Dearest R-O,
It’s been over a decade since I left, since you didn’t know and didn’t care, and the time and space have rendered me able to admit this: my feet are bigger than yours. It’s not a metaphor or an intended inference to an African proverb; they really are bigger. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were born in North Carolina. Boys from North Carolina have tiny feet.
Growing up, I thought all white girls had small feet. I also believed they (white girls) had big, beautiful calves and ankles, while most J-BGs, big-bootied and thick-thighed, walked on chicken legs. Just like I thought, Pocahontas was pretty. Ridiculous notions, aren’t they—the tiny feet and chicken legs? Tisha didn’t play much of Tina Turner’s music when I was a girl, but I recall her legs were famous.
Thinking that White girls were dainty, and all of us were big-boned, seemed on par with what all the world I knew back then thought, but it’s weird to focus on feet when White girls’ hair was the thing everyone was always bringing to J-BGs’ attention. Everyone wanted us to believe that all White girls had long, silky, thick, beautiful hair and that J-BGs were all rough and tough. And I certainly bought into that as well. The feet thing is a personal hang-up.
Tisha must have discerned the beginning of my systemic self-hate, which I developed at a tender age from exposure to European beauty fodder on T.V. and in magazines, the words of White people’s children, and you. Tears were always flowing down my face because some kid at school called me “Blackie. In my six-year-old mind, lighter-skinned girls dominated the playground. They were everywhere, and then there was me, “Blackie.” Tisha always said, “They’re just jealous,” when asked, “Am I ugly?” And that answer did little for my belief that I was too dark to be pretty. No one was dying to be the dark-skinned J-BG—me—so I knew it wasn’t true.
Then, one Christmas, I couldn’t have been more than seven or eight years old, Tisha gave me a most special companion. I locked eyes with her through the clear cellophane top of the box and, in my heart, named her Twinkles before I completely removed her from the packaging. She was so very pretty in a way I could never have imagined without her. Twinkles was my complexion, original brown slash Crayola-brown, and her skin was smooth to the sight and touch. She had a button nose and orb-shaped brown eyes, framed by long lashes, that were so bright they danced and sparkled and twinkled. Her little doll feet were perfectly tiny, she wore a Sunday-morning frilly linen dress, and she had a head full of silky jet-black hair that hung down her back, stitched into her scalp. It was love at first sight. She was so pretty, so dainty.
All grown up now, my feet are not dainty. At five feet five inches tall, I should wear a size eight shoe or smaller. As if these dogs that are bigger than yours aren’t enough bad luck: tan is what people consider brown. I don’t have a lot of junk in my trunk—it’s genetic, and my hair is mostly nappy; I’ve got some good spots. But here’s the kicker: I don’t understand how any of this came to be my inheritance.
Tisha has Native American paternity. My paternal great-grandmother was fully Native American, so Tisha told me. My Ancestry.com results and my physical characteristics suggest differently. Native American genes should have produced silky hair, tan skin, and tiny feet like Tisha’s hair, skin tone, and size seven feet. Instead, I got the cursed shrunken kinks, a Crayola-brown complexion, which all my childhood was referred to as black, these big feet, and what is now a completely flat behind.
Grandmother Mae, Tisha’s mom, had six girls. Their shades are as different as the black and white on a zebra, the same as Sister, Delores, and Sparkle in the 1976 film Sparkle. I know you saw it. Tisha, the oldest of the six, passes the brown paper bag test but denies being light-skinned. Two is without doubt light. Her complexion reminds me of Sister’s. Three’s complexion mirrors Tisha’s. Four is dark-skinned like Delores—like me. Five is browner than Tisha and Three, but not dark; she was Grandmother Mae’s favorite. I once heard Grandmother Mae say playfully, “Six is just high-yella.” Reflecting on her face, like everybody else, all I took in was her light skin.
Grandmother Mae’s girls do have a couple of traits in common: little feet (it’s so unfair) and flat butts. Unfortunately, the flat asses go almost all the way around. Grandmother Mae didn’t have a Black girl’s booty, so everybody got their flat ass honest. Tisha, Two, Three, and Four are built straight up like J-WGs—Just-White Girls. That means their asses are as flat as pancakes. Five used to be thick and shapely, but she doesn’t have a big booty. Six, the baby, has a big booty. Great Britain could have high tea on Six’s brown-child cushions, and she’s not even brown. Six has a tiny waist, a big butt, and buttercup skin. Six is pretty, but so is Five. Even though she went on some diet that zapped all her beautiful plumpness. At Grandmother Mae’s house, there was a professional photo of Six wrapped in white light and a white fur shawl on the mantel. Her shoulders were bare, much like the woman on the May 1962 cover of Ebony, and her face looked as bright as an angel’s halo. Everybody stared at that picture. I stared at that picture. You would stare at that picture.
I can’t pinpoint the exact moment I realized I wasn’t light-skinned. Maybe it was in grade school when you and I were on the playground on Freaky Friday, and you mostly chased girls who looked like Kim, but I don’t know if I processed the dynamics of colorism or the conceptualization itself. But then, cracking on people became the thing to do. Almost every day, a bunch of kids in the neighborhood gathered around the steps of someone’s two-story duplex and took turns insulting each other with jokes: “You so black…” It was the same thing as The Dozens. Cracking was just what we called it in my neighborhood. I never cracked because I always hoped no one would crack on me. But someone always did: my big brother Bobby. Bobby teased me mercilessly about my skin tone and was the heavyweight champ of cracking. He once called me “The black weasel from out of space.” Explosions of laughter followed. I don’t think I cried out loud, but I cried. I’m sure you were among a bunch of kids on your block that gathered around to crack on some dark-skinned J-BG who was hoping you’d be kind and not notice her.
Whatever I learned about my dark skin in grade school, it was when I got to high school that you properly educated me about being dark-skinned. That was when the Tracie Spencers slash Mýas were out. So, Kim got to be your serious girlfriend because she was light-skinned and had naturally silky hair. Lots of boys liked me, though. I had a steady stream of suitors from the first time I had to walk down The Hall, where you and all the other popular kids, the athletes and players, and the cheerleaders and majorettes hung out and toyed with the rest of us rats scurrying to class, hoping to escape their fun, to the first time I saw you. But after I saw you, it didn’t matter that Ronald Burton, the light-skinned basketball star with light eyes, was one of the ones inviting me to “Come here,” concurring with his friends that I was a cutie-pie and praising me out loud for the changes to my body over the summer.
Standing there staring at and flirting with Kim and all of the Sixes, you were so fine. Your deep espresso smooth skin, your hair faded low on the sides, and your ripped body underneath your t-shirt, capped off with your varsity jacket, made me dare to look at you when my head should have been down as I focused on making it to my class amidst the catcalling. You were still interested in me—but only in the dark. The light-skin-dark-skin-girlfriend-thing was, and still is, a status issue. It couldn’t matter to you that my skin was perfectly smooth and toned all over, that my eyes were bright and pretty, and I had legs to die for; you were captain and star quarterback of the football team. So, of course, you couldn’t ignore my dark skin and nappy hair, even if you had thought I was pretty. Our community rules dictate that an R-O with your success and achievement chooses Kim to be your girlfriend and the one you show off in public.
Besides, colorism within the African American race isn’t a new phenomenon. You’ve been passing me over to make a beeline for Kim, centuries before you and I met. I expect you to think Kim is prettier, because the White man did a number on you. But why do you feel like you canbe perfectly black and perfectly nappy and still be desired, but I can’t? As I write this, I realize, as I have not before, that internal discrimination among African-descended Black Americans is a learned behavior at its root.
Nevertheless, I hold you responsible for being unable, by now, to reason beyond messages communicated via the impressions of slavery. I also don’t accept the excuse that you cannot reason beyond the media’s often prejudiced suggestiveness. White people have been parading size two women across T.V.s and pages since forever. Yet, you’ve managed not to fall for that.
I’ve been thinking, and I don’t believe most of the shit you say is a reason you prefer Kim. Frankly, I’m tired of all your bullshit answers. White women are not, nor is Kim, submissive. You don’t like my nappy hair. Do you? So, let’s go ahead and acknowledge your fascination with hair that a woman can let down before making love. Ponder that. Hair is the single most obvious reason why you feel compelled to prefer Kim. I’m serious. And it’s not like dark-skinned J-BGs are the only ones who have nappy hair.
Wearing weave, braids, and lace-front wigs is normal African American culture regardless of a J-BG’s complexion. You know this. Whether she’s café-au-lait, caramel, or chocolate, her hair is probably, more than not, real Indian hair. We’re accentuating our softness—all of us don’t have the bone structure to pull off a fro—we’re drastically cutting down on the work to keep up our authentic nappy hair, and we are identifying, as messed up as it sounds, as Americans.
In some instances, you exalt the bad bitch slash a light-skinned J-BG with expensive Brazilian hair, even though you hate “fake” hair. You tolerate it, though, on light-skinned J-BGs with big butts and thick thighs because they look like Kim with thousand-dollar, silky straight bundles flowing down their backs. Also, all your prerequisites are met—the big butt and thick thighs. After all, you love the attributes of the J-BG, just not our hair; you fundamentally hate our hair, no matter what we do to it.
I am completely in the know that you dream of going to bed with a woman who does not roll, remove, or WRAP her hair at night. I ascertained from the media and am cognizant that you want steamy, sensual showers that do not include headgear. More generally, you want movement, shine, touchability, and visibility ALL the time. Long is a bonus; for some, maybe you, it has the same effect as a little nudity.
That’s why it’s rare for you to partner with a J-BG who’s natural, natural meaning, not the kind of hair that waves up in the water. And I swear to GOD, that’s what you pray for. When you do—entertain a J-BG wearing her natural nappy hair—it’s because you cannot ignore your honest connection, friendship, and respect for this J-BG. You adore her beyond escape (or believe there is none). Otherwise, those shrunken when wet coils would never retain your attention outside of sisterly affection, and they are not, even still, acceptable. You have no love for puffs, and you know it, outside of respect. And that’s why, whether you admit it directly or not, hair is the only prominent characteristic that adds an element of logic to our issue.
Case in point, Six’s prettiness was not extraordinarily remarkable. Like most girls considered attractive, her face was free from blemishes, none of her features were grossly unaesthetic, and her hair was a little longer than wrap length. But the combination of light skin and these ordinary qualities blinds you to the facts. Until now, in reflection, I never noticed; five had jet-black shiny hair that moved. I was so busy looking at Six that I never noticed her square jawline and big, bushy eyebrows. I talked down any observations other than her light skin for the sake of good manners.
‘Cause it’s just good manners to be whiter, love, want, and marry whiter. But the truth about Kim is that she can be more ghetto or hood than Sheneneh. She can be uneducated and living comfortably on welfare with three snotty, silky, curly babies. She can curse like a trucker, have more dimples, rolls, and dunes than should ever be allowed in a pair of short shorts, and be quite average if you would look at her head on, but even so, her hair is wavy. All hail.
If you detect bitterness, it’s not because Kim’s hair is wavy or that she is White. Oops, I mean whiter. It’s ridiculous to be that short-sighted.
A question was posed to me; it was something like:
“Why do I always see these really good-looking Black guys with these average White women—why not you?”
Makenomistake. This is your fault. It’s your fault that J-WGs think I would give up my melanin to be a White girl, and this discussion is not even about White women. You have people all over the world thinking J-BGs, especially dark-skinned J-BGs, rank at the bottom of the list when it comes to beauty and attractiveness, as well as attitude. I cannot deny your role in the creation of these stereotypes, no matter what you intend, by abandoning J-BGs for whiter women. It’s not just the media’s fault. Beauty experts are known for featuring deep-dark J-BGs alongside J-WGs in magazines and on runways. Albeit they generally aren’t American. Still, you are as much to blame for the racially discriminatory standards of beauty in America as White people.
Remember when we met? It was at your gym for a consultation appointment. As we talked about my weight loss goals, you also told me that you were divorced and the primary parent for your children, not just an entrepreneur. I thought, this guy is so cool. And easy to look at. At the time, I was sporting extremely long, DIY, natural-looking twists accomplished with twelve dollars a pack synthetic hair—made of artificial plastic fibers—not “horses’ hair.” Just saying. In that first face-to-face encounter, you suddenly remarked,
“I like your hair.” That was intriguing, especially since it was evident it was overdue to be taken down slash out, whichever you prefer. Then you said,
“I like Whoopi Goldberg.”
I think Whoopi has beautiful hair and skin, but I understood the remark for what it was. I then countered.
“Most of this is my real hair.” Exaggerating, unnecessarily, the natural transformative beauty of my African hair.
“Really?” You said it with raised eyebrows.
Cut to the second or third chat; I had you pegged as an “ay papi,” and I remarked this to you cleverly in a steamy sext that went something like:
Ay, Papi,
This is 300-level wordplay.
Bring your A-game.
Word choice is everything.
But rhythm is your ace.
And you replied, “Are you going to say that for me!?”
You didn’t even realize I was being condescending to you. As clever and fun as the sext was, you only heard me saying,
“Ay, Papi!”
Here’s a side note for you and your fellas: If you want someone to cry out, “Oh, daddy!” and you don’t want the ghetto version, “Give it to me, daddy!” or a simple American “Yes, daddy!”, what is wrong with “Oh, baba!”
We all know—that—is too black for your asses!
In a later conversation, I asked you (like the silly woman you thought I was),
“What kind of girls do you usually date?”
That was not too ambiguous for you; you answered straight away.
“Redbones, but that’s because (intelligently) all of the women in my family are light-skinned. So, that’s what I’m used to.”
(Said haughtily and sarcastically) “That’s definitely a way to narrow the pool of qualified applicants, to consider mixed women from the families of migrants to the state of Louisiana following the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, only” would have been an unequivocal comeback. Instead, I commonly reacted to the term’s watered-down use in today’s urban vernacular.
(Said like a silly woman) “Have you ever dated a dark-skinned girl?”
“Once.”
(Playing the hell out of the silly woman part, I asked)
“So, what do you see in me?”
“I love your smile.”
Doot, doot, doot, doot doo, dootin, doot. / Doot, doot, doot, doot, dooo, dooin, doo. / doot doot… You’re still singing, I hear, stop. Just when I began to think you were the same old R-O with no regard for dark-skinned J-BGs, you said something sweet, like when you said, “I like your hair.” And just like “I like Whoopi Goldberg,” followed that “I love your smile” may as well have been followed by “I love Mammy.”
You know, my ex was a professed redbone dater before he met me. I’m not suggesting I can cure you. I’m confessing, “No J-BG wants to be the token black girl of your dreams.” And I did want to be the girl of your dreams “in the parking lot, in the ladies’ room, in the office behind closed doors, and at the altar.” I deserved to be there, as much or more, alongside all the others.
Another sidenote: The others, whether exotic or just plain old White, may also be sporting booty. Yep, there are just as many big-bootied, chicken-legged white girls as there are big-breasted, flat-behind African-descended American women. My perspective has changed considerably! J-BGs and J-WGs are dying breeds as attributes have begun to appear mono-ethnic.
Since you’re still resonating with a preference fostered by enslavers, tell me, what could I, a dark-skinned J-BG with nappy hair, have done to get you to look at me the same way you look at Kim? Really, what can all J-BGs do? Especially us dark-skinned J-BGs?I suggest we wait patiently for a scientist to discover the natural substance we lack or rapidly lose after infancy, causing our silky baby hair to nap up like beads of rain on a waxed window. Then some White entity who, once again, decides to capitalize on Black enterprise will peddle the FDA-approved antidote slash supplement for silky, long hair. We’ll all, us J-BGs, rush to the stores and break the internet, emptying our pockets to get it. Then Wigs, weaves, and braids will be a thing of the twenties in just a few years.
If that doesn’t happen, hope springs eternal for a J-BG darker than night to be “born” with a natural mane of long, flowing, silky Peruvian type, jet black or—no—blond hair down to her ass. A white guy, who ran his hands through it first, will leak a video for all the world to see her with his hands twisted all up in it. Then she’ll get a reality show, iconic beauty fame, two sidekick blond-haired black-asssisters, and a heap of endorsements. Two years later, when the procedure to achieve the look is developed, the rest of us will pay eight to sixteen thousand hard-earned dollars to get the surgery. Otherwise, if hope does fail, OR if we decide to just wrap this up, J-BGs might turn right around and do the same ish slash shit to you. We’ll prefer White. Then, J-WGs will soon be born with bushes. Doot doot doot, doot doot, doot doot…
I love your smile,
Kimberly Nichole slash Nijaeri
