Of Sea Witches and Racial Appropriation

My Photoshop skills are strong

My friends keep asking what I think about Rachel Dolezal.

I know, I can feel the whoosh of wind from your eyes collectively rolling. But I do have thoughts and it’s taken me a while to do this because I wanted some time to look at the bigger picture. When the case first came about, it was a hilarious train wreck. Now with some time and some reflection, I'm not laughing.

I suppose I can't start any discussion of her without talking about gender identity too since people won't stop comparing them. Heading to the right, there were a lot of conservatives using Dolezal's situation to point out the hypocrisy of liberals. Then you have lots of woo-woo white liberals on the left mocking Dolezal so they could prove how understanding they are about racial issues. A bunch of tales told by idiots, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

I'm gonna dismiss the comparison to Caitlyn Jenner. It's an understandable one on the surface, but it's fundamentally flawed underneath (much like Dolezal herself). Kaitlyn Jenner may have felt like a woman all her life, but until recently her experiences were those of a heterosexual male. No matter how she felt inside, she was still treated to all the privileges (and struggles) that came with being a man. So transition or not, she can’t speak to the shock of having her first period or being catcalled in middle school. She can't say that someone made her feel ashamed to be a girl who played sports. And no one made assumptions that her only goal in life was motherhood. She didn't experience those things and more importantly, she's not claiming that she did.

The trappings of race are not the same as the experience of race. Rachel Dolezal didn’t simply live a black woman with her cute ‘fro and an over-application of bronzer. She appropriated the hardship stories of living as a woman of color. And not only did she relish sharing these stories, but hers were the most harrowing. She claimed to be stalked by the KKK and that she was a victim of numerous hate crimes. Tales that now appear exaggerated or fabricated.

Make no mistake, Dolezal was grown and harvested in the same cabbage patch that spawned another famous pathological liar, Alicia Esteve Head, who faked being a victim of 9-11. Like Dolezal she was smart, educated and people valued her. But that wasn't enough for Alicia. So she crafted a heartbreaking story of bravery and loss. She claimed that families of 9-11 victims stalked and harassed her because she lived and their loved ones didn't. Her narrative was so powerful that other survivors felt guilty about their own grief because their pain paled in comparison to hers. Much like Dolezal did with the NAACP, this woman became the leader of her community. And as a voice for the World Trade Center Survivors’ Network, she really was a force for good. But she was also a liar who used the other survivors to fuel her narcissistic, parasitic desire for victim-hood and in doing so, she siphoned off compassion and sympathy that should have gone to actual survivors.

So when did the laughter stop in regard to Dolezal? It was about the time I watched a bunch of her interviews on YouTube. I spent far too much time listening to her talk about the difficulties of being mixed race and acting as a bridge between black folks and white folks. She went on for a long time saying that dating black people or having mixed children not give white people a free pass to appropriate black culture (okay I laughed a little here). On one of the videos she gave a talk on the history of black hair. After that, I watched a video where she talked about cultural assumptions and how she didn't feel safe leaving her house with her 'fro messy because she had to represent the race. A vein in my forehead pulsed when I read that.


My hair has been the touchstone for every act of hate that was ever perpetrated upon me by strangers. Growing up as the lone person of color in my itty-bitty town I experienced the things that Dolezal claimed as her own. Harassment, intimidation, violence. Powerlessness when I was punished for defending myself from acts of aggression. Every curl on my head is a reminder of being repeatedly thrown off the school bus for refusing to sit with the kid who punched me and called me a nigger. And thrown off again when I refused to sit with the other kid who routinely spat phlegm into my 'fro. It represents the counselor who straightened my hair. The dead animals in my mailbox. The unwelcome demands to touch. This tangle of beautiful, complicated hair is stubbornly knotted up with my feelings of worthlessness. Of ugliness.

I don't speak for all minority women, but if you spend a lot of time talking to us about our hair, there's a word that comes up a lot. Protective. We are always looking for the most protective hairstyle, the best way to keep our fragile, overworked, disparaged hair safe. I think that's an apt word. There are many blogs and videos out there about protecting our hair. And underneath the twist outs and expensive products these videos and posts have deeper meaning. They are about women of color communing about the pain of invisibility. We are rejecting the notion that our hair is ugly. We are telling each other that we are beautiful. And in doing that we are creating another way to protect our hair.

So Dolezal's smug claiming of the black hair experience makes me feel a little protective and a lot unsafe. It also makes me want to scream, how dare you? How goddamn dare you steal our most profoundly painful experiences and shrug them on like a ratty old coat that you can cast off whenever you're sick of playing dress up? I'm not mad about her hair or her duck-faced selfies. I'm mad because she appropriated the pain of being a minority to feed her ego. She absorbed our history, invaded safe spaces and then felt entitled to speak for us. It’s privilege at its worst. This wasn't the appropriation of our looks, it was the appropriation of our stories. In order to sing, she stole our voices.

So, dear friends, how do I feel about Rachel Dolezal?

Fuck that bitch sideways.

That's how I feel.

A Post About Suicide

I try to keep my posts here light but sometimes, the darker things must be talked about. My Facebook wall is blowing up with opinions and thoughts about Robin Williams. Some are profoundly thoughtful, others are misguided and condemning. People have a lot to say about suicide and a lot of those people have never experienced the level of shame and depression that comes along with having those thoughts. I cannot speak about Robin Williams pain, but I can share my own. Typically, I have poor boundaries and therefore will tell anyone anything about my life. But this story, before today, was something I'd only told to a couple of people.

I have always struggled with depression. I came from an abusive family with lots of emotional and physical trauma. But I thought I was fine. I had a handle on it. Then one day, I just fell into the bottom of a well of depression. It came on fast. I had a breakdown and I gathered pills and I considered taking my life. The person I loved most in the world was sleeping just down the hall and it had absolutely nothing to do with him. My pain was mine. The very considering of it was the most terrifying thing I've ever done. It scared me so badly that I called a suicide hotline which was the most unhelpful thing ever. The woman kept repeating everything I said and wasn't the least bit sympathetic. She actually made me so angry, I hung up on her and I found a website that asked me to stop and consider calling someone. So I called some friends, who came to my house at 2am and talked me down, because I was too ashamed to wake up the person I loved and tell him what I'd been about to do. For two weeks after, I felt like I was in the bottom of that pit with no way out. It was dark down there. Cold. Life was meaningless and I could barely get up in the morning. I kept thinking about ending it.

Lucky for me, whatever triggered it, just up and left. It was like I woke up and wiped off my glasses and could see again. To this day, I cannot even tell you WHAT triggered it. But I can tell you that it wasn't selfishness.

That's the thing I see written the most about suicide. How selfish it is. How they should have reached out for help. I can't speak for other people who've been through the fire and I KNOW that some people do it out of spite or out of rage.I know some people do it because of physical pain. But for me, it was the inevitable outcome of a life of shame. I felt unworthy of love, unworthy of life. That everything I did was not only useless but that my very presence ruined other people's lives. Asking for help felt like burdening the people I cared about. It didn't feel like selfishness because I didn't value myself.

So please stop shaming people who already feel ashamed. How can you tell someone who already feels like a piece of trash that if they do this act, everyone will think they're a piece of trash? What logic is that? Wouldn't it be better to tell people that they have value? To try to understand that their pain is no less real than the pain you'd feel if you stepped on a rusty nail? I can't understand why do we treat emotional pain as though it were imaginary. We've all felt some kind of emotional pain whether its a breakup or the loss of a job or the myriad of other crap- storms that life spins our way. We all know how real that pain is. The pain of someone who is considering suicide is no less real.

Yes, suicide hurts lots of people. It has far-reaching consequences and the belief that you are unworthy of life IS a false belief. But you should know, you were born worthy of this life. If you are considering suicide, I understand your pain, your heartache. The pain is real and it must be addressed. But you are not a bad person. You are not pathetic or selfish. Please consider reaching out. Please consider waiting five minutes. Then ten. Then an hour. Then a day. Give yourself some time. Not because other people will have to clean up after your body, but because you are VALUABLE, even if you don't feel like you are. It doesn't matter your flaws. It doesn't matter what horrible things you've done or thought. You are more than those things.

Click here to go to the website that saved my life. If all the current suicide talk has triggered you, like it has hit me, please click. "Suicide is not chosen; it happens when pain exceeds resources for coping with pain."

The Search for the Perfect Citrus Perfume

You know how you'll smell a perfume and it will just rock your world? So you take it home and spray it like an angry skunk and three hours later find yourself marinating in something that smells like a pile of hot garbage?

I know you know what I'm talking about.

My body (and my diet until recently) is full of sugar. When I try on perfume, whatever the sweetest note is, my body is going to exploit and exaggerate it, until I end up smelling like baked Skittles. I have, over the years, fell in love with a number of high-end perfumes that ended up so nauseatingly sweet on me, it's like I rolled in a pile of middle school girls eating sugar cookies. Armani Code is fabulous, but not on me. It quickly turned overpowering and caused me to have asthma attacks. Coach Poppy smelled so good in the bottle but after an hour, it smelled like I had just finished my shift at Uncle Buddies Bikini Barn Emporium.

Same with Bvlgari BLV, Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue, Clinique Happy, Marc Jacobs Lola, DKNY Be Delicious...

So after a while I realized I only like two things in a perfume; citrus scent and amber. Unfortunately they are often paired with stupid, stinky vanilla, which I seem to be allergic to. Lucky for me, as I already loathed vanilla. I work at a college and my sniffer gets assaulted daily by Bath and Body Works and Victoria's Secret sickly sweet vanilla scents.

So finding a nice, long wearing scent seems impossible. Citrus scents tend to be more orange blossom than a fresh orange and I don't love flowery scents. So I recently researched... and yes I'm a huge dork, you didn't know?

I narrowed it down to a handful of expensive and cheap citrus-y perfumes. I was able to buy roller ball versions (read: cheap) of all but one*.

Love & Toast Candied Citron
Love & Toast Persimmon Plum
Pacifica Tuscan Blood Orange
Ralph Lauren Big Pony 1 for women

*Lancome O de L' Orangerie 

So far the Candied Citron is a total bust. Smells like medicine on me. Tuscan Blood Orange is awesome, love the scent, sadly the scent disappears in an hour. I might experiment with layering if I choose it.  I tried layering it on top of Bath and Body Works Coconut Lime Breeze and Bath and Body Works White Citrus. Both of which are okay on me but not great. That seemed to make the scent more complex but the blood orange scent disappeared just as quickly. So I dunno. Tomorrow I'm going to try on the Persimmon Plum and Wednesday will be Big Pony 1. I still haven't found the Lancome scent to try on. Though, while I was writing this, I discovered Bath and Body Works brought White Tea and Ginger back, which they had discontinued, much to my sads. I might have to
order a bottle...

Anyhow, that's my completely uninteresting foray into the world of eau de toilette.  Just makin' conversation.

What's your favorite scent? Got any recommendations for me?

I'm Obsessed with Poetry Jams

I have an intense love of poetry jams. Spoken word poetry is all about mixing theater with the art of wordplay and those are things I adore. I have never forgotten the first time I saw spoken word poetry. I was fourteen and watching SNL. Usually after that, I tolerated Midnight at the Apollo, because I knew that once that was over, I was gonna get to watch Mystery Science Theater 3000, which was my favorite thing ever. But this night, between the R&B songs and comedians on Midnight at the Apollo, there was a young, white guy. I don't remember his name but I remember him; white t-shirt, scrawny body, carrying nothing to the stage but a piece of paper. And he began to speak and what came out was a bombastic, brilliant, funny poem about himself and the world around him. The audience (mostly black folks who raised some serious eyebrows at him when he took he stage) stood up and cheered and hollered and let him know that he was a bad-ass writer and performer.

I became obsessed. I pulled back my frizzy hair and sat down to write my first spoken word poem. It was about being biracial and it was called, "The Other" because when I took tests at school, I always had to check the other box, for my race and it always bothered me, being not enough of any one thing. I wrote it. I was so proud of it and it was terrible. If I have learned one thing over the years, it's that I'm a prose girl all the way. Pentameter scatters before me. Rhythm and cadence disappear.  But back then, I performed them with zeal. I was a biracial Eminem, all broad hand gestures and pseudo-urban affectation. My town didn't even have paved roads but I wrote like I was Tupac in the ghetto.

I gave up poetry when I discovered how much better I was at prose, but my love of theatrical poetry continues. Thanks to YouTube, I spend a lot of time having communion with writers. People like Taylor Mali Sarah Kaye make my heart happy and poetry jams fill me with child-like joy.Watching spoken word is like going to church. My sad little heathen heart loves having someone standing at the pulpit, up on the stage, making broad hand gestures and preaching  about love and sexuality and faith and technology. I have always connected to my fellow human through words and in this way, it becomes a kind of communion, a supping of the wine. They give the body and the blood and I consume in order to share their humanity. 



I want to share with you this little gem that I found on YouTube. This young man is Marshall Davis Jones. His piece of brilliant but it's a little too theatrical. I think if he toned it down a bit at the end, it would shine even more.  But here it is, beautifully imperfect and so full of wordplay and pathos and... truthiness that I needed to share it with you.

 
I am aware of the irony of posting this on my blog, but... I'm doing it anyway.

Get outside sometime. Enjoy the sunshine, the moon shine (or the moonshine), the hustle and bustle of your fellow people and remember that touch is best experienced with someone or something that can touch you back.


 

When the outside gets to be blinding and all the touching gets to be too much, check out some more fantastic spoken word poetry. 

 

 Worst Poetry by Sarah Kay

What Teachers Make by Taylor Mali  

New Insults by Kait Rokowski 

 Social Anxiety at 130 BPM by Aaron Burnstein

The Impotence of Proofreading by Taylor Mali 

 When Love Arrives by Sarah Kay & Phil Kaye

 This is one of my all time favorites. Note to Self by Ebony Stewart. When I love the way love, I love on purpose.

Perfectly Positive Monday #3

Whoohoo Monday! Get ready for a shitstorm* of positivity and exclamation points!!!

*I am so classy.

Writing:

·         Made some headway on Chapter 10 of my damnable work-in-progress. I'm finally at the point where I'm writing from scratch which is actually an improvement over laboring on the 22nd revision of my first eight chapters.

·         My husband earned himself a foot rub because he read the last completed chapter of my novel and told me, "Seriously, this is the best chapter you've written. You're getting so good!" I'm so proud of myself because it really is the sharpest, funniest thing I've written. I have always loved writing but if I'm gonna be honest, four years ago when I started writing seriously, I sucked at it. Now I can honestly say I suck much less. There's at least a fifty percent reduction in suckage. Feel free to add your own suckage reduction/marriage joke here.

·         Because I can't wait to get started with my next novel, I spent a lot of some time on Pinterest searching for character inspiration. My next novel is about a female rock star and her face hasn't come to me yet. The first thing I do is focus on coloring and go from there, so I'm still unsure if she'll be a blonde, brunette or redhead? My inclination is to write a redhead because I am obsessed with gingers and secretly dream of being one. But my husband picked out this itty bitty tattooed blonde on Pinterest and said, "That's your character."  Hmm.

Other Parts of Life:

·         Saw Avenged Sevenfold and Halestorm last Friday and it was so rad! Halestorm was surprisingly good and A7X can truly do no wrong in my eyes. Mostly because my eyes are busy ogling M. Shadows' arms.

·         Got to eat at Cops and Doughnuts in Clare, MI which is always the best thing ever. They have this doughnut called the Bacon Squealer and it's a long john with maple icing on top and two strips of bacon. It's the best doughnut I've ever had and it tastes like pancakes! Don't judge me. They make everything with love there and everyone knows that things made with love don't have calories.

·         My hubs found a job! This comes after a miserable year of searching, applying and rejections. He started today and said he already loves his coworkers which is usually a good sign. Better to work a job you don't like with people you do, than to work a job you love with people you can't stand. I've done it both ways. I'll take the sucky job with awesome coworkers every time.

·         My Mother-in-Law made some seriously delicious Lasagna last night. When I say it's delicious you can bet on it, because (with the exception of Raman and Mac n' Cheese) I hate all forms of pasta. I know, I'm a weirdo.

·         My best friend (who lives in Mexico) is staying in Michigan for the summer. Yay!

And now it is time again for...

Stuff That Makes Me Cheerful!



Maple Bacon Squealers from Cops & Doughnuts.



Avenged Sevenfold's new single, Hail to the King.

Because seriously, SHARKNADO.

What brings you joy on this fine Monday?