Independence Day

With today being the 4th of July and all, I got to watch my day time television shows. Today on the Tyra Banks show, yes I know it was a rerun, Tyra wanted to address the State of Black Women. She had a panel of black men and women, and her audience consisted of all black women. She wanted to address issues facing the black community, and more specifically the black women. A few things stuck out for me, one, Tyra talked about black women who wear hair weaves and dye their hair to be blonde. Tyra admitted that she was the last person who should talk about hair weaves and dyed hair because I mean, look at her, but some of the men on the panel felt like black women wanted to look white.

This subject is not a sore one for me, I currently have a weave in, but I love my hair with and without the extensions. I don't feel like I try to look "white" but I do want to be beautiful. I'm not saying that long hair is beautiful either, I think beauty radiates from the inside out. Last year I chopped my hair off, and this year I decided to add extensions.


Unfortunately our society is bombarded with beautiful women, and they happen to be mostly white women. On the covers of all magazines its white women everywhere. One of my favorite magazines, Elle, has only had a black women, Beyonce, on their cover in the last four years. When Vogue put Jennifer Hudson on the cover, the letters in the following issue were disgusting. People wrote about how shocked they were to see such a overweight and dark skinned girl on the cover. The issue came out around the time of Dreamgirls, and many of the women and men who wrote in, didn't know who she was, nor did they care. All they saw was someone who didn't look white, ummmm like Beyonce. Don't get me wrong, I think Beyonce is gorgeous, very beautiful woman, but similar to what Tyra was saying, she usually has blonde hair and a long weave. She looks damn near white.

Even if that is her publicist and her label that make her look like that, what does that tell young black women. Having your own hair is not beautiful, you need to make it long and straight. Your natural color is not beautiful either, you need to have your hair as light a possible to be gorgeous. The closer you are to the paradigm, which happens to be white, the more you'll be accepted in society. Its sad but so very true.

Tyra went on to discuss body image. Many black women have curves, curves that are sometimes beyond our control. However, its the skinny women who are everywhere. In the magazines, on television and in movies. I don't know if its society that is to blame or if its the black community. Maybe a combination of both. Now I know there are a ton of men out there you think that a curvy woman is beautiful, and that they have "more cushion for the pushin" and whatnot, but a lot of those same men will go out and cheat on those curvy women. It doesn't matter to me what kind of women, men like, but don't say one thing and then cheat. The same men who claim to love curvy women, are the ones who will stare at a more petite woman later on.

Women need some consistency...so who is to blame. We know that society sees skinnier, thinner women as gorgeous, but we also know that society doesn't love us the way our men are supposed to. I'm all for people being healthy and exercising, because that is important, but women should be able to love their curves, with or without a man's love.

Finally, Tyra talked about black women being strong, single and childless. She said that she is 34, CEO of her company and she has never been married. She always view her mother, who was a single parent after her parents divorced, as a strong black woman. I took classes in school, one on The Black male and one on The Black child. The black woman takes care of her child, but not her man. According to what I learned in those classes and according to what some people who were on the panel said on the show.

Unfortunately from what I learned, the black woman ruins her child, more specifically a black man, by raising him fatherless. Now i know its not the woman's fault all the time, if her husband or boyfriend is an asshole, but do black women run their men away? Do black women demand too much from their men? So if the black woman runs away her man, and raises a black male, how do you think she will treat him when he gets older? He gets treated as if he were the husband, and she runs him off too. My studies in a nutshell, but I think you get the point. So now, her son will find another black woman, and treat her like dog too, based on his father and based on how that woman treats him, and the cycle continues. I have a single friend, who is a strong black woman, and she is having difficulty finding a "good" man, but what does that even mean?

One of the women on the panel, CEO of Act-1 the employment agency, a black woman, said that single women need to stop putting parameters on men. They need to stop searching for that "good" man and just look within themselves, and think about what they can do to help their own lives. So what can black women do? We have it harder than men and harder than white women. I don't want to take away from what we have accomplished, because black women have gone farther than their male counterparts, straight from the text, don't get mad a me. We need to take men with us, and help them, without nagging them. We can't push them away, we need to come closer together. A man is a man and a woman is a woman, we deal with things differently, but we can't treat our men like they are our children, whether they are white, asian, latino and/or black. Men need to be men, and if your man is a good one then he will treat you like a woman and give you what you deserve.

Now as for Ms. Tyra, she is an inspiration to me. I know a lot of people would call her a sell out, and they say that to any successful black person, Obama is a sell out, Condoleezza Rice is a sell out (well she kind of is) or Beyonce and Halle Berry are sell outs too, but think how far these people have come. And I can't get mad at any of them. I wish race and color didn't exist so people could just be themselves and do their own thing with out parameters set on them. Like she is this...for a black woman...or he is cute...for a dark-skinned guy... All of these things need to stop in our society, and they need to be addressed. We are so focused right now on saving the environment, but equality and humanity have gone out the window.

Have a happy "Independence" Day.