Here is my post secret for the day: I didn't become "cool" until 1997. That's the year I graduated and migrated to Seattle. Up until then I was that random girl, never quite fitting in anywhere,mercilessly teased for everything and anything: "You talk white", "What's wrong with your hair?", and etc, etc, etc. I was the Chia Pet...so named for my trademark afro. Kids used to follow me around school singing "Chi, Chi, Chi, CHIA!"
Before there were natural divas like Jill Scott and Angie Stone, or India Arie singing "I am not my hair", there were no pop culture references to say that being nappy was cool (with exception of Don King...and the cool factor there is debatable). In fact every influence that I grew up with(outside of my immediate family)identified black beauty with being skinny, but curvy and having light skin and long straightened hair. And coolness, for a black girl in Madison, Wisconsin was being beautiful, knowing how to dance, knowing how to talk to boys, listening to rap and hip hop, and while not being "dumb", not being super smart either. Being the intelligent, pudgy, nappy headed feminist, who loved to read and played soccer (not basketball like every other black girl), was too embarrassed to dance (though for the record,I am a damn good dancer), who had no idea what to say to boys, and who spoke with a clear-dictioned Iowan accent meant I missed the mark. So what happens when you're not cool and you have parents that make you go to middle and high school? It's not pretty.
There was the daily hazing, the constant insults from all directions. And then, though we rarely got caught and there were no phone calls to mom or interventions, I fought at recess every single day of the seventh grade. I used to carry a heavy lunch sack to smack people with...not because I liked fighting, but because I had to defend myself (clearly this was before I had learned any tae kwon do).
Everyone always asks me why I hate Wisconsin. Well, it's not the state itself...though I do hate football traffic, those hideous foam cheeseheads, beer, bratwurst, and winter...it's all the bad memories I have from surviving school. I spent several years feeling completely miserable and demoralized EVERYDAY. Eventually I was too exhausted to care anymore. And when I finally graduated and was legally allowed to leave the state, I got the heck out of dodge to a place where no one knew me. I felt free for the first time to be myself without the same fear of ostracism. And suddenly (magically almost) I wasn't quite so uncool. It's not that I had changed to fit the mold, but rather that I changed my attitude. I decided that I liked who I was and saw no reason to hide or blend. And this seemed to work for me. I made lots of friends and started having fun...no more fights, no more snide comments following me like a cloud, my life as I knew it had fundamentally transformed.
Yesterday I was downtown on my way to meet some friends for dinner at the Alibi Room and I had a Chia flashback. I was crossing 3rd, and though I had my i-pod on, I totally heard these black teenage boys talkin' shit about my hair. It had been such a long time I actually felt shocked and somewhat scandalized to think this could be happening to me again after all these years. One of the girls with them lightly chastised them for being mean, but the rest of them thought it was hilarious and suddenly I was 13 again not knowing how to respond, but feeling hurt and like an outsider in my own skin. I didn't say anything. I reverted to that familiar voiceless self-pity and it sucked. That's not who I am anymore!
So here is what I want to say now: There are as many ways to be a black woman as there are black women. I may not fit into someone else's box or live up to someone else's standard, but this is who I am and if you have a problem with it, that's exactly what it is....YOUR PROBLEM. I'm done fighting. I'm done trying to dumb it down. That insecure 13 year old may still live in the depths of my psyche, but the greater part of me is the woman I've become, the world traveler, the teacher, the artist, the writer, the soon to be black belt (AUGUST 15th!), the original Afro-Feminist Samurai. This journey may have it's obstacles, but the higher the mountain, the better the view from the top....from this summit looking back on who and where I was, I'm content with picture and excited for the adventures to come. I finally feel like I'm growing into who I'm supposed to be and nothing anyone else says or does can derail me from my highest good. And by the frickin' way, my hair is FABULOUS! Now you know.
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