Skinny, Ashy Ankles: The New Black Woman Pathology

This just in: black women have skinny, ashy ankles. Black women have skinny, ashy ankles and the world needs to know. They are disproportionately represented in sales for Nivea, the thick cream marketed purposely toward black women’s bodies. They supply the band-aid brand with most of its sales, as they are the frequent victims of blisters. And they are dying. Read it: DYING from skinny, ashy ankles.

GIFSoup

This is why it is a national crisis. Black women with skinny, ashy ankles are frequently the victims of career-ending injuries. Since black women are fat, their skinny ankles don’t hold all of the extra weight and they tend to topple over, especially the majority of black women who live in urban areas with unpaved sidewalks.

Skinny, ashy ankles are a class issue. Have you ever tried to use dollar store lotion? It doesn’t even have a scent and it has the consistency of a vinegar douche.

Do you think most black women can afford Lubriderm? This is the alternative.

Skinny, ashy ankles are also a black family issue. Since black women are one hundred times less likely to be married than every other raced, gendered body in the world (and probably the universe if we would just admit that what we are really interested in is the study of alien bodies and extend our studies to the populations on Mars), they typically trip in places with no burly men to help break their falls. This is an epidemic that hurts the black family, as young boys have to watch their skinny, ashy ankle mothers fall without the support of men. These boys develop a sense of nihilism and think to themselves, “fuck it, I’m going to fall too. Falling is in my bloodline.” Then these African American sons of skinny, ashy ankle black women decide to sag their pants to make their falls more likely. Hence, because of skinny, ashy ankle women, falls and sagging pants are now integrated into black culture as if this pathology should be glorified.

Black women are responsible for this.

And you know what? Black women want to have skinny ankles. It’s because of slavery. This is the part of the essay where I apply my argument to the controlling tropes of black womanhood, as if black womanhood has not become a signifier in itself, a trope without tracks:

Mammy: Mammy’s ankles were ashy because she used all her lard in her cooking and therefore it contributed to her overwhelming obesity, which was passed down to the current generation of obese black women with skinny, ashy ankles.

Jezebel: Jezebel was led into sexual sin and exploitation by way of her seducer’s attention to her ankles. Her skinny ankles only fed her insecurities, which were exploited by male suitors. You will notice that the modern video vixen, aka Jezebel, has skinny ankles.

The Tragic Mulatta: It is well known that female products of miscegenation often had one full ankle (their European heritage) and one skinny, ashy ankle (the African heritage . They spent their whole lives trying to hide the black side. This way of walking, this peculiar fascination with positioning the white ankle toward passerby, was called “passing” by the journalists of the day and the term has continued to explain the mulatta experience in America.

Look at the skinny ankles on this Sapphire.

Sapphire/ Matriarch: Like our ancestor Sojourner Truth, black women have never had men to help us over puddles—huge puddles that splashed mud on our already ashy ankles and made us lose our balance and titter over. All that falling makes a woman bitter, especially since we have learned to balance the world on our skinny, ashy ankles. No wonder we can’t keep the few good men who actually would like to help us. No wonder we run them off and raise their offspring by ourselves.

This is the part of the essay where I return to the present and talk about the joys and perils of skinny ankles. I am married. Read it: MARRIED. To a man. Who is straight. Who finds me desirable. Who makes me not a statistic and therefore the perfect person to write about black women’s pathology. And we have legitimate children who have skinny but well-oiled ankles. He loves my skinny, ashy ankles and he thinks the ashier the better. In fact, he loves when my ankles are so ashy that they get cut on the back of my pumps and I have to wear band-aids to cover the blisters. Those are the nights that he gingerly takes off my abusive shoes and wears them as earrings as we make passionate, heterosexual love, my blistered ankles in the air.

Woman: Thank you, baby, for making heterosexual love to me despite my pathological ankles.
Man: Baby, it wasn’t no big deal. I love them ankles, girl. I’m a black man and my eyes are designed to find beauty in that which is deemed despicable by the rest of the world. Now get up on them ankles and make me some waffles.
Woman: Anything to keep you, boo. If you leave me, I’ll be a statistic.

Still, I don’t want my daughter to suffer my fate as a skinny-ashy ankled woman. I tell her to get her stuff together and oil those ankles. I apply butter directly to her ankles in hopes that the lipids will soak into her skin and give it a plumpness that is finally, finally non-pathological. I want the best for my children. I don’t want them to be like me—a web of problems, a “fix me” sign, a pathology, a wanderer in a desert, looking for the lake called hope…

Feminist Musings on Showing Up

It’s 11:30 PM. I have a baby with a cold. I have a looming, untouched exam prep list. I have a sink full of dishes. I have students writing me after 9:00 asking for “leeway” in tomorrow’s class. I have a headache. I have a backache. I have anxiety-induced insomnia. I have people. And when the rest of the list makes the latter seem small, my people show up and, as the church folk say, show out.

You may be wishing for a quota on feminist writing about friendship. You may be wishing that we would stand erect and alone, our spines as stiff as steel. You may wish we would stop complaining about the world and study mathematics. You may wish we would just shut the hell up already. You may never have disappeared. You must have always been visible. You may, you must, you should move on if you are bothered. Because my sister friend has told me to show up and I will.

She called because of facebook. Because of the way that we ask others to see us in 500 characters or less. Because I was complaining again, feeling small, feeling like giving up, feeling invisible and less than worthy. Because I drank the academy’s Koolaid and she was calling to “wreck that shit.”

“If you ever feel like disappearing,” she said, “hear my voice telling you to show up.”

It was more than a suggestion. It was a fourteen word holy gift. It was firm finger lifting a heavy chin, a left hand on a right shoulder blade, a mama’s lap, a sister’s hug. It was a conundrum.

If you ever feel like disappearing…

There are millions of disappeared people. They have ceased to exist. They have vanished from sight. They have passed from view. The definitions all depend on a seeing other. Someone ceases to exist (to whom?). Someone vanishes from (whose?) sight. Someone passes from (whose?) view. The truth is that by the time I feel like disappearing, I already have.
I’ve disappeared from doctors who believe brown bodies are already diseased, law officers who color-code deviance, preachers whose conceptions of sin are embodied by Eve, academics who measure my skull and find it wanting… My many disappearances don’t seem to be my choice.

But my friend told me that if I ever feel like disappearing, I should hear her voice. She implied that disappearance could be active, a decision one makes to vanish. I think of my many active disappearances: the “informal” department parties I skip, unwilling to down glasses of wine and pretend not to feel interrogated. I think of the ways I cease to exist as a student by telling myself that my opinions don’t matter, that they aren’t useful or polished enough. I sometimes vanish from sight as a teacher, acting as little more than a moderator for uninformed opinions because of fear that sharing my true self will lead to negative course evaluations. Nervous laughter helps me pass from view in churches when male preachers blame the falls of (biblical and contemporary) great men on (biblical and contemporary) hoes. Some disappearances are active; sometimes disappearance is an act of protection. Other times it is an admittance of defeat.

Hear my voice and show up.
It was more than a suggestion. It was my grandfather telling me to “get my education” as if he, who was raised in the Jim Crow south, knew the process would be/ should be anything but passive. It was a command to stand up and be my Momma’s daughter, to lift my head like she taught me so that the weight of the world wouldn’t crumple my spine. It was an invitation to swagger, the way rappers turn a plea (can’t you see me?) into an accusation (you don’t see me), into a bonafide diss (you can’t see me!) as if intentional blindness is an admission of impotence.

So I accept the invitation and I’ll pay it forward. I will show up in my department as brown bodies always show up, especially against a white background. Others attempt to discredit me because they are afraid I will show them up, that their lies will show up, especially against the background of the truth. We show up for each other because we know firsthand the difficulties of showing up alone. I will show up for my people as they continue to show up for me. And if you ever feel like disappearing, I hope you will hear my voice and show up.

Glowing in the Dark: Being Feminist At the Movies

Last night, we went to see Jumping the Broom, but this is not about that movie. I don’t have energy to waste on telling Salim Akil to do better (again); I don’t have enough energy to show the ways in which Tyler Perry and T.D. Jakes are cinematic bedfellows, conspiring in the dark to teach black women how to get and keep a man with the help of Jesus.

 I’d rather talk about what happens when six feminists walk into a movie theater or any other space that would render us silent.  We laugh. We pass popcorn. We call “bullshit” when appropriate. We notice similarities to relatives and point them out to our neighbors. We drink smuggled wine. We talk too loud. We fume. We remind ourselves and those listening that we are absent from/ offended by this film. We have side conversations about which child star has grown into his face, about which male lead may or may not have dentures. We resist. We glow in the dark.

That we managed to have fun after (maybe during) two hours of a prosperity gospel sermon with pictures is more than a miracle; it’s a daily practice of society’s despised and dispossessed. Pearl Cleage, in an essay called “Beverly’s Boots” wrote about such practice. In the aftermath of the Bush/ Quayle election, the city of Atlanta exploded with black feminist energy. Hanging out with sisterfriends, Cleage almost forgot to remember that she had just been politically dispossessed and the remembrance almost depressed her: “All of a sudden, I felt my blues coming back strong and that’s when I saw Beverly’s boots.” They were cowboy boots that “didn’t give a damn about George Bush.” For a few hours the other night, we didn’t give a damn either.

Let me be clear; we didn’t have to stay in that theater. In fact, if faced with a similar situation in the future we will probably leave. But the truth is that there are other spaces we don’t want to leave. We talked last night about the academy, about the politics of negation that play out, about the silencing that goes on and the frequent dismissals. But I don’t want to leave. I take my daughter to church to wear the dresses bought by her relatives and I wonder what tools I need to give her if decide to stay; I can’t smuggle in wine or call “bullshit” when I hear it. There are other institutions and groups that would rather I disappear and still I glow in the dark.

 I often think about what CF Ashon wrote when the news of Eddie Long’s sexual abuse surfaced. He wrote, “The ability to have pleasure in the spaces that try to make it impossible is important… We have the capacity to withhold in us a certain consent to the theological, emotional, psychical violence we are made to endure. And having the capacity to withhold, we have something in us that persists.” I hope I am not abusing his meaning when I say that in withholding consent to violent messages, we are also creating ways to find and make pleasure in the space(s) of negation, to play (with ourselves) in the dark.  

It is a lesson I have learned by living in this body that is already coded with meaning, with darkness.

Darkness is alive, creating light/ life. It is more than empty metaphor, imbued with meaning by those who have named themselves namers. We laugh in the dark. We dance in the dark. We gossip, whisper, plot and plan. We soothe each other, we build fortresses, we organize, we recycle love and expand it. We won’t be negated, silenced, erased. We withhold consent. We glow.

It Gets Wetter: A Message to Women Who Frequently Have Horrible, Rushed Sex (NSFW)

Here’s a bold truth: I don’t enjoy penetration of any kind unless I’m wet enough to drown a dolphin. And this truth wouldn’t be a problem if sex weren’t always about penetration. One sex therapist put it best when she said, “If most women don’t have orgasms during ‘sex,’ but do have orgasms, perhaps we need to redefine sex.” Amen and Ashé.

With a redefinition that includes pleasurable, intimate touch, kissing and best of all (for me, anyway) cunnilingus, I realize that I had some of my best sex as a teenager. He was Pentecostal and I was a Baptist youth leader. We were both convinced that sex before marriage was wrong and equally convinced that only penetration was sex.  It was a sultry, sticky summer full of questions that began with “Do you like?” Sex was a lazy journey without a clear destination.

I was soon to learn all about the danger of clarity in a patriarchal society. Since then, sex for me has been a series of negotiations. I know there will usually be a moment when a male partner is ready for penetration and often, that is before I’m ready/ comfortable/ wet / aroused enough. If sex were not a personal expression of political power, these moments would be no more than awkward. It would be like leaning in for a hug first only to find that the other person was disinterested. The problem is that men in a patriarchy are socialized to “lean in” first– always. And those who are not conscious enough to interrogate this socialization begin to believe that leaning in is their right, their privilege. So awkward moments can become coercion, assault, or rape.  Or just horrible sex. But you know that already.

What you may not know is that with time, the right partner, patience and negotiation, it gets wetter. Believe you me.

 So I’d like to start with cunnilingus because, well, I like to start with cunnilingus. It’s a beautiful thing. Direct and indirect clitoral stimulation work together to flood sheets and help you ride the waves of multiple orgasms. A recent study found that there are only 29 people in America who sleep with women but don’t perform cunnilingus and only 11 of those expect to receive fellatio or cunnilingus but think cunnilingus should be reserved for “wifey.” Unfortunately, those 11 get around quite often. My girlfriends keep running into them. I believe that we should start a website to identify these people and block them from hookup or relationship radar.

There are a lot of songs about performing cunnilingus . In fact, the subject has been exhausted with various degrees of tact. The point I’d like to make is that the word “perform” is a misnomer that puts undue pressure on a partner. Unless you are into experimental, interactive theater, performance has connotations of independent expertise. In my experience, cunnilingus is best (especially at first) with a little direction. Those who consider themselves experts can suck you silly or lick you dry if what they’re putting down doesn’t work for your particular pubis.

About that pubis: the porn industry, Zane novels and other forms of sex miseducation would have you believe that a woman can be reduced to her orifices- that these are her only sites of pleasure. My dissertation will be about how the soft skin behind the knee is ignored in popular culture. Or the lost art of booty massage. Or the treatment of the vagina as a cavernous hole that brings pleasure to men or children to the world. Most vagina diagrams show the outer vagina only, leaving the inner workings a mystery.

See that small black hole? It's so much more.

I never had a vaginal orgasm until I read this book and saw a diagram of my beautiful vagina, full of nerve endings I never knew existed.

Check out how big your clitoris really is.

When I saw how long the clitoris actually was, I was able to imagine the spongy tissue as I engaged in solo or partnered sex acts. Visualization helped me attach sensation to specific body parts. It was a life changer and I was angry about the years I spent not knowing. Imagine if men were taught that the only way they could achieve orgasm was by massaging the very tips of their penises. You’re right. It wouldn’t happen.

I invite you to study your sexual self. She’s beautiful. Draw her. Paint her (Judy Chicago=FAIL). Write poems to her. She deserves some personalized attention in this world that is hell-bent on her exploitation and commoditization.

I write these things and run the risk of being called crass, hypersexual, or just plain strange because I love you. I want you to know that life can and will be wetter for you. I want you to name it and claim it. I want you to receive this word I have for you. With time, your eyes will roll. Your thighs will spasm uncontrollably. Your pupils will dilate. Your very core will shake like the walls of Jericho when you believe. It will get wetter.

From the other side,

Ashaf

Single, Saved, and Sewn-In: The Gospel of Getting Your Hair Done

* To celebrate our anniversary month, some of us are revisiting previous posts from the past year and reflecting on them. I have chosen to reflect on “Single, Saved and Sexin’: The Gospel of Getting Your Freak On” because it was one of our most popular posts. Crunkashell’s truth telling and well-written argument inspired me to think about another Biblical edict that has shaped my life. I hope this frees you too.                                                            

Unapologetically sewn-in.

 

Like most conservative, fundamentalist, literalist Christian folks, I grew up believing that getting your hair done was a sin—the only sin, in fact, that ever made God tell an angel to go to hell. For years, my grooming experiences were laden with guilt. I routinely went years at a time without getting my hair professionally done, until societal pressure would push me to give in to my urges. I couldn’t even enjoy all of the shocked faces at my high school prom because I just knew that if Jesus came back during the middle of a Luther song, I would burn in hell from the tips of my toes to the top of my perfectly coifed hair. I was caught in a continual cycle of high maintenance cuts, low maintenance care, trim, condition, rinse and repeat, topped off with five years of home hair care (if you can call what I did care). I treated hairstyling as if it were a bad habit that I desperately needed to break.

 

Is this the man of God who is supposed to be attracted to a woman whose head is a wreck? Or is he a sinner because he has dyed his hair, permed it, and drawn in his edges?

All of this is a prelude to a confession: I’m single. I’m saved (as in a born-again, my-name-is-on-the-list, goin-up-a-yonder Christian). And I have a sew-in. Unapologetically.

At my former church, I spent Saturday mornings (the time that many women spend in the hairdresser’s chair) with beautiful, dynamic, educated women whose heads were wrecks. We didn’t consider ourselves self-righteous; we were easy to be around and non-judgmental of each other. Together we prayed for the fallen sisters among us—the ones who missed a Saturday in sinful preparation for a Monday job interview. We also prayed for those who, in frustration, committed the most heinous sin of all: braids—the only hairstyle that the Bible explicitly denounces TWICE. We realized that they weren’t evil-hearted for their refusal to live by Christian standards: we prayed for an evil world that calls everyone to a standard of vanity that Paul and Peter both found appalling for women. More than anything, we prayed for the heterosexual men of God that our savior promised to send—men who would judge us by the content of our characters rather than the hair on our heads.

Isn't she holy? Isn't she also fried, dyed and laid to the side?

When we were teenagers making non-vanity pledges, we couldn’t have guessed that these promises would have such an effect on our romantic lives 10-20 years later. In fact, according to our worldview, our (lack of) hairstyles wasn’t the problem; the problem was with the sinful men who were attracted to the very vanity that God despised—the men who preferred long hair, short hair, natural hair—any style at all. We were convinced that we were doing the right thing and the rest of the world, though beautiful by man’s standards, was wrong.

I still respect the sisters who believe that and I believe that we serve the same God; I just no longer believe in their ethics of care. It is hard to live and thrive in a world that you know is gawking at your head. It’s hard to take the Bible as the gospel truth when black women are already policed in this society that is built on the fact of our deplorability. Do black women get a pass on the Bible’s vanity clause when they live in a society that demands it? Were not Paul’s words written to a people for whom “get up and go” hair was not a cause for consternation? What should black women do with their hair when we can neither cut it, style it, perm it, or God forbid, braid it? And were our ancestors living in sin for the hundreds of years that nimble fingers weaved intricate braids in the heads of women and men? I cannot serve a God who would turn someone away from His heaven for a hairstyle.

Holy hair.

After all of these years, I’ve realized that the perfectly humble, holy hairstyle is not what I needed. I needed a bigger view of God.

For so many women, the biggest faith struggle is believing God for a male, heterosexual life partner. The women pray, serve, and refuse to apply makeup or comb their hair in hopes that God will send a spirit-filled, Word-educated man who was wildly attracted to their piety. Black women especially are attacked from both “the church” and “the world” about all the things we are doing that keep us single. The church says take off that makeup; men will think we are sex workers. The world, with the help of Queen Latifah, says we’d better not; men will think we are not nice or fun. The church says stay away from those demonic braids because they were a sign of sex work in Paul’s day. The world says get a sew-in—a style that requires braids—because real men dig Beyonce.  

God is bigger than our understanding of Him. I have learned the limitations of my previous belief in the inerrancy of a text. Words, like any sign, are infinitely interpretable. Trying to nail down the single truth of a sign is an attempt by man to control a world that has always been out of control. Running from the hairdresser’s chair in a fit of guilt when she’d only finished half my perm felt better than coming to terms with cancer’s attack on my family.  Walking the halls with my afro flat on one side made me feel righteous and important in a school that didn’t value us enough to give us new books. Shouting out of our hastily-done ponytails in church gave us joy in the face of the poverty we faced all week long. There are so many things that we cannot control; refusing to change my hair does not change this fact. It only blinds me to world-problems that I’d probably have the confidence to effect if I weren’t so caught up on this head of mine.

So hairstyling is back on the table for me. I have a sew-in. It’s luxurious. Underneath my sewn-in hair is a set of braids that would make my former Sunday School teacher speak in tongues. When my stylist patiently parted my tangled hair and gently braided it close to my scalp (but not too tight), I fell in love with her and refused to feel bad about it. My sew-in hides the sin of my braids, but one day I will feel bold enough to rock a fro-hawk or some other style that shows the extent to which I have “back-slid.” And that’s ok. I believe in a God who will love me anyhow.

That’s why I’m unapologetically single, saved, and sewn-in.

NUNU Pt. 2: We Mad Now!

Uncle Pastor said that he has spent his lifetime helping the uncle-less. He considers himself a victim of spiritual warfare and has collected five stones in his fur pockets.

Well, church. My pastor spoke a prophetic word when he said, “As long as you great, haters gon’ hate.” Just as the NUNU: No Uncles, No Uterus movement got off the ground, a huge scandal broke out in a southern megachurch. A group of parents recently accused Pastor John Jenkins(who goes by Uncle Pastor) of intent to manipulate their teenage sons and daughters. Uncle Pastor recently started two ministries, Pastor’s Adopted Nephews Teen School (PANTS) and Pastor’s Adopted Nieces Teen and Youth School (PANTYS), for the at-risk, uncle-less children of the church. Former members say that he often preached to the men about getting involved in the PANTS and PANTYS of the church. He told them it was their duty to misguided youth who would never have a chance in this life without surrogate uncles. The members say they never caught on to the sexual innuendos imbedded in the sermons or titles of the schools. They began to get suspicious when Uncle Pastor gave their children wine at evening services, pointing to passages in scripture when Jesus turned water into wine for the children of his brother, James. The schools were officially closed before Uncle Pastor could do further harm. The travesty of this situation is that feminists are blaming movements like NUNU for creating a “narrative of need.” One church mother said, “My family was fine until Uncle Pastor convinced them otherwise. He didn’t have to break out into “Sometimes I Feel Like an Uncle-less Child” every Sunday! This story about uncle-less-ness is just that- a story.”  The devil is a lie!

If uncle-lack is little more than a story, how does one explain the alarming statistic that young women without uncles are more likely to have sex before the age of 25? Although there was no control group in this study, the numbers show that many of the sexually active young women were products of mothers without brothers- a group that grows at an alarming rate. If uncle-lack is little more than a story, how does one explain gang activity on the uncle-less streets of cities like Compton? It’s a vicious cycle; as more uncles are murdered or jailed, new generations of uncle-less men rise up in anger. If uncle-lack is little more than a story, how does one explain the popularity of Uncle Luke in strip club culture? Do you think those women would answer to “Where dem hoes at?” if they had loving uncles at home who asked better questions? Do you think the women below would have degraded themselves at Uncle Luke’s birthday party if their biological uncles had thrown them their own parties?

Feminists and so-called cultural analysts are alike in that they judge practical movements from the comfort of their ivory towers. Sure, your educated readings of statistics may read differently than ours, but things tend to look a little different on the ground. To the ivory towers we shout, “Quit talkin’ bout narrative; remember the imperative” [The author would like to note that the use of off-rhyme and assonance is a literary tool to garner the attention of the masses and is not to be taken literally. She does sympathize with narrative lovers because she used to be one]. The imperative is uncle-less-ness in our communities. There is no reason to have wars over semantics when we’re trying to find uncles for our future generations.

These women say that our communities don't need more uncles; they need equal access to healthcare, employment and education. Question: What does this have to do with stable families- with daughters who aren't fast and sons who aren't gangsta?

The writers of NUNU and those who are likeminded did not place Uncle Pastor in the pulpit. The uncle-less did. The writers of NUNU did not buy Uncle Pastor’s Honda Civic. The uncle-less did. The writers of NUNU did not help Uncle Pastor manipulate PANTS and PANTYS. The uncle-less did. It wasn’t the story that gave him the glory [author again notes use of literary device]. It was the need that fed his greed [and another one]. If there were active uncles in the congregation, Uncle Pastor would never have been able to manipulate the youth.

Uncle-lack is real and here to stay. Pondering over whether the narrative creates this lack is like trying to answer the age old question about the chicken and the egg. Does the answer matter when folks at the picnic are waiting for the missing fried chicken? Readers, our communities are pounding the picnic tables for missing uncles.  Won’t you just bring them out?

P.S. You don’t agree with us? We invite you to join us instead of setting up your own divisive camps. I know this may seem absurd to you (or if you’re ableist, insane, nuts, or cuckoo for cocoa puffs), but we know best. We have the numbers; over 100 bloggers support NUNU, so we must be telling the only truth. If you can’t beat us, join us. In the meantime, hide yo’ uterus, hide yo’ ovaries, and get you a brother to help raise your kids!  

P.S.S. The brother from whom the last line is quoted was trying to save his NIECE.

NUNU: No Uncles, No Uterus

Obviously, any two people can make a pretty baby. But where are the uncles to help raise this pretty girl?

Gentle reader, I write this post with a heavy heart. To address the current crisis of my people, I must revisit the great depravity of my own childhood in order to highlight the disaster that is the contemporary American family: I, like countless contemporary children, grew up without an uncle in my life. I know, I know. My story is not a popular one in this day and age, when women are hell-bent on raising their children independently, without the help of their brothers. In fact, “brother” is a word that has faded from all but the most devoted nationalists. But let me tell you how the absence of a mother’s brother affected my childhood and the lives of countless children today.  

I am a third generation uncle-less child. I had no uncles, my mother had no uncles, and my maternal grandmother had no uncles. If my great-grandmother had uncles, she never told my grandmother. We are a sorry line of uncle-less women. Though I want to blame my brotherless mother for my hasty conception, I can’t totally place the weight on her shoulders. Whose pattern was she to follow with no uncles in sight?    

Let me show you what an uncle-less childhood looks like. There was no handsome man to call me “Miss Thang” or “Pretty Girl” [side note: my devoted father called me “Princess,” “Sunshine,” and “Water Head” but this critique is about lack, not abundance]. Without this uncle figure, I looked in all the wrong places for these nicknames. Without a model for non-fatherly/ non-sinister love, I was unable to recognize the grown men predators who meant me harm. Uncles (especially single ones) show girl children the ropes of relationships in ways that fathers and mothers simply can’t. An uncle will take you to the side and show you the difference between a player and a square, a lady and a tramp. Because my mother had no brothers, I had to negotiate these false binaries all by myself.  

If more of us had real uncles, perhaps this uncle wouldn't be so appealing in times of war.

There were other milestones I missed because of my mother’s brotherlessness. No trusted man gave me my first sip of alcohol in the safety of my own backyard barbecue. I remember despondently listening to the stories of my friends who were introduced to such drinks by their beloved uncles. What did I do on the summer holidays of my adolescence? I blew bubbles! Let me tell you, blowing bubbles does not prepare you for freshman year in college. Because I grew up without an uncle, my first alcoholic drink came from an upperclassman who told me I was drinking “Pal Punch.” Had my mother had a brother, I would not have been mocked for yelling, “This don’t taste like Kool-Aid!”  

The totality of my depravity can’t be covered in anecdotes. If my uncle-longings were nickels, I’d have at least $907.35. But they’re not. They are my private pain, and I have decided to make this pain public in order to address the foolishness of my generation’s women. Feminism is the major culprit in today’s epidemic of uncle-less-ness. With all this talk of sisterhood, women are forgetting the importance of our brothers in raising children. Our ancestors said it takes a village to raise a child, and surely that village included uncles. Hell, uncles were critically important even when we reached these shores. According to Wikipedia, Uncle Tom was a Christlike figure who was martyred for his refusal to reveal the whereabouts of two escaped female slaves. If there were more active uncles to show us the way, don’t you think we would be able to cure this pandemic of snitching in our communities? Have you watched First 48 lately?  

This guy definitely had an uncle.

   

Women, my pain does not have to be shared by our future generations. Save our communities! Guard your uterus until you have established brotherly relationships with men who are devoted to helping you raise your children. You can not do it alone! You can not even do it with the help of the child’s biological father. If you have daughters, please keep trying until you have at least one son. Our future generations need uncles. Statistics show that crime rates are rising in areas that already have high rates of imprisonment. Don’t be fooled by the “socially conscious”—this has nothing to do with heavy policing and inhumane living conditions. No, these statistics show that when uncles go to jail, whole families fail! Don’t be selfish; wait  until your brothers return home to conceive. It’s the least you can do for our future generations. It’s the least you can do for the girl child in my broken heart, who blows bubbles and hopes someone will call her “Miss Thang.” May God bless and keep you, and send you a brother for your uncle-less child.  

P.S. The writer of this post is qualified to berate mothers because she is blessed to have three brothers who will play active parts in her daughter’s life. Because this is my family structure, it should also be yours. P.S.S. I am looking for 100 other bloggers to join this movement, which is not to be confused with the following: NCNC: No Condoms, No Cutty; NPNP: No Proposal, No Poontang; NVNV: No Vasectomy, No Vagina; NFCNFC: No Fundamentalist Christianity, No Family Circle, etc.