NO Glossies for Black Girls--DOES IT MATTER?

Champion Double Dutch Girls Jumping High. Image: Seehowyouplay. 

A girlfriend and i were just talking about the dearth of black girls who speak to us and our experience on monthly newsstands.  Rising Media MegaPowerHouse Abi Ishola just posted a thought-provoking and on point episode on just this topic--No Lifestyle Mags for Black Girls 18-34.  Will def leave you wondering outloud...are online-only magazines enough to satiate an entire demographic? Unasked though but looming beyond the surface...is a black woman's magazine still pertinent? i mean, yes, i have a lot of hair/cab issues no one else will eva wrap their weave around (that's right! no one else even knows what that means:) but so much more of my voice resonates in the pages of The New Yorker/Vogue than Ebony.  Okey, okey unfair example and yes, i love my Ebony/Essence heritage, but i think there are some really tough questions we need to ask ourselves bluntly and openly if answering any of them really matters to us.  

Wanted! Mario Epanya's Africa Vogue Dream.

Just how many savvy, informed, educated and fashionably fly young black women identify first with color over class? If you're gobbling up ARISE Magazine as eagerly as i--can you honestly say the hottitude there is about cool covers of black folk or about a certain class' lifestyle? Or is it neither and simply that ARISE captures an intellectually elegant but complex truth--that we're as much defined by our black heritage as we are a plethora and infinite series of other identities? 

Reminds me of an exchange with another friend (white) a while ago.  She said she hides her The New Yorker cover on the subway b/c it's such an elite/ #thestuffwhitepeoplelike read. Really? So high esoteric ideas+intellectualism are beyond people in Kibera/Harlem because they are lower income? See the parallel? It's hard bouncing back from any one-dimensional definition of identity.  It's like the insult women's magazines throw at us constantly--concluding that because we're concerned with fashion we couldn't possibly have much room for earnest intellectualism alongside monthly intakes of our high fashion shoegasm. Thank You, Marie Clare/Vogue for knowing and doing better:) And no serious judgement everyone else, you're just mirroring the society we live in, missing an opportunity to shape what+who we could become. Not saying i got or know the answers here, and not saying i'm not stirring the pot, but the thing must be said for exactly what it is, 

Does It Matter That There's No For Black Girls Only Glossies? 

LIFE IS FOR LIVING

Brendan, we're sining you higher and higher. Image: Rodrigo Araya Plaza, Chile 2007.

Something important happened today. I found out a friend passed away over the weekend. Needless to say, am filled with sadness/rage/disquiet and shock all at the same time. I remind you what you already know, LIFE IS FOR LIVING, Today, right now this moment and this very second. Brendan was 24.

Nerdalicious Is So HOT It's HOT

Yes, I wear glasses. Not everyday, but when the need presents itself, i am well armed and know how to take advantage of the opportunity. A friend once asked me if they are vanity specs--hell!no. i keep a blog noting what i'm obsessing about daily--do i seem like a woman tinged by vanity? LoL. Today though, i ran into a gorgeous woman who swore she was 50, but looked 36. No makeup, no fuss just a fresh face that popped. Her secret? Live Outdoors. Plus, glasses that bring out the best of your features. I immediately zoned into her so perfectly-fitted Ralph Lauren tortoise frames...suddenly seeing a tortoise future for me.

Farm Fashion: LOVE Ladysmith Black Mambazo's Loud Love of Art, More Than Music & So Profound
Image: Ben Williams, BookPhotoSA, March 2008.

Speaking of, heard a great NPR interview of Ladysmith Black Mambazo tonight. LOVE. While you're at it, hear the group's leader Baba Joseph Shabalala tell his story in his own words--it's beautiful.  Their new album, Songs From A Zulu Farm, is charmed with nostalgic childhood songs that will transplant you to forbidden afternoons, swimming in pools with friends when you shouldn't have been, stealing another hour outdoors sheepishly. There's a funny Old McDonald Had A Farm cover in Zulu that should be required listening for all little girls+boys. The absolute sweetest song, Ntulube--Away, You River Snakes--is about singing frogs and snakes out of a pool and wooing tortoises in. LOVE.

Def. Guapa: Extremely Beautiful & Courageous

The Beautiful Ones: Egyptian Young Lionesses Captured by Seyr-u-Zafer

Still, today my heart pounds fast at the flash of a certain image, at the suggestion of a fist in the air, a sixteen year old hoisting stones in youthful revolution against a machine. The ongoing revolt sweeping North Africa harps back to a centuries old call to battle by young lions, the fierce ones, the most courageous and beautiful.  Edwidge Danticat's words in Create Dangerously come to me,  "Someone who (is) guapa (is) extremely beautiful and courageous--courageously beautiful."  Of course, I think too of the radiant, the beautiful life force that was Malcolm X, eulogized so eloquently by Ossie Davis (another guapo) "Our Manhood. Our Living, Black Manhood." Just like me to see Malcolm X and Ossie Davis and Haiti and Edwidge Danticat's soulful lovesong, Create Dangerously and  Soweto June 16, 1976 in the burst of flames enveloping Egypt/Tunisia/Yemen today. and I have so little sophistication on the issues embroiling North Africa right now, but I do know what stirs me and forces a primal surge to want to pray, to offer my words, to want to add my voice to the rising tide singing a chorus.

The Ones We Have Been Waiting For--Today's Soweto School Girls. Image: Liquidpremium, 2008.

Again, Danticat (no guessing how fiercely I recommend this book), "One of the many ways a sculptor of ancient Egypt was described was as "on who keeps things alive". Before pictures were drawn and amulets were carved for ancient Egyptians tombs, wealthy men and women had their slaves buried with them to keep them company in the next life. The artists who came up with these other types of memorial art...may also have wanted to save lives...As the ancient Egyptian sculptors may have suspected, and as (Haitian martyrs) Marcel Numa and Louis Drouin surely must have believed, we have no other choice"

Catch A Fire: KoKOFIFI SHOP SneakPeek

Sneak Peak: KoKOFIFI Closet+ Random Guy Who Had To Get In On It. Image: The Irreplaceable Annie Escobar

Ever been so completely taken, so happily engrossed, so enveloped, so enraptured, so captivated and utterly bewitched by something(/someone?) that even eating seems a strange distraction? i've gotten got and i so, so, so don't want a cure for this disease. smitten by KoKOFIFI. Catch the fire! 

Winter Wonderland

The White Witch of Narnia. Image: Karl Turley.

We woke up behind a magic wardrobe today, replete with talking snowmen who led us to little snow men lining the white carpet of Madison Square Park.  Alaskan huskies leapt for their wagging tails, beckoning for more turkish delights, which I'd secretly sewn into the hem of my fur-trim coat.

Of course, the city awakened in the light and spell cast by the grande white witch, who is beautiful to behold and queen of the wonderland. It was magic, today. Really magic. A moment stolen from a perfect childhood, holed up all day with The Chronicles of Narnia and other C.S. Lewis delights. A reminder of the impossibility of life, bursting with beauty and winters of wonder. 


If you have not been outside in the snow yet, There's an entire secret garden awaiting you.  Why are you still reading this?

Night White Winter Blossoms. Image: Misahiro Miyasaka. 

Song of Myself of Girl Crushes & Leggings of Nude

Beyonce Whips Out The Stud Leggings for House of Dereon

18th Century Native American Leggings, Reproduced by Ubercool History

Buff Company Zender Dale Arts in Lake Superior, Michigan. LOVE.

Like most women, I think about what I'll wear a lot. It's not just the big Aha! Cinderella dresses, it's an everyday conversation.  Do i want to look domineering or playful or both? Does this dress spell out easy-going+approachable? Or am i not relaxed enough with this crow-like bow crowning my head? Does it scream too much i worked at this perfect i so don't care look for 4hrs before hitting the bathroom upon arrival and re-arranging it for another hour and not enough wow girl, could you style me too?

And because of this ongoing internal exchange, I live making mental notes on bold beautiful looks that work despite trend dictates and also, noting women (and men) who truly understand the art and thread of a strong but subtle sartorial statement. Growing up, this was really my mother and her gaggle of girlfriends. I remember one of her most fashion-forward friends coming over in nude leggings before fashion insiders discovered even the word legging. I was so engrossed in my nude legging girl-crush, I fumbled through lunch staring at her legs. Everyone must have been mortified, but i was none the wiser, completely infatuated with this rare bird of style. So then, here, a song of myself--"And nothing, not god, is greater to one than one's self is/ I hear and behold god in every object/ yet understand god not in the least/Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself/Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)", Ah! Whitman:)  For such women, like my childhood girl crush, and their romantic epitome of style, i sing a song of myself.

Owning It. LOVE the 21st Century Remake Of A Classic. Native American

Legging/Boots Revisited At The National PoW-WoW. Image: Smithsonian

Nice! Fun Randoms: Leggings

Native Americans wore buckskin leggings to protect bare legs and stay warm. The leggings were made from soft animal skin or cloth and often sported crazy cool beadwork/ painting/show'em your stuff designs. Men tied them in place with garters, women rocked leggings too, but skipped the garters. Cowboys adopted this look on the range.

American soldiers were styling in leggings from the Revolutionary War, through War War II! Seriously, leggings protected you from dirt/mud/ anything that could undermine your hot ankle. Militaries dropped this look when combat boots became an irreversible+
irresistible trend with troops, in like, the 1960s!

Celts been rocking this look since the Roman Empire, when trews were in vogue, with separate pieces for each leg. Matter of fact, Romans nicknamed our Highland Celtic bros "long trousered philosophers." Bet you ain't knowed that. Yup! You been schooled.
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