Ras, Woman and Child?

Ras, Woman and Child?


I love the look of well tended locs on men. There is nothing like a man, in shiny . cultivated locs, well fitted jeans, a crisp white shirt and an ounce of swag in his walk. Kees Diefenthaller springs to mind, so does Shurwayne Winchester. I use the phrase well tended because I am not attracted to locs that have let themselves go on a brother’s head, literally finding themselves in a tangled mess, developing muffin tops, distorted bellies and thin edges. Anyway I digress. Men with locs usually spell glorious and Nubian. Proud brothers who are walking in their kingly characters, sporting hair that shouts pride in one’s roots. Locs-men are usually non-meat eaters, or lets not get carried away, non-pork eaters. They claim righteousness and wholesomeness and the casting away of the old order. They are the first to grasp their lighters when genuine old skool reggae erupts in a dancehall setting. Men who wear locs are hot.

I have, however, noted and tested a hypothesis about locs-men: why is it that so few of them seem to go out with locs-women? When I was a card carrying member of the weave-a diva club, men with locs seemed to love a bit of the old kanekalon or 100% human hair, it did not seem to matter. chicks with relaxed hair or weave definitely got more play than the Nubian loc-sporting women in the club.

Having said that, I really am not bothered: the chances of meeting and sustaining a relationship from a nightclub encounter is probably less likely than Bob Marley issuing a hit song from the grave, but I am always very intrigued about perceptions of beauty and the prejudices and stereotypes that are associated with locs.

Do men with locs think loc-wearing women are beautiful? Or conversely, is it that a loc-wearing woman exudes a “I don’t play” vibe that causes a man to take another step back. In a controversial video, Method Man admitted to not being attracted to women with natural hair. He says “I don’t like Peasy Afros. I don’t like dreads either. I like a woman to get her hair did”. And for her to get cancer as well I suppose. Is it that women with dreads don’t look “did”? I wondered whether in spite of men making fun of the weave, it is truly what their view of sexy and beautiful is. When I see a man with locs, I see someone who oozes confidence, who is not afraid to go with an unorthodox view of sexy, someone . When men see me, is this what they see? Or have they been conditioned for so long by their sisters’ Barbie dolls, by the video-hos in rnb videos, by the actresses that surround them, by the images in the media, that women who wear their hair in dreads almost become invisible, inadvertnently?

I make no criticism. Everyone has his or her own notion of beauty and it is not up to me to pass judgment, but it would be wonderful to see a few more be-dreaded men with be-dreaded women by their side- Rastaman, rastawoman and rastababy.

Royal Wedding Black-Out

Lindsey, in the brilliant Clybourne Park, the caricature of the liberal movement, utters the magic words that are indignantly sputtered when middle class Britain say something that could even be marginally interpreted as prejudiced: “But …half of my friends are black!”


These soothsaying words surreptitiously say the unsaid. I couldn’t possibly be guilty of thinking that those teenage boys sitting outside of the cornershop are in a gang, because half of my friends are black; I couldn’t possibly be racist when I say a tennis player looks like a golliwog because half of my friends are black; I couldn’t possibly be insular and narrow-minded, because half of my friends are black. It is an uncomfortable exclamation that is usually uttered in response to a pregnant cause, after some off-colour (pun intended) remark.

So maybe it is honest, and even somewhat refreshing, that William and Kate do not make any false claims that they have any black friends or friends of colour. It is slightly disappointing perhaps, given Diana’s friendship with Dodi Al Fayed, William’s declaration that his heart is in Africa, Kate’s family holidays to St. Vincent and even more to the point, the fact that the Boujis-Mahiki-Kitts set is increasingly international, replete with Arab wealth. Surely Wills and Haz would have rubbed shoulders with others outside of their “set”?

Buoyed perhaps by recent all-inclusive directives, the British media took this task on inflicting diversity on the Royal Wedding upon themselves: BBC World Service’s coverage was fronted by black and Asian newsreaders, much ado was made of the fact that the footsman to the Queen was a black American (why is it an honour for a black man to be the Queen’s servant instead of her equal, even if he is the top servant?) and the lone black chorister was zoomed in upon and given special attention. Black people played “Spot the Black” on Facebook and Twitter. Fact was that any persons of colour who featured in the audience were the Ambassadors and representatives (and their wives) of the Commonwealth jurisdictions, and the odd spouse or partner of a local politician or celebrity. I was impressed though, that Boris Johnson’s wife, Marina Wheeler, who is half-Indian, proudly wore her salwa khameez with pride- who would have expected Boris the ultra conservative to be the poster-child for integrationist Britain at this “last bastion” of Englishness?

The fact that there were hardly any black people at the Royal Wedding seems to come as a surprise to our friends across the pond where affirmative action propels persons of colour (rightfully or wrongfully) into the glistening parapets of upper society, although I don’t recall Chelsea Clinton’s wedding being a Benetton advert either. I hazard to say that in spite of the increasing international outlook of boarding schools these days, it is a rare thing to find persons of colour whose parents had the funds to ensure that they went to exactly the right boarding schools (Eton, Marlborough), maintained the right hobbies (skiing, riding, polo), vacationed in the right resorts (Courchevel), partied in the right private members; clubs (Raffles, Public) and lived in the right postcodes (Sloane Square, Kensington, Chelsea). Getting into those sets is difficult enough, getting into the royal enclosure within that circle would have required not just wisteria type social climbing but the tenacity and determination of the first man heading to Everest.

William and Kate’s whitewash wedding may not be politically correct, but it is at least honest. That’s just not how they roll. And that’s fine. I was more taken aback that Posh and Becks were invited and President Obama and the last two Prime Ministers were not. There might still be hope-maybe Harry will bring home native Zimbabwean Chinekwa, instead of Chelsy?

The Perfect A

The media, predictably, were quick to denigrate and pounce on hip hop music when Claudia Aderetomi travelled to a dodgy hotel in America to get industrial grade silicone injected into her butt cheeks, allegedly so that she would be able to break into the music video industry. Suddenly, hip hop music became a source of condemnation and derision, and every columnist in the mainstream press clamoured to criticize its treatment of black women. Women like Nicki Minaj and Buffy the Butt were held up as representing the aspirations of black girls- full figured, with a slim waist and a huge undimpled (preferably fake) backside. Apparently, we all want this. Yeah, right.

Never mind that free from the influence of black music, hundreds of women die from each year from cosmetic surgery, Caucasian Lidviyan Selaya died in December 2010 in Florida after suffering cardiac arrest after liposuction, Chinese singer Wang Bei died in November 2010 after undergoing a facial grinding procedure, and Latin American Solange Magnano, a beauty queen, died from a pulmonary embolism after a gluteoplasty (butt lift). Who can also forget Donda West, Kanye’s mum, who died from a heart attack a day after a liposuction procedure. I doubt that she was vying for a part in a hip hop video or needed the money to forge a video hunny career.

The media missed the point, as usual. While I do not deny that music videos present an ideal that few can live up to, the problem is not hip hop music or the “careers” of video girls or even the clichéd trotted out objectification of women. The problem is that we live in a society that focuses, thrives and makes it profitable for us to exist in a permanent state of dissatisfaction with ourselves and our bodies. Mainstream media fails to mention that black women used to always be derided by the mainstream media for not having the perfect lithe, sinewy bodies. A big bottom was an unsightly thing, to be laughed at or burned away on a treadmill, instead of a natural genetic feature to be celebrated and acknowledged as an evolutionary symbol of our femininity. Mainstream media conveniently omits that most black women cannot obtain jeans that pull over our buttocks in the UK- the High Street is a notoriously difficult place to shop for me, and I do not have a bigger than average bottom. Gym classes that focus on problem areas include “legs, bums and tums”, making it clear that a bottom that sticks out is considered unsightly and a problem. Who could forget “I like big butts and I cannot lie”, the opening line in Baby Got Back? The very hip hop music which is now criticised was a proud rebellion against that type of derision of our bodies, and while it is indeed a shame that we have now reached the point when it has exerted a pressure of its own, we cannot forget that it is really the exception to the fash-rule.

Claudia Aderotomi was a fallen soldier in the universal battle for female perfection. We have all had those moments of self denial where we wonder whether mornings at the gym or denying ourselves chips is really worth it and feel like zapping it all away to achieve what we feel would be a perfect figure or a perfect weight. Just as teenagers at school are no longer required to obtain plain As and must distinguish ourselves by having A*s and just as Sainsburys only sells Grade A carrots with no bumps or knobs or other physical deformities, we live in a society where we feel that we must be a perfect A. Regrettably, for every Claudia, there is a Jenny and an Emily in the search for perfection- a perkier breast or a flatter tummy, hopefully we realise that we don’t need to die to validate our selves and our bodies.