It Bears Repeating…

Posted by twilliams on Jan 4, 2013 in Random | 2 comments

Like you, I’ve spent the past two weeks flitting about from holiday party to holiday party, nibbling on rubbery crab cake hors d’orvoures, mainlining rum-soaked egg nog, and freezing in high-waisted sequin short-shorts and sheer tights while waiting for a cab (inside the taxi, I pick tinsel out of my hair and idly rummage through gift bags, hoping some generous PR girl thought to include chocolate). One party runs into the next, and after having the same conversations with eleven different people, the only thing that starts to stand out are the outfits. The sparkly little body-con numbers in candy-bright hues, the disco-era rompers pulled together with a festive gold belt. Silky tops, strapless satin cocktail confections. I’ve spent the past two weeks watching the chicest girls in the city dazzle in their holiday party best – and I couldn’t help but notice, yet again, that everyone was sleeveless. It’s really such a moment!

Suffice it to say, I felt super-on trend wearing Dove’s go sleeveless Soothing Chamomile Deodorant all holiday season (silky-smooth underarms in just five days, hello!). In Jamaica, go sleeveless allowed me to rock my eensiest bikini with ultra-confidence — I felt so fab knowing that I got 48 hours of protection, and smooth, even-toned skin, that I had to shout it from the mountaintops (yet again!). Cheers to all the fabulous sleeveless fashions this season, and to Dove, who made us all look hotter while wearing them! Check out www.facebook.com/Dove for more info

The Game Done Changed

Posted by twilliams on Oct 10, 2012 in Random | 16 comments

So one of my oldest and dearest friends (we met in 1949 as wee assistants at Elle – me, beauty; her, fashion) has a bright, hilarious, precocious like you wouldn’t believe  7-year old daughter.   Let’s call her…hmm…Topaz.  I could rhapsodize about Topaz’s slightly wild, pre-Raphaelite waves and early-Blair Waldorf style choices, but I hate to focus on looks when describing a little girl (as my mom always says when folks tell Bobina she’s gorgeous: “…yes, and she has a gorgeous MIND as well, don’t you, beautiful?”).  Topaz is also white.  Half Italian-American, half Sephardic Jew.  Not waspy-white, but no one would mistake her for ethnic.  And yet…

She is obsessed with blackness and always has been.  Since before she even understood what she was talking about (she barely does now!).  She thinks there’s nothing, nothing, more aspirational and glamorous than blackness.

[Key background info:  We live in Park Slope, Brooklyn, a ripe-for-SNL-sketch little utopia of privileged, mixed-race families in every combination.  Exhibit A: at Lina’s birthday party last year, Topaz was the only one that wasn’t light brown with curls as a result of Black/Ecuadorian or Indian/Japanese or Jamaican/Irish parentage.  Everyone’s an artist or a writer or something cool.  In my hood, if you’re a non-organic Republican, I fear for your safety.  Long story short, we live in an ultra liberal, post-racial, super-gay environment that doesn’t at all represent the rest of the country.]

Topaz is exclusively interested in black dolls.  When the New Orleans Creole American Girl doll came out last fall, Topaz’s mom already knew she was expected to be first in line at the Fifth Avenue storefront, day of.  Her best friend at school is white/Middle Eastern, but Topaz insists she’s black.  She was recently asked to draw a self-portrait at school, and sketched a girl resembling Rudy Huxtable.  One time, Topaz’s mom was brushing one of her black dolls’ hair, and Topaz freaked.  “You’re doing it wrong!  Ask Tia Tia, you can’t brush black hair the same as white hair!  Black hair is special.”

Wait…whaaat?  I mean, when we were growing up, anyone of color in America was secretly (or not so secretly) coveting whiteness.  It’s just our country’s history.  I mean, we all remember Whoopi’s ’80s stand-up sketch of the little black girl rocking the sheet on her head, aching to be white with long, blonde hair.  We’ve all read The Bluest Eye.  Pretty is white.  Smart is white.  Power is white.  Black is ghetto, ugly, animalistic, base and unsexy.  The fact that this privileged little girl — who, bee tee dub, goes to an ultra-white prep school — feels the opposite is kinda dope.  It baffled me, until I really thought about it.

Topaz’s president is black.  Topaz’s first lady is a fucking fashion monster.  Oprah owns us all.  Topaz’s mom’s two best friends are glamorous black women (*hair toss*).  I repeat, TOPAZ’S PRESIDENT IS BLACK.   The most important family in this country is black, mothafuckas.  Growing up knowing that, seeing first-hand what we’re capable of – of course she thinks we’re the shit.  This is all she knows.  I’m loving experiencing the beginnings of this cultural turnaround.  Again, I realize that we live in a rarefied place – but it’s a start.  This little white girl thinks black is all things classy and powerful!  Here’s hoping we start believing this, too.

And here’s hoping Topaz never stumbles upon Worldstar Hip Hop or Basketball Wives.

Eww. I Really Dislike Kimye.

Posted by twilliams on Sep 24, 2012 in Random | 58 comments

Up until recently, I’ve had no patience for Kimmy hate.  Wayminute…I’m not saying I’m on her #team or anything, just saying that hating on her is more indicative of one’s own issues than hers.  Yeah, she’s boring and has negligible intelligence and is lying, just lying, about her ass and the wedding thing was fucking Satanic…but honestly?  If you had an evil genius Doberman-ager mom who promised to turn your supernaturally stunning looks and embarrassingly slackjawed sex tape into a bazillion dollar business – would you say no?

Madame, you’re lying.  You know you’d be all over it.  So don’t judge.

And yet here I come.  Judging.  I don’t know, yesterday I was lazily scrolling through my Twitter feed and noticed this:

@KimKardashian Rain rain go away.

A very small, benign statement that sent me careening over the edge.  Look, I know I’ve tweeted some dumb shit.  But I don’t think I – or any of the patently amazing women I know – would ever glance at a cloudy, grey sky and even think “rain rain go away,” let alone take it to Twitter.  Kim!  You big dummy!  This is the great wit that’s mesmerized the most lauded creative genius of our time?  When black women were furious about her boning all those black athletes, I couldn’t have cared less.  What sucks is that she bagged the genius.

 

 

Then I proceeded to get annoyed at her for all kinds of things she can’t even help (I can’t pay my mortgage?  Yo fuck Kim Kardashian!!).  But seriously, beyond the intelligence inequity, I hate the look of Kimye.  To a generation of young black girls, they reinforce the idea that they never have a chance with the A+ black man — because all he wants is an ethnically ambiguous blow up doll (I won’t even get into a bar conversation I overhead, where a group of black finance douches listed their girlfriend requirements – the top of which was that the girl be mixed with something “exotic.”  Plain old mulatto isn’t even poppin’ anymore!  And a “regular” black chick?  Invisible…no matter how beautiful, intelligent or charming).  Kanye doesn’t want a dazzling black woman, a girl that looks like his beloved mom – and this is not helping the self esteem of the teen girls doing unsavory things to afford slapping the world’s worst weave in their heads, or inflating their asses to kartoonish proportions.  And really, Yeezy?  You’re a writer, a lyricist, a poet!  RAIN RAIN GO AWAY?

I will not address ClosetMakeoverGate.  We’d be here all day.

Here’s hoping twelve-year old black girls skip over this Kimye debacle and fetishize Michelle and Barack, instead.  Or Jay and Bey (I’d say Denzel and Paulette, but they’re so Nineties — and besides he cheated on her so extravagantly that they no longer count).  Both A+ black men who fell for their equals, their exact counterparts.  That’s hot.  Kim and Kanye are financial equals (and there’s something to be said for that), but that’s it.  Eww.  I just hate them.

The Cat in the Tat, or Let’s Be Honest

Posted by twilliams on Jul 6, 2012 in Random | 48 comments

I like tattoos. I know, it’s seems weird, since I’m like the bougiest, prissiest person anyone’s ever met. But I do, I like them on boys (my friend Kibwe said, in reference to the Tyga/Big Seans of the world, that skinny and tatted-up is the new “black and ugly as ever”). And I like them on me. The pain, the art, the tackiness — it’s good girl naughty. Before last week, I had three  — one on my foot, a teeny one on my back, and an unfortunate-at-the-time-but-now-sorta-amusing one on my hip. I’d always wanted to get a fourth, but I was concerned. When one has four tattoos, does one officially become a tattooed lady?

Three days ago, I became a tattooed lady. Fuck it, I thought to myself. You need something.

 

 

My life has been feeling fuzzy lately. Who I used to be and who I am now have not been aligning properly. I needed something to bring it all into focus, a “you’re hysterical, woman!” slap in the face. So I gave myself a little reminder. WRITE. Write. This is what you do, this is who you are. Stop whining, nobody cares. Write something. It’ll save you.

When you’re Type-A anal, first born overachiever — when you’re a successful black woman (never forget that one, it comes with extra agita…mustn’t fall, can’t, everyone’s watching) — and things don’t end up the way you’d planned, it’s shattering. By 30, I’d done everything. I had a fancy magazine career, a dream home, a husband, and four books published. Six years later, I’m jobless, selling the money pit apartment, divorced. In and out of the hospital. A broke single mother who hopes you like her bob. Really? I know, I know…the economy. Everyone’s suffering, why should I think I’m immune? And then you have that horrible, hyper-American thought…well, fuck everybody else. I don’t know them. I know me. And this wasn’t supposed to be my story, dammit!

I know how obnoxious and entitled I sound. I also know that when things go wrong, you quickly find out the kind of person you really are. As Rose Nyland once noted during an overwrought breakdown of Blanche’s, “Boy, when the mask falls it really makes a thud!” I’m sick of walking around in a disconnected haze, eating nothing, dry-swallowing pain pills and overdosing on Ancient Aliens marathons. And pretending to be la-di-da fine. No amount of concealer can erase self-hate.

So it’s time to remember myself. Feeling lost? Write a book. Write it out, bitch. WRITE.

Washboard Abs of Pleasure, or Online Dating is Humiliating

Posted by twilliams on Apr 26, 2012 in Beauty, Random | 34 comments

In an effort to get over my Love in a Hopeless Place, I tried online dating for a minute. It was disappointing. Actually, it was…disorienting. Successful online daters, I have questions. First of all, let’s address this “successful online dater” thing. Everyone knows someone who’s found love on these sites, but it’s always like the cousin of a coworker of a girl in your spin class. Urban legend much? And not to get racial, but most of the women I know that it’s worked for are white (please god, someone leave a comment and prove me wrong!). Which must be because there are scores of white men dating online — good looking, moneyed, strong-shouldered. Most of the men that are matched up to my profile are white, which I’m a hundred percent down with. But it begs the question…where are the quality black men?

The ones I’ve run across are so embarrassing I’m losing chic points even discussing them here. I’m talking about profile pics featuring shirtlessness. Basketballs. Poses involving leaning up against bad cars or holding wine bottles (or both). My friend Charlotte summed it up perfectly: “It’s a lot of Al B. Sure types promising magic nights, Godiva chocolate and washboard abs of pleasure.”

But then I came across a winner. Flawless walnutty brown skin and almond shaped eyes. A radiologist from Ghana via London. Yale. Kayaking! Pics of him tuxedo-ing at a benefit with expensive-looking friends! Funny, sexy emails. Yeesss! I met him at a coffee shop in Tribeca (always coffee first, drinks are too much pressure). First problem? No straight man needs to be anywhere at one in the afternoon wearing a fringed, lollipop red day scarf. And a little fedora. He looked like Ne-Yo. The glare from his buffed nails was blinding. Somebody get Dr. Dandy outta here. And yet, I tried to make the most out of it — no reason to waste this hairdo:

We chatted a little — actually he chatted, asking me nada about myself — and he was obnoxious on a level I’ve rarely experienced. I had to share this little snippet.

Me, bored: So how long have you been on blankety blank site?

Dr. Dandy: Awhile, but I have to admit something.

Me: (you’re gay) What?

Dr. Dandy: You’re the first brown woman I’ve asked out in years.

Me: How odd. Why?

Dr. Dandy: I have in profile that I really only want to date girls outside my race.

[Note: I barely read his profile. I saw "Yale" and "radiologist," and jumped. I'm not proud of this.]

Me: Sooo…what do you think I am?

Dr. Dandy: I figured you were mixed, so I thought I’d give you a chance (huge belly laugh).

Me: Nope, regular black girl. From DC, no less. Black black black. My middle name is Aisha.

Dr. Dandy: I guess my radar is off, hardyhardyhar (another guffaw)!

I’m totally grossed out, swishing a straw around in my Orangina and formulating an exit line.

Dr. Dandy: How old are you, may I ask?

Me, adding on four years to bother him: Forty. You?

Dr. Dandy: Forty? Hrmph. I’m thirty-one.

Me: Oh, you’re a baby.

Wait for it…

Dr. Dandy: Don’t call me a baby. I’m a grown ass man. Don’t ever call me a baby.

What kind of man speaks in a vaguely threatening tone to a woman he’s just met…and in reference to such an innocuous comment? I didn’t say what I wanted to say, which was “Your grasp on your manhood is so tenuous that it all falls apart when a complete stranger calls you a baby? Your daddy beat you at one-on-one a couple times too many?” Instead, I stared at him for a second, blank-faced, and then said, “You really need a nap.” And bounced.

Should we even discuss the “I don’t date girls outside my race” thing?

Officially taking an online dating break until further notice. These men out here are batshit!

 

 

Nail Art: Haute or Hood?

Posted by twilliams on Apr 12, 2012 in Beauty, Random | 6 comments

New York magazine’s blog The Cut posed a very interesting question today: this nail art trend, is it just another example of “white women are doing it now so it’s cool?” Around the way, black and Latina girls have been sporting intricate, be-rhinestoned designs on their digits for ages, which has always been dismissed as hood or tacky. Suddenly, tricked-out mani’s are showing up on runways, red carpets, and strolling out of 5th avenue nail salons — and it’s glamorous! It’s kinda like when Gwyneth and Britney started wearing “extensions” in the late Nineties, to much fanfare; meanwhile black women had been wearing “weaves” for over a decade (and certainly no one was calling it chic).

SYB Babes, I’d love to hear your thoughts…