gotsnare?

It’s Mother’s Day coming up, so I’m thinking of all the women in my life and all the awesome roles they play (mothers, non-mothers, and never-mothers alike).

See, if I joked and called you a “nigger”, you’ll be mad

You black people think we are always out here to ruin your day

And y’all always forget what MLK preached!

White privilege ain’t real ‘cause my life is hard

I was the only white kid and the blacks were so mean

So I called one a nigger, but clicked anon first

THIS SHIT WORKS OKAY, I AM DEAD SERIOUS.

The last time I saw this on my dash, I didn’t think it would happen, so jokingly I wished I could go to a fun. concert.

AND GUESS WHAT, I WENT TO A FUCKING FUN. CONCERT.

I SAW THIS ON MY DASH THE OTHER DAY AND THOUGHT “ITS WORTH A TRY” SO I WISHED I COULD GET A 3DS

LITERALLY LIKE 4 DAYS LATER MY DAD SENT ME A PICTURE OF THE 3DS XL HE BOUGHT FOR ME WHILE I WAS AT SCHOOL

Skin bleaching can be seen as a superficial form of self-styling, a form of adornment and bodily enhancement, just like plastic surgery, make-up or hair straightening.

The aim is to use the chemical opportunity afforded by bleaching to achieve a certain beauty ideal and spectacle that is not about devaluing blackness.

Rather, it is about expressing one’s participation in the global fashion system, and showing off an ability to rework sociobiological “memes”.

We should remember that many of the people who unabashedly bleach their skin occupy the lower sociocultural and economic rungs.

For them, appearance is everything.

It is often the only currency they have to trade with; their first and only engagement with the world.

They therefore invest more in their physical styling.

Part of that currency is to “step out” with luminous, light, radiant skin enhanced by hydroquinone cream and layers of pale foundation, mascara, rouge, eye shadow and shimmering painted lips.

While some of the women I know on Lagos Island who bleach their skin do so on their own terms without any desire for whiteness and its privileges.

Far from self-hatred, these women are so self-possessed they would find the idea of desiring whiteness quite ludicrous.

For them, skin bleaching provides the opportunity to change what they don’t like about their appearance or to further enhance what they find beautiful with cream or a “concoction”.

There is no shame, hatred or deep reflection behind the choice.

It is a fashion statement, a way to show off and be the subject of marvel.

That bleaching should induce shame in the participant is more a projection of the bourgeois world that is so angst-ridden it fears that yellow fever threatens to expose its own indebtedness to the European beauty ideal.

This is a very interesting article by Bibi Bakare-Yusuf in which she argues that women who skin bleach are not doing so out of self-hate or seeking to be like white people. She recognises that preference for light-skin can be traced to European colonialism and enslavement of Africans but goes on to say that women who bleach their skin today, have no connection with that history and bleach because they want to stand out by having lighter skin not because they hate being Black. So bleaching for them is just another cosmetic procedure.

bell hooks (via tooradicalforthisshit)

I could further relate bell hooks’ truth-telling to the particular context of street harassment in South Africa (it may be similar in other countries but I prefer to write of what I know). The collective, psychological, politico-historical trauma of (especially poor and working class) Black males in this country extends deeply and street harassment is one of the sites where it plays out as an intersectionality between culturally-induced patriarchy, capitalism-induced patriarchy and various aspects of historical dispossession that lead to a constant need to seek ascendancy over the only entity which has ever been hierarchically positioned ‘beneath’ them - by asserting their imagined entitlement over (usually, Black) women; which is through sexual dominance as power. (Interestingly, people will always discuss the negative effects that oppressive institutions like Apartheid have had on Black men, concluding that it deprived them of their manhood - while, not enough discussions are being held, conversely, about the same effects on women. Therefore, I usually don’t consider the manhood-deprivation issue as a way to completely excuse such behaviour. But, I digress.) This is a complex topic and I’ve only really hinted at the surface but there is a definite link between the iconography of Black male sexuality (I can only imagine what boys are being taught at their manhood initiation practices), the high cases of sexual violence against women and children in this country and the seemingly insignificant, unmonitored, daily occurrences of street harassment. Just had to jot this down quickly.