Hair Resolutions, Relationship Games and Lipstick...

Today is henna day, so I'm stuck in the house with a thick brown paste plastered to my head for the next 1 1/2 hours (I've already passed 5 of them). Just me, myself and my thoughts - which I'm not doing a very good job of keeping track of. Perhaps spending so much time alone, doing not much of anything makes it hard focus. But anyways, my thoughts are all over the place today. I need to write and have spent the last few hours trying to decided what to write on and have finally drawn the conclusion that this afternoon's post will be a brainstorm of sorts. So here is me, streaming my consciousness....

I've been reading up on my natural hair blogs (there are some great one's out there) and it makes me proud to be one of the brave few. I'm hopelessly lazy with my hair though, so I think my 2010 New Year's resolution will be to learn more about caring for it. My hair is aight now, but it could be magnificent with a little more TLC...

Moving on...

Relationship games. I don't like them. Hate them actually. But if you don't play are you just, in essence, benching yourself in a game that you have no choice but to participate in? Why can't we all just be up front and honest? Why can't we just say what we mean, mean what we say, and ask what we want to know? I don't know why not. But apparently even I can't, so instead I construct a litmus test like game to determine where a certain someone stands - as to not have to ask the question (or have a discussion) outright. WTF?

Maybe (probably) games are just our way of navigating the murky waters of human relationships (particularly romantic ones) where there are so many rules and so many pre-constructed/conceived notions of gendered behavior. For example: so as not to appear clingy aka needy aka crazy I, as a woman, am wary to bring up questions that could be interpreted as wanting to define a new relationship. Supposedly compulsive relationship definition is a 'pathology' women in general are supposed to suffer from, right? In reality I know I'm not clingy, needy or crazy (quite the contrary actually) and I am pretty much okay with the non-definition that's going on and just simply want to know the answer to the question "are you into me, or not?". Why can't I just come out and ask it?

Oh, so many reasons...

1. I'm lame
2. I'm chicken and my ego is fragile
3. I don't really want to know
3. I'm afraid of being perceived as the "typical woman, always tryin' to trap a man" or otherwise overbearing or pushy because...
4. Direct woman are often misinterpreted as controlling, bitchy, dominating, etc...
5. I don't want to change the dynamics of the relationship - it's good now and a formal conversation on the matter might make it awkward
5. Games are easier and seemingly less risky


Jumping off...

I really want to find a flattering red lipstick. I'm in a red lipstick kind of mood. I wish MAC were closer, because I'd absolutely go and get a consultation today.

To me, red lipstick signals an easy and natural sensuality that I'm working on embracing. Red lipstick is less about putting things on than it is about rooting yourself in, because when you're wearing red lipstick - that should be pretty much it (on your face that is). It is simple in a way that a carefully constructed 'face' is not, yet much more assertive and much less apologetic. Bold. Daring. Classic. Feminine. Seductive. Blithe.

It's on.

Night Women

I was never assigned Toni Morrison's "Tar Baby" in school...ever. But because Morrison's work has always left me both emotionally and intellectually spinning, I decided a month or so ago to read what I had missed. In doing so, I've stumbled on what has been for me, her most compelling piece.

Unlike "Beloved" or "The Bluest Eye," "Tar Baby" is distinctly subtle. The images that Morrison uses to tell this story are violent in a different way...they depict a internal, intimate violence that lies deeper and more pervasive in the (Black) human psyche - and then again, perhaps within us all. As a Black women, the novel hit a particularly contemplative note with its dealing with the relationship between the two central characters and then, their relationships to the novel's other actors and their representations.

However, most striking were the images of the night women that Jadine (our protagonist #1) conjures up in opposition to her own identity - a collective representation of women or feminine identity that challenges her own constructed sense of self.

Jadine is a model and learned woman of the world who has been educated abroad and who is, at the outset of the novel, relishing the new seal skin coat given to her by her White lover. She is the orphan daughter of poor Black parents and the niece of Black domestic servants who have loved her enough to convinced their employer to become her patron (and now to whom they are seemingly indebted), but her self-identity is wrapped up in who wants to relate herself to, not to who she is actually related to (via blood or history).

The night women represent all that Jadine opposes; they represent the backward, the rural, the uneducated, the laboring, the hairless, the toothless of women that Jadine views as her adversaries. She imagines that the night women are judging her, her lifestyle, her decisions, and her sexuality as incongruent with the collective history of Black women and perhaps she is right. In living her life and in constructing her identity, she has forgotten the sweat, blood and tears shed by the Black women that came before her. She has forgotten to incorporate their pain and has thus, has created a polarity that need not and should not exist.

The novel ends with an old local Black Caribbean women telling Jadine's lover (our protagonist #2, who is in search of her) to forget her, because she has forgotten her 'ancient properties' - she has forgotten her essence. Without too many plot details, the lover mentioned represents Blackness or the essence of Black identity. He is the tar baby set to snare Jadine and pull her back into...[complexity still to be determined].

In my mind, this last paragraph the novel begs both a question and a position. The question: Have we as modern, educated, middle class Black women forgotten our ancient properties? Are we fighting our own night women that we should be embracing? The position: I (because I can only speak for myself) will not forget the night women, I will embrace them and remember my ancient properties.

But who are our night women? They are the baby's momma's in the welfare offices. The video vixens on BET. The homeless Black woman begging for change on the sidewalk. They are those women that society deems undesirable or even generally unassimilated into dominant culture. Those women that remain too close to the historical realities of Black womanhood (albeit not the only reality) for most Black women. In the quest to show ourselves worthy recipients of our degrees, our positions, our material gains, and in general, our status as "respectable Black folk," are we willing to throw other Black women under the bus - creating ghostly night women of our own?

It is a theme, is it not? Black women are notorious for their hostility and vicious competition with each other. My offering is that Toni Morrision has a lot to teach us in 'Tar Baby' about the complexity of the Black feminine identity, both in relation to other Black women and in relation to Black men. Like tar, her message is thick and her prose laded with the intense truth of our denials/betrayals of our own. I am learning. I am remembering (think of rememory). I am acknowledging the night women as an inextricable part of myself - my identity as a Black woman in tangled up in theirs/ours...