Tell Them They Are Special: What are We Teaching Our Young Queens?

Black womanhood begins as black girlhood, and the seeds we plant in our young queens are the messages that carry them into adulthood. How adulthood turns out has a lot to do with what we’re exposed to in childhood and that’s a screaming fact when it comes to learning to love yourself. To put it simply, if we want to continue this celebration of the beauty of black womanhood - we have to teach the young ones to love themselves and love their sisters, and continue with work that was started by the ones that came before us.

Our elders had to fight harder to be seen and speak a lot louder to be heard but they still reminded us that we matter. They reminded us that we must aspire to appreciate the beauty we see in the mirror - hair, lips and everything! We had that message passed down and now it’s our duty to teach the beautiful young ladies following our lead the same precious lessons about what it means to be a black woman today.

I’ve seen black women ashamed of their skin, aspiring to be lighter or a completely different race. This didn’t happen accidentally. It tells me that the message was poisoned or wasn’t passed down to her all all.

Children are incredibly perceptive and they tend to mimic and internalize before they understand. If they are fed messages of racial self-hate - how can we expect them to become people who love their race? If we teach them that other black girls are competitors and enemies, how does the sisterhood get stronger? It is our duty to actively work on creating an environment where collective #blackgirlmagic can take root and bloom.

One of our followers (s/o @DalieBoo) sent us this message “I think that video about lies we've been told should be the topic of a forum in high schools and colleges, geared towards our beautiful, young Black females.”

Her words express her hope for our young black queens. They need to be taught to shut out the lies they hear and they need to be told that they are special, important and deserving of love. They need to constantly be reminded that they are not second class to any other race, and we need to create films, music, magazines that show this and support brands that preach this message.

The tale of the unloved black girl is as common as it is heartbreaking and it does toxic damage to the self-esteem of young girls with so much potential, and power to shape our tomorrow.

It isn’t just about what we say, we need to wear capes for these girls and show them how capable they are of soaring to reach their dreams without denying their blackness or being ashamed of it. The seeds of who we become are planted in youth and now is the time to put black girls in the position to learn from our successes and our mistakes. Our mission can only be deemed successful once we are able to inspire generations to come, and change the outcome for all black queens.

Taking Back Our Mirrors: How Beauty Ideals Become the Lies That Obscure Our Beauty

Mirrors don’t work the way they’re meant to. We gaze into them to see ourselves, but we don’t see true reflections of the beauty we possess. They become sites to self-examine, point out flaws and what we don’t like. The wrinkles, bulges and marks become what we want to correct - the things that overshadow all the good we should be seeing, all the parts that collectively tell our unique stories.

We don’t go looking in the mirror with these things in mind but the language that surrounds us has conditioned us to see the bad before we even come close to seeing the good that’s so evident. Some magazines and brands use their powerful platforms to make us feel as if we’re lacking in some way. Try as a we might, they keep moving the line, as soon as we brush past a milestone an even bigger one appears up ahead.

“Now that you’ve lost some weight, do you have a thigh gap?” “You look great but we can make you look even better.” These seemingly friendly messages push the bar for perfection further and higher, so much that we risk injury to jump at them.

It’s not problematic to create beauty products that make women feel better about themselves but it is problematic to paint products as what we need to rely on to love ourselves. We have to love ourselves before we put on make-up, that way its application serves the right purpose - enhancement and not total removal of natural beauty. I’m not one for make-up shaming, I just want us to care about being beat on the inside as much as the outside.

When I think of our reflections, and the flaws we so expertly point out in them, I come to conclusion that we don’t own them when we see so much ugliness in ourselves. Our reflections and our mirrors are coated by the lies we’ve been told about what makes a woman beautiful. These lies play in our heads as we nervously approach our mirrors and they play back the long list of things that make us feel unworthy of words like “beautiful” and “sexy”.

The lies that cloud our mirrors are what contribute to the evils of skin bleaching as some women suffer such debilitating self-hate that they decide they can’t inhabit their stunning #melaninonfleek skin. We see our hair in the mirror and we call it ugly because we’ve internalized the lies told about what it is. Our noses - too wide, our lips too big and so it goes. If we looked at ourselves without the stereotypes, the prejudice and the judgment our mirrors would be uncoated and what we’d see and what we’d interpret from it would be of our own making.

To take back our reflections we have to take our mirrors back from those that lie about us. We need to silence their words and let the beauty that looks back at us define what’s truthful about our beauty. With brands like Dove working on helping women see their own beauty we are starting to make strides. Stars like Alicia Keys who have struggled with accepting their own beauty are adding necessary voices to this issue by being truthful about what they’ve faced and by showing us that what they see in the mirror are their truths, gorgeous truths.

One face at a time and one woman at a time we’re going to dust and scrub off all the lies that stubbornly cling to our mirrors. And that’s a charge that “No Lies Told Then” is here for, because these are truths that are worth telling, selling and advertising. Let’s #takebackourmirrors and revel in our magic.

The Under Appreciated Value of Inter-Generational Conversation

If there’s one thing that isn’t stated enough these days, it’s the importance of listening to our elders and learning from their experiences. Maybe technology has made us feel like all knowledge is accessible with a device connected to the Internet, or maybe we don’t value maturity. Either way, deep and meaningful conversations between generations don’t hold the weight they should, and many opportunities are missed.

The oral tradition cultures of centuries ago gave the young a front row seat to the wisdom of parents and grandparents. We might not sit around fires and have story time with grandma but we still have people available to us who provide perspective and empowering words.

Who do you think you’d be today, if someone older hadn’t dispensed advice, guidance and a warning or two? How many bad decisions were you saved from making because you listened to someone who clearly knew a lot more than you? There is so much value in learning from each other, and even more when we allow our communication to cross the generational lines.

It isn’t one sided either; when intergenerational conversations are encouraged, both sides of the age divide benefit. Young people can teach older generations about a lot more than how to use Instagram. Through our perspectives they can see life through different eyes, and open up to new views on things like careers, gender roles and finding happiness. Through their perspectives we can learn about black womanhood and black manhood, learn how to make better decisions and how to be great examples for the generations that follow.

In whatever form they come, intergenerational conversations are a vast and often underappreciated resource that impact who we become. It is a part of our story that is incredibly important. The four main characters in No Lies Told Then, Sandra, George, Bridget and Johnathan are a perfect representation of important conversations between the generations.

George relied on Johnathan as a confidant, Sandra also learned a great deal from Johnathan’s perspectives and although their relationship wasn’t perfect, Sandra was also enriched through her conversations with her mother. For Sandra, her learning started as a young girl growing up in Harlem, but we get to see the ultimate benefit of everything she learned in the woman she becomes. Though the journey of her life was often bumpy, terrifying and difficult – having the wise words of the people around her aided her navigation. She also provided powerful life lessons to her own mother and it teaches us that no one is ever too old to learn.

Having older and wiser people in our corner makes a difference; if we’re lucky enough to have them we should lean on these relationships. Find a mentor, spend time with your parents, aunts and uncles, soak up the nuggets of their life experience and teach them a few things too! Appreciating these connections means that we too will be appreciated when we slide to the higher side of the great age divide!

Nayla Kidd & The All Too Familiar Need to Escape a Life of Unreasonable Expectations

She left a life that to many was the epitome of success and potential. She changed phone numbers, deleted her Facebook page, switched bank accounts and moved. Is this a woman on the run or an undercover FBI agent? No, it’s an Ivy League student, Nayla Kidd (19) who decided to make a drastic decision to change a life that she simply couldn’t stand to be in anymore.

“I needed to break from my old life of high pressure and unreasonable expectations.” It’s a feeling that’s a lot more common than we’d want to admit, and even though completely switching lives is quite extreme, it’s easy to understand how it can happen and identify with all the pressures that cause it. Society has built life on specific things beauty, perfection, wealth, work and relationships that are framed as common, but aren’t exactly a world view that everyone shares. Being different and wanting different things is seen as a betrayal of that image but the problem is that same image is making so many of us miserable.

For someone whose life appeared so together, Nayla was struggling and she just couldn’t see a way out that didn’t require a huge shift. It’s a shift that’s extreme and obviously outlandish so it makes her seem like an anomaly. While her actions are rare - the feelings and circumstances that it informed them aren’t. It does happen, and it is happening.

There are probably hundreds of thousands of people who find themselves under incredible pressure. They have the world at their feet, plenty going for them - success, beauty, fame, popularity and the trappings of a good life but secretly they drown everyday in pressure, self-doubt and a pain that many don’t see and wouldn’t believe. It’s even worse when you have what everyone sees as the perfect life.

In our work towards creating a fulfilling life, the roads we take can bring us closer to the opposite of who we want to be. Some actions are taken to fit in, and to be what everyone else expects us to be, and the problems begin when these actions make us feel alien to ourselves. At that point what’s the way forward, do we fight or flee? Do we accept that life as is it or do we find ways to fight against it and move against the trap of what everyone else considers inevitable?

I’d imagine that this is what Nayla thought about as she woke up morning after morning, inching closer to her greatest fears. A life of high pressure comes in many forms – from intelligence, to physical perfection and wealth, it’s easy to become trapped in the image of success that’s expected instead of working our way towards our own interpretation of it.

It’s a struggle we see Sandra fight in “No Lies Told Then” and hopefully it’s one we see her win by finding and writing her own truth. The best outcome is to never have to run away or be assumed missing by our loved ones. The best way it can turn out is to discover where you need to be without having to change phone numbers and bank accounts.

Are You Living on Unreasonable Expectations: 3 Questions to Ask Yourself

1. Happy people don’t have to ask if they are happy, it’s just a state of mind that exists freely. If you find yourself feeling like happiness is far away that’s not a good sign.

2. Does it feel like it takes a huge amount of effort to get you through one day? It’s often the constant feeling of carrying a load that’s too heavy or failing to find joy or satisfaction in anything. This suggests that you’re not living a life that represents your own personal truth.

3. Do you feel like your life is more about meeting milestones that are seen as successful by other people? True success comes from fulfilling a path that’s defined by your own ideas, perspectives and the things that bring you joy.

The Black Women's Voice Isn't Just Marketable, It's Necessary

Black women’s voices are on a loudspeaker right now; after the many lifetimes of powerful black heroines who fought, spoke, protested and were suppressed, ignored, silenced or worse. I’ve seen us abused, disregarded, victimized and often shown to be at the bottom of the food chain when it comes to the respect, understanding and attention of the world - especially in the moments we needed them the most. I don’t what caused the shift, but 2015 truly felt like a watershed moment where we loved ourselves and each other, and we painted it on our shirts and expressed it boldly online, in the streets and on award show stages. It felt so good for the self love of black women to be something that dominated the year, so much so that it seems to have become fashionable.

With the words “the black woman’s voice is very marketable right now” a character in “Being Mary Jane” echoed the idea that while we were speaking words of adoration, support and sisterhood to ourselves, brands took notice and started listening in on that frequency. Some brands did it well, like Apple Music with that epic commercial featuring Kerry Washington, Taraji P. Henson and Mary J. Blige. Other brands attempted tactics that either tried to get a rise out of us for clicks or discredit an empowering movement, or disqualify its necessity as Elle magazine so dismally did recently.

Our #blackgirlmagic isn’t just about our bodies, our hair and our looks - it’s also about our power, more specifically, our economic power and the billions in dollars we spend on products. It’s a power many brands desperately want in on. My enquiry doesn’t lie with their products, it lies with their sincerity. Are we being courted for the right reasons? Are institutions and mega-companies playing to our tune to empower us, give us a voice and help make bold moves towards integration or are we being used as a means to a profitable end?

When people say that the black woman’s voice is highly marketable, this attracts the attention of two groups of people; those who really want black women to win and will ensure that our victories aren’t hollow, superficial and temporary. On the other side we could fall into the trap of anyone who realizes that there’s money to be made in this movement, and they’ll fake their way into our hearts and wallets. The ability to distinguish between the two is one of the most powerful weapons we have in our arsenal - because the last thing we need is for our empowerment to be treated like it’s the latest trend which will get shoved to the back burner when something newer and shinier pops up.

I don’t want our collective voice to just be marketable, or the new fashionable thing to be down with. I want it to be necessary and permanently a priority for us and for any brand trying to win us over. Close attention must be paid to who claims to have our backs - their interest in us must be heartfelt, not exploitative and we deserve to be seen as valuable beyond how much money can be made off our cultural value.