Gather the kids around the computer, this one’s for them!
Hey kids of color. Wanna worry about you ability to achieve as much as your teachers do? Then check out the ad at this FootAction store!
I’m not sure which is more horrible. The thug with the grill or the girl much too young for boobs wearing a dress that shows off where her boobs will be while some nowhere near-man boy touches where her underboob will develop in about 10 years. Either way, none of those words should be associated with children. My apologies.
Anyone wanna join me in a cleansing round of cricket?
Look at these little guys and girls! They’re so excited to see in this woman what they could be. And if they work very hard, what they will be some days.
Awww, reminds me of me when I was their age.
Thanks, Pampers. For ensuring that Oreodom continues from generation to generation.
If you want to look good, sometimes it has to hurt.
This weekend, as I sat in my salon chair for my regular soul flagellating ritual of a relaxer, I was convinced to try
pressing instead. The results, are thankfully the same–my hair is straight and the little curls of God’s practical joke are gone…and both methods come with pain, discomfort and a credit card bill near or in the three digits…But I’m not sure which is the best way to go.
For those of you who are already blessed with hair that responds to a comb and that your beloveds can easily run their fingers through, here’s a quick primer on what we do to keep our locks in line.
Relaxer: Imagine spreading a slice of sandwich bread with a thick layer of mayo.
Getting a relaxer is like only the sandwich bread slice is your scalp and the “new growth”–tightly curled natural hair that has yet to be tamed. And the mayo is lye a relaxer cream that in about 10 minutes of it landing on your skin begins to cause second degree burns. Luckily, it takes about 20 minutes for a relaxer to do it’s thing, so you’ve got plenty of time to sweat, squirm and stew about how lucky you’d be if you didn’t have to do this.
Pressing: No chemicals, so it’s healthier. But it’s also painful. Imagine raking your lawn. See how pulling the rake through the grass makes the lawn look all pretty?
Now imagine the lawn is your hair and the rake is a metal comb that’s been heated up to about 400 degrees. Also imagine that in order to make the rake work, you have to smooth just a bit of oil on the grass first so that when the 400 degree metal comb touches the oil, some vaporizes, but what doesn’t, melts on to your scalp and causes a quickly cooling, but mild first to second degree burn.
The pain of the relaxer is more intense, but sustained, so you can build resistance and is over in about 20 minutes.
The pain of a press and curl is more sporadic, so you’re not sure when to stop tensing and lasts longer as the oil-then-rake process must occur a couple hundred times (using very small chunks of hair each time) before you’re done.
Relaxers also last longer so you don’t have to endure them as often; but the scars they leave behind tend to last longer than the welts brought up by a relaxer.
Hmmm. Definitely want to make sure that my hair process reinforces the self loathing…there’s beauty in pain after all. Not sure which is the better way to go. What do you think?
You know how worried I am that in post-racial America, I don’t have to spend nearly $200 a pop to get my hair straight or to not let anyone see me watching Waiting to Exhale on a lazy Sunday afternoon.
But thanks to Bill, Bill and dreamy dreamy Anderson, I know that I am on the right track and that distancing myself from RBP.
Here’s Bill O’Reilly telling a guest he looks like a drug dealer. And Oreo points to the dealer professor for a) going on The O’Reilly factor in the first place b) not being upset and c) adding a terrific punchline
Here’s Bill Maher explaining how the President should handle the oil spill.
And here’s some young Oreos in the making.
(in the spirit of fair and balanced coverage…I did start my career as a reporter, after all…if you click around the CNN page there, there are a handful of varied results…but they’re not all that varied)
But I’m honestly a little caught up in the filmmaking and envious that they can tell a whole story with so few words! And then super creeped out by the end.
So, I was wondering how I was going to cap off my Memorial Day Weekend. I mean, there’s the Oreo usual–a night of contemporary theater, getting my hair straightened, an improv show rehearsal, relaxing by the pool in my 1950s era bathing costume.
But come Tuesday, how am I going to keep the celebration going. Thank you Cinefamily for giving me an answer! They advertised this event (a night showcasing the 100 most important animated Looney Tunes cartoons) with this video. Out of the ostensibly, 100 videos they could have put on their website, they chose one that reminds me why I will work so hard to keep my freshly straightened hair out of the pool this weekend.
Please enjoy the classic (and important) animated short: Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs.
A special prize will seriously go to anyone who can get me a bottle of Cotton Gin!!
Here’s a bit of nostalgia where Joe Biden reminds us that were it not for white people risking their lives in parks after dark, all of colors would have HIV/AIDS. Thanks, Joe! Pretty inspiriting footage. Hope to see you at the next regatta.
Freeman says he doesn’t want to have a Black History Month, talk about racism or be called a black man. But he does have a near sassy head shake in there. Do we have a new Oreo king?
The conclusion they came to was that RBP males are just kind of okay people and that of color women should lower their expectations and snag themselves a middle of the road mate. The men on the show described black women as “delusional” for wanting men who were, as panelist Sherri Shepard suggested, “ambitious” and who had “a sense of humor.” Men also described women as conniving and petty and said that women should use sex appeal and not reason, logic or passion if they want their men to listen to them.
I, of course, was horrified at this.
They were ignoring the much simpler answer: These ladies should go full Oreo and date white!
They’re obviously headed in the Oreo direction anyway what with their college degrees, bulging bank accounts and not-AIDS. So why not dive the way in??
So many benefits to dating white.
First of all, if you’re an of color woman and you date an of color dude…how typical can you be? Why not instead, enjoy the pleasantly surprised smiles when you introduce your new beau to your buddies by planting a kiss on the face of a handsome white stranger at happy hour? Folks just won’t see it coming and you become a great conversation piece.
Two revolves around two words: Good and hair. If you reproduce, think of the money you’ll save on expensive relaxers when your half-white kid has loose locks that respond to your average comb.
Three: Upward mobility. When you and your non colored partner go to buy that condo or purchase your box seats at the Pantages, think how excited people will be to have a nifty interracial couple sitting next to them. Have two black folks show up with a real estate agent in a neighborhood toying with gentrification and you’re likely to get some uncomfy looks and stares. Spare yourself the awkward welcome to the neighborhood bbq, have a tapas tasting instead and watch your new neighbors grin!
Now, back to the panel itself. Way to go Nightline for choosing the right commentators and solidifying some really important societal tropes. I mean, who better to host a discussion about something as personal as marriage and who ends up with whom and why than comedian Steve Harvey!
Also Nightline, way to remind us that there is in fact a terrifying social problem if women do not get married. This conversation wasn’t centered around people choosing to forgo relationships, it was about women not being able to marry. How dare they.
Like other discussions in the genre, the Nightline special began with the Disney-inspired assumption that marriage is an appropriate and universal goal for women. Any failure to achieve marriage must therefore be pathological. With this starting assumption panelists were encouraged to offer solutions without needing to fully articulate why low marriage rates are troubling.
Writer Melissa Harris-Lacewell outlined the event and shows us how RBP women are really making things difficult for the county and themselves:
In the 1960s, the Moynihan Report blamed black women heads of household for social deterioration in black communities. In the 1980s single black mothers were vilified as welfare cheats responsible for the nation’s economic decline. In the 1990s black women were blamed for birthing a generation of “crack babies” that were predicted to burden the nation’s health and educational systems. The Nightline conversation was suspiciously reminiscent of this prior reasoning. As the nation copes with its anxieties about a black president, a shifting economy and a new global position, black women suddenly reemerge as a problem to be solved.
All this could be solved, ladies if you’d just embrace the Oreo lifestyle. Which yes, includes things like enjoying schooling and employment, but also things like dating the right guys. And by right, we mean, white. Because they’re out there. They can get you into the right clubs. And according to these panelists, RBP men do not want to step up to the plate.
The solution offered most frequently in Wednesday’s conversation was familiar: professional black women need to scale back expectations.
But questionable casting or not, thanks, Nightline for adding to my self loathing. Not only am I an of color woman–the most undesirable of the women according to statistics and you; but I am also but I am an unmarried of color woman-proving your point that we’re hard to place to be correct. Yikes. I’m sorry, me. So very sorry.
The Oreo Experience 