actuality.

In a "Race Class and Gender" class I took a year ago, I remember discussing with my professor the idea that advertising is not necessary for anything that is truly beneficial to the people, that a "good" thing will make itself known simply through it's sheer necessity and the idea of selling something which is needed is the beginning of corruption. Well, being born in a capitalist  society and someone who fights often a losing battle against excess consumerism, I do understand the validity of this. But as a person who lives in a capitalistic society, I recognize that the odds of my dropping out of that society to go live off the land, which we are successfully destroying every second of the day, is highly unlikely for many reasons. And don't think I haven't thought about it.

I am a black woman, and as a black woman born in a country, which uses media to negatively stereotype or negate the beauty of black woman, this video is like a little spark of something which was has been a seed in my mind since I was fourteen years old. Okay India Arie! I am not my hair! It's true. But hair defines the way the world sees us just like fashion does because is the kind of society we live in and in the mainstream media, the only resources I can find about how to take care of my own hair in it's natural state are......I can't even get started on how little there is, how sparse, incomplete and inconsistent. There's a clear message behind how little information even hair dressers have on how to take care of natural African American hair. With the creative, critical and positive use of independent media, that message is beginning to change. And that's good.

O'Reilly Culture Spawn

Did they actually show this little boy the original taping? This is way too good.