From StyleBlazer

Before The Face season finale aired this week, she was known as  “Sally,” not to give away the big reveal. Well, she’s Sally no more. Gorgeous, outspoken and original, Devyn Abdullah is fashion’s newest face! The Bronx born beauty has landed a contract with Ulta Beauty, after years of hard work and hustle to both support her young daughter and achieve her dreams. Finally, it’s her moment! We met with Devyn and her supermodel coachKarolina Kurkova for a celebratory lunch at the Peninsula Hotel in NYC. She excitedly talked about the next chapter of her life, inspiring young girls, and finally set the record straight about not considering herself a black girl model, but one that every woman can see a bit of themselves in when they look in the mirror.

SB: I know recently you caught a lot of heat when you said you didn’t consider yourself a black model. Do you think that comment was taken out of context and do you want to clear it up?

Devyn: “I’ve been waiting for the moment to address this.  I can understand how someone can take it out of context, and how someone could misinterpret it. I definitely want to apologize because I didn’t want to offend anybody in any type of way.

Check out the rest of her response on StyleBlazer.com.

Source: Bravo

According to ABC News,

“Real Housewives of Atlanta newbie Porsha Stewart is the consummate housewife, or “black trophy wife” as she likes to call herself. For her husband of barely two years, Kordell Stewart, Porsha cooks, cleans and hosts charity events for Hosea Feed the Hungry and Homeless, a charity started by her grandfather civil rights activist Hosea Williams.

Being a trophy wife per se is not just about your outer looks. It’s about the man who has put you on the pedestal and him admiring you and thinking well enough of you to put you up there,” Porsha told ABC News Radio. “And I think it’s important for our little girls to know that they can be a princesses and they can have it all…So I feel proud to represent — and I use the word lightly — the black trophy wife.”

Of course, all of this was probably said prior to Kordell giving Porsha her walking (also known as divorce) papers…

Foreseeable conclusions aside, Porsha does raise an interesting point. While most women might see her extolling of the trophy life as some sort of setback for the women’s movement, there is no denying that in spite of all our advancements in a capitalist and patriarchal society, beauty still has a real currency. As such being a trophy wife can conceivable be seen as another viable option as any of the other sex-positive career choices women today have. I mean, after all, it is about selling a lifestyle. And while definition on views a trophy wife is a status symbol in reality a trophy wife knows how to trade off her beauty as capital for economic gains. Despite the less than respectable reputation the term receives, there is a lot of time, energy and money that goes into maintaining the image of a trophy wife. There are the work-outs, cosmetic surgery, having to endure daily attention from a glam squad and spending tons of money on the best and correct outfits.  Additionally a trophy wife also has to be the beacon of grace, virtue and submission; knowing when to fall back and keeping your opinions to yourself, smile pretty and let her man shine, which is basically all the time. She also is likely charged with keeping up appearances for the entire home front. That means making sure the estate is in order, clean and comfortable; making sure the house staff is doing their jobs; throwing the best soirees and maintaining the facade of respectability. In essence, a career as a trophy wife can afford a woman lots of positive and rewarding outcomes including financial security and access to other means of financial security – just in case your job as a trophy doesn’t work out.

Unfortunately it still appears to be a white woman’s only club. The long standing joke is that when black men get money, black women are nowhere to be found. Of course, there are many prominent black men who have been able to enjoy their success while married to a black woman. Chief among them is President Barack Obama. But generally when you see rich and powerful men like Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and Kanye West, it is not uncommon to see a woman of another race grace their arms. Sure, some marry for love however there are some men, who marry for status. And within this group is a sizable portion of black men, who abide by Eurocentric standards of beauty, which places whiteness at the top and blackness, which on women is viewed as unfeminine, at the bottom. Therefore by obtaining a white trophy partner, these men can feel themselves closer to endowing a status, which would enable him to acquire all the privileges that come with whiteness in American society.

It may seem like a terrible nuance to nitpick who gets to sit up on the pedestal and be subjected to the male gaze but it says something when white women can be valued just alone by their physical appearance and lineage whereas a black woman has to obtain education, have a good career and basically work like a damn mule in order to be considered a viable spouse. Some may actually prefer it this way especially considering that Porsha’s situation as a trophy didn’t work out for her. However all may not be lost: Luckily for her, she didn’t sign a pre-nuptial agreement. Maybe she is not that dumb after all.

Source:

From Hello Beautiful

I am in awe of the Black Woman. She is one of God’s greatest gifts. To truly appreciate her, you have to really know her. The barrage of attacks against the Black Woman has mounted to the point where I am offended. What is even more disappointing is that the most vigorous attacks are coming from the Black Man.

Read the rest of this post on HelloBeautiful.com.

Ya’ll know the word b***h has become the new n-word in some ways. Even though it doesn’t have nearly the same history, certain people can say the word in certain company and other’s cant,because as soon as someone gets a little too comfortable and let’s anything that rhymes with itch and starts with a b roll off their tongue when they don’t know you like that, it is on and poppin’! Think it’s not? Let this video show you.

Source: iStock

A dangerous thing happens to me when I leave New York: I let my guard down. On my commute to and from work, and virtually anywhere else I’m headed on foot or Subway, I refuse to walk out my front door without head phones on. It’s the only protection from the excess street harassment, homeless people begging for food, and entertainers jigging in train cars for cash. So, once I get outside city and state lines I tend to be a calmer, less-guarded person, knowing all those elements of fuckery aren’t present in overdrive. Until recently, that method never really failed me. Then this weekend  that mindset led to me chatting with an old white man on my flight to Cincinnati who was probably the sweetest  post-Klansman (assumed) I’ve ever met in my life.

Despite my more welcoming demeanor in other more friendly cities, I’m still not too keen on striking up conversations with random people, especially on a flight when the landing is your only way out. And I did have one line of defense on my flight which I had to pull out rather quickly, Drown by Junot Diaz.  I don’t remember what the older white man sitting next to me first said to make me grab for the book of short stories but I had an inkling he was a talker, and talk on that little one-hour commuter flight I did not want to do. Eventually though, my eyelids got heavy and I knew I wasn’t going to make it through another page so with one fell swoop I attempted to slide my book into the seat back in front of me and close my eyes fast enough to avoid signaling I was open for discussion. Something told me as soon as that book left my hands that man was going to strike up a convo, and when I failed at operation put the book down unnoticed that’s exactly what he did.

Initially, I actually started to feel bad and curse my introverted personality for not being more social. My seat partner had shared all sorts of tales with me from his days in the Air Force, and because we’re both from Ohio, he taught, yes literally sung, the O State versus Michigan chant to me 30,000 feet in the air. I was literally laughing at myself for getting got by a talker with no place to escape and simultaneously pleasantly surprised that the old man was pretty decent company. That was until he dropped the “c-word:” colored.

After telling me about working his way up from the manufacturing floor to head of a company he worked for for 40 years. My seatmate asked me what I did for a living. I said I was an editor for a black women’s website and for some reason a light bulb went off in his head that he should prove he has something in common with me. That’s when he proceeded with, “we had a colored girl that worked for us once. When she first started, one of the men on the floor pointed me out and said, ‘you see that man there? That’s a man you don’t ever want to piss off.’”

Haha?

I barely had time to digest the c-word or respond to old Jim Crow because the “damn I knew this was too good to be true” thought was drowning out most of my cognitive abilities. All I could manage was, “did he really say colored?” while also thinking, “he’s old enough to possibly get a pass, but young enough to know we’re not called that anymore.”

I let the verbal slip slide, figuring a flight was not the place I wanted to get into race dynamics with a man who told me he once maced a dog after threatening to put his size 10-and-a-half shoe up his owner’s butt so I continued listening to his tales of times passed and hoped for the best. Unfortunately that didn’t last long as he then proceeded to tell me about another fella he checked on the job, letting him know he didn’t appreciate him telling him how to do his job. Eventually he got around to telling me that same man was the first colored so-and-so and now they’re the best of buds and play golf every week. At this point I thought, “and his colored butt hasn’t told you yet that we’re called black now?! That man probably hates your white a**” Oh, I also was assured Mr. Antebellum had probably lynched one or two back in his heyday day, or at least lit the torches and cut the eye-holes in somebody’s bed sheets. He was too turnt up that early in the morning and too ignorant of all things black to not have had an issue with segregation at some point. I kid. Sort of.

At the end of the day, I wasn’t really up in arms about my passenger. I mean, at least he didn’t call me the n-word. And he didn’t seem to mind colored folks too much as he was tapping me on the shoulder and cracking jokes every minute a story from the good old days popped in his head. I just need some white folks to get it together and step into the 21^st century, at least when talking to said coloreds. We’re actually referred to as black now. You know this.

Have you ever had a “white person just called me an awkard name” moment?

Brande Victorian is the news and operations editor for madamenoire.com. Follow her on twitter @Be_Vic.

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Source: hellobeautiful.com

From hellobeautiful.com

When Bernadine Harris stood in front of her cheating husband’s meticulous closet with a piercing stare, in the notorious scene in “Waiting To Exhale,” women all around the world knew what time it was!

His suits were hung precisely on expensive hangers and his shoes–lined up like the boots of military men– shined like they had never been worn. “This motherf**er is psychotic!” declared Bernadine as she ripped a group of blazers and silk ties from the wall. She filled a Radio Flyer red wagon with his belongings and hauled it to the front yard, piled the designer threads into his BMW, doused it with lighter fluid then watched it burn. Oh how liberating that must have felt!

All women have had that moment…that point of no return–when all the drama, tears and bullsh**t you’ve endured in a relationship, comes to a puss filled pimple head and pops! After all the hurt you’ve been through, one thing is certain–you MUST make a dramatic exit!

Read more at hellobeautiful.com

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I doubt the black woman who flipped out on a London bus last week is the only woman of color to ever want to randomly go off on white people and “tell ‘em why you mad son”, but perhaps she should have kept this rant to herself, as it has landed her in a bit of legal trouble. In a YouTube video posted August 17, a black woman some think is drunk and others think may be a little mentally off, takes the opportunity to get everything she feels about white people off her chest while riding public transportation, and she didn’t hold her tongue at all. Here’s a bit of her rant transcribed:

“I’m so glad I’m born black and I’ll die black. I was born African and I’ll f***ing die African.”

“The only reason I was born in this country is because you f***ing people brought my people here.”

“My parents are f***ing African, born in Jamaica. And I’m f***ing African, born in England and I can’t stand you white people, I tell you.”

Elev8.com

Don’t marry a man unless you would be proud to have a son exactly like him. I read this phrase and thought it was important to remember. So often, women create a list of things they want in a man, be it long or short, and fail to include this very stipulation. Some say they want a man who is accomplished, good looking, religious, smart, but fail to assess character.

I’m in my late twenties and single. I don’t rush into relationships because I’m keen on what I want in a man, but still, I tire of a question that I’m sure many women in my position can relate to.  “Why aren’t you married yet?”

I’ve met many men from different walks of life, but I’ve been slow to label my relationships.  I’m interested much more in who a man is when the date is over and he returns to his corner of the world, than I am in his resume.  Who is he in those moments when no one is watching? Who is he when his character is tested? I’m interested more in what is driving him than his destination. Years ago, my older sister told me that women are given a power over their children’s lives that we sometimes forget to exercise. We get to choose the father for our children. We get to decide who will be a part of their life, who will influence them, who will essentially raise them. We have the option to choose, and considering the staggering divorce rate, the percentage of single mothers, incarcerated fathers, and number of cases in child support litigation nationwide,  it’s sad that so many don’t choose wisely.

No, I’m not saying that we, as women, should be seeking absolute perfection, but I am saying that we need to remember to place priority on the things that matter to us, because ultimately those things cannot be ignored.  Many women I have talked to want to get married. They’re eager to start the life they have planned for themselves with a husband, two and a half children, and a beautiful home. When it doesn’t happen fast enough, they fear they may end up alone and unhappy. The truth is, we can be married and more alone than we were as single women. In all of that planning, we focus on a new last name instead of a life. It is important to ask the right questions.

In the unfortunate chance that a marriage is broken, will he uphold his responsibility as a role model for his children, or is his willingness to be a father contingent on the success of the marriage? I want my son to grow up loving and respecting women.  I want him to value hard work, and be persistent in those things he desires. I want him to be confident and humble. I want him to love God. I want him to grow up to be a good husband and father, accountable for his family.

These traits are learned over time and so if I have all the power to decide who will be the one to teach him, I want to choose carefully. I’ve heard it said that children learn more by a parent’s actions than by their words. Just imagine the little boy on the stepstool pretending to shave like his father. Or drawing a picture for his grade school crush.  What better way for a father to teach his son than to be the man that he wants him to be. So if we settle for the husband who is not everything we cherish but will do just fine, we’re potentially setting ourselves up for disappointment in our children and, needless to say, a miserable life for ourselves, always wondering if we should have done better.

Herina Ayot is currently working on a novel based loosely on her own life, “The Content of Things Undone.”  She tweets @ReeExperience.

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blackgirlonghair.com

There are some things that college just doesn’t prepare you for. It can provide you with knowledge of your field of study. It can give you career training. It can prep you for what and what not to say during an interview, bu the one thing, however, that college fails to prepare many of us for is what we will encounter once we’re actually hired. The American Dream leads us to believe that hard work and dedication are all that you need to succeed in this country; however, they fail to disclose the little disclaimer that says, “Please Note: This dream is often only applicable to qualifying races.” College taught me many things, but one thing that they did not tell me prior to shaking my hand and giving me a diploma was that in many cases, as a black woman in corporate America, you have to work ten times as hard just to be considered as good as your counterparts.

I remember my first paid internship in the public relations industry like it was yesterday. I popped up on the scene with my eyes beaming, deep brown skin glowing, and my heart full of expectations. I had already made up my mind that I would work harder than I’d ever worked in my life. I was prepared to conquer the world! I learned swiftly that an intern’s position was the lowest of the lowest on the totem pole, but I was prepared to stick my chest out, lift my chin up, push my shoulders back and handle my business like a woman because I knew that I would reap a greater reward in the end. So no, I didn’t expect anyone to give my anything. I was prepared to earn it fair and square. But the public relations department that I interned for was so small that it didn’t long to realize that I was being treated differently. The differential treatment started out with small things. You know, those things that are so “small” you ask yourself, “Did that just happen or am I bugging out?” For instance, things like my entire department tip-toeing out while I went to the bathroom to attend a company sponsored event that I wasn’t even made aware of until after the fact. Yeah. “Small.”

“You’re just an intern, they aren’t required to tell you anything,” is what I told myself as I carried out the rest of the workday alone, trying not to get in my feelings about the shadiness that had just taken place. But once another intern was hired,  I could no longer blame the subtle shade on my title. This intern happened to be white, and once she was instantly invited to attend some of our more “upscale” events, while I wasn’t, I realized that my suspicions might be correct. My dark-er skin, wide-r hips, thick-er thighs, and full-er lips made me less qualified to attend these events because I would improperly represent the face of the brand, I suppose.

There was one instance where I had to go and make a purchase for some supplies using the department’s American Express Card. The way in which I was treated when I was given that card would’ve led a person to believe that I had a criminal background and was just given the code to Donald Trump’s bank account. “Don’t get happy and run off with that AMEX card in your purse,” the department coordinator called after me as I exited the office. My nostrils flared as I thought to myself “Girl bye, I’ve never had to steal anything in my life.”

Little comments such as that one went on as long as I was in this department. There was one occasion when the entire department went out to lunch and for some reason one of the other employees felt the need to tell me about her big, black, voluptuous nanny named Shelia whom she had as a child. I remember sitting there resisting the urge to twist up my face at her wondering, “Why in the hell is she telling me this? Does she want me to watch her kids or something?” Of course, there was no moral to her story–she just felt the need to share. I felt the urge to flip the table over and assume the stereotype of the angry black woman, but I didn’t. Instead I sat there silently.

By Dantel Proctor

Source: natreview.com

I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that hair is a very sensitive topic among the black female population. One topic that keeps arising in the realm of that is the natural hair versus relaxed hair debate. Why it’s “versus,” I still don’t really understand.

I remember in high school seeing black girls get ridiculed for not having a relaxer and have their locks labeled as “nappy.” Yet I also remember how in college no judgment was passed; people were celebrated for making their own decisions and not being afraid to stray from the pack. With time, we were all becoming more accepting of doing whatever worked for our hair. There were girls with relaxed and natural hair and you were saluted for whichever route you took. Then I entered the “real world,” coincidentally at the same time that the recent resurgence of the natural hair movement seemed to really take off, and that same high school judgment returned, but this time it was for the opposing reason. This time rulers were hitting the knuckles of the non-natural women, the ones who would dare to still relax their hair.

I am now one of the ridiculed ones, but I’m having a hard time understanding why. I have been relaxing my hair since I was eleven years old. My hair is soft and fairly curly and my roots do in fact grow up, not down. However, I prefer my hair straight. I like my hair to flow, lay across my shoulders, and I hate to say it, but I am a habitual hair twirler as well. I can’t help but get the “I need a touch-up” itch every couple of months to maintain the ultra-straight look that I’ve loved my entire life. This once was also the practice of all of my friends, but now everyone is natural, and that’s fine, but they’re pointing a finger at me because I have yet to “convert.” Do I have to?

A close friend of mine told me that all women that wear perms are only doing so because they are insecure and care too much about what men and society think of them. Another friend was a little less judgmental and said that those aren’t the reasons for all women, but it sure is for a lot of them. I have also been told that I am living an unhealthy lifestyle and that I am just assimilating to what “White America” wants. My question is, why does it have to be that I’m appeasing white folks if I like my hair straight? I am the type of person who doesn’t adhere to every new trend or fad and style-wise, I am basic and constant, knowing what I like and not straying too far from it. My mother had her reasons for giving me my first perm, but my continuing it for all these years has little to do with what others think and more to do with my own personal style choices and how I like my hair. Keyword, my hair.

To hear some of the harsh things said about women with relaxers is hurtful. I don’t insult people who have decided to be natural, that would be prejudice of me; so why the double standard? If people think getting a relaxer is strictly to please white people, then wouldn’t that mean going natural is being done strictly to please black people? I know that this isn’t true, and it’s a pretty far assumption, correct? But the assumption that this is the only reason a person would get a perm is pretty far reaching too, and warrants this kind of logic. I bet natural women would be offended by that accusation, so why shouldn’t we, those who choose to use relaxers, be offended too? Is it a crime to do your hair the way YOU want to versus what everyone else feels is right?

Honestly, I have given a lot of thought into going natural and I’m still undecided. I have not relaxed my hair in four months and I am experimenting to see if I can still maintain the hair style I love, without a perm and without doing the big chop, but I just don’t like a lot of the natural styles that I’ve seen. I’m entitled to my own opinion. I see the benefits of natural hair, but a relaxer has never actually done any damage to my hair, and by all accounts my hair is healthy–just ask my stylist. If my hair is still thriving, despite the fact that it is relaxed, then am I really doing wrong by not going natural?

I think what a person does with their hair is a personal choice and there should be no pressure surrounding it. It should not be assumed that because someone goes natural, it is because they just want to be in on the newest fad or that if they keep a perm, it is because they are insecure or want to blend in with everyone who isn’t black. I don’t like people pushing me to try and feel ashamed or as though I haven’t “evolved” because I still like my hair relaxed. It’s nice that there is sense of camaraderie and celebration in the black community in regards to wearing hair natural, but shouldn’t all black women share that, despite the way they choose to wear their hair?

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