My love is a beast, an epiphany, a whisper, a roar; if you can’t rumble, don’t attempt to make love with me.

--Stacyann Chin 

Style Crush

Girl with Curves

There is a Brazilian artist, Anjelica Dass,

who is trying to photodocument every skin color in the entire world. She's naming them according to something called the Pantone color scale, which gives every hue a numerical code, and posting the pictures to this tumblr. It's hard for me to figure out which number I am (especially because the numbering system doesn't really make obvious sense to me), but regardless, I think this project is cool. Evidently some critics are asking what the point is, but I think it's simply--the diversity of the human form, even in one little aspect like this, is so beautiful that it should be art. Documentation need not be about quantification and separation--documentation can simply be recognition.  

I Skyped with my mother for over an hour today

after talking on the phone with her for almost an hour and then talking on the phone with her again for about half an hour afterwards. The purpose of our video chat was so that I could see her newly shaved head, so as to be able to weigh in on the topic of whether she should wear her bald head to work when school starts again in September or hide under hot ass wigs for the next two years or so until her hair grows back to a length similar to what it was before. 

As soon as the video connected, a smile slowly spread across my whole face. One of those genuine full smiles that I try not to do in pictures because I don't like the way it makes my face look. 

My mom: What?

Me: I think you're beautiful.

My mom: Stop lying.

Me: No, I'm serious. I think it looks great.

This is about how much hair is on my mom's head right now. It's salt-and-pepper, but mostly salt. She's "...getting used to" it. I feel like I'm finally seeing her for the first time, and I love what I see. I love the unencumbered view of her face; it says "this is me. This is all I am and all I have for you." It is vulnerability and beauty all wrapped up into one. 

Maybe I'm romanticizing it. This isn't happening to me. It is, however, making me remember how wonderful it was to feel like I was seeing myself for the first time when I went natural. It's making me revisit the idea of getting a (fairly drastic) haircut. 

I am intrigued by tapered fros, a la:

My mom and Choosing Pancakes love it. KS doesn't think I could pull it off. EY is hesitant to say maybe. What say you?  

i am a lover without a lover. i am lovely and lonely and i belong deeply to myself.

--warsanshire 

(via Square Dancing with Giants)

Once upon a time, I was a more science-y type of nerd.

Like, Math Club President, Academic Team (akin to Quiz Bowl) Captain, co-founder and VP of my high school's Astronomy Club nerd. 

...Shocking, I know. 

I also held leadership positions in Habitat for Humanity and Students Taking Action Now: Darfur, so when I grew up and turned into a full-fledged a social justice nerd, I basically said, kthanxbai science. But sometimes, given the right confluence of events, that science nerd part of me comes roaring back. Last weekend was one of those times.

First TN got me tipsy and then took me to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, where there are awesome dinosaur skeletons (and those of lots of other prehistoric beasts and creatures), but dinosaurs were my favorite when I was a kid. I had dinosaur figurines and dinosaur stuffed animals (the tail of one of which later became my first dildo-like object because I was a freaky kid) and dinosaur books and I could have told you anything about any dinosaur using its scientific name. I watched The Land Before Time whenever it came on TV. I wanted to be a paleontologist so I could think dinosaurs are cool for a living. And all of that rushes back to me whenever I'm in a natural history museum to this day, except that it's all accompanied by an overwhelming sense of awe at how people can find these things and put the skeletons together and understand the life and habits of creatures that lived millions of years ago. 

I also got to feel a piece of Mars at the exhibit on the planet, which got me pumped to go to the Air and Space Museum next (after we spent 3 and a half hours at that museum and saw every exhibit). At the Air and Space Museum, I got to marvel again at how ridiculously amazing flight is as a concept and feel humbled by the men and women who started it. I also got into a theoretical discussion about Jupiter with TN's boyfriend because I just don't understand how a planet can BE a swirling ball of gas. 

And then Sunday night, after we'd each rubbed a little piece of Mars at the museum, the Curiosity Rover landed safely on Mars, ready to start its explorations for life. And I suppose I was primed for this kind of a freakout because of the days' activities, but thinking about how we could go from first landing on the Moon the year my mother was born, 43 years ago, to doing something like this now just floored me. It prompted a conversation between the three of us about how TN's boyfriend and I just profoundly don't *get* science/technology.

It started from me reading some article that said that NASA had to wait an agonizing 8 minutes for the message to get from the Curiosity back to their lab saying that it had landed safely. EIGHT MINUTES. Eight minutes for information to go from an automated robot on MARS to a building on Earth. #mindblown This led to us looking up how satellites work, which led to a discussion of radio waves, because TN's boyfriend and I really don't get how information can be turned into waves that go through air and space and time to be received by devices that turn it back into things that make sense to humans. 

It was very reminiscent of a conversation I once had in the Large Library with ChoosingPancakes about how, really, if you want to break it down to the most fundamental level, conversation astounds me. The fact that I can open my mouth and make  a series of sounds and you can hear those sounds, interpret them as having some meaning, and then make a different series of sounds to which I'll react the same way is mind-boggling. The fact that I can do that on paper and we can have the same interaction with little squiggly lines that somehow represent the sounds? Even crazier. And the idea that I can sit here in my dining room in DC typing these words on my laptop (which I have zero understanding of the workings of either--I understand that binary code is involved, sure, but that doesn't mean I understand how 1s and 0s = information) and whenever I feel like I'm finished, click a little button that says publish and then somehow it exists in this space on the internet for all of you to see on computers and phones all over the world. 

I have to spend most of my life not thinking about the technology that gets me through the day, because otherwise I think I'd spend my whole life just sitting on the floor in awe of all the magic that is life.

Science makes me go like this (except that all of my excitement is questions):

GPOY

Reblogged from Free Bird

Shame is the lie someone told you about yourself.

--Anais Nin 

(via Indie. Radiant.)

What I love about being queer is the ability to grow and transform my sexuality. The recognition that our sexualities are complex and ever evolving, just as every other part of us, is a blissfully freeing thing. Regardless of anything else in the entire world, I am not bound by anyone else’s rules beside my own. Queer is freedom, possibility and space.

-Kim Crosby

I try to be transparent in my assumptions, theories, frameworks, and arguments because intellectual work is political work.

--Chauncey De Vega 

I don't like "meant to be"s...

...but I can't help feeling like I was meant to be where I was on Saturday evening. I went to a natural hair meetup cohosted by my girl @HGKWW and saw a young-ish Black woman rocking a low fade. I made a note of her and how she pulled the style off with elegance--since my mom called me crying after she cut all her hair off after it began falling out in clumps, I've been making a mental note of bald/near bald Black women that I see out and about, so I can say with honesty that that look is in right now when I talk with her about it.

About an hour later, before a giveaway, this woman starts speaking and handing out flyers. Her name is Andrene Taylor. She is thirty three years old and has beaten lymphoma three times already. She's currently preparing for a triathlon and serving as the President of an amazing Foundation called ZuriWorks, whose purpose is to raise cancer awareness in Black female communities. And even more, she is hosting an event this coming weekend called It'll Grow Back! Loving your Hair with Natural Care, which along with dealing out knowledge and tips for naturals generally, will feature discussion about the pros and cons of wearing wigs post-chemo, when hair starts growing back, how the hair that grows back differs from the hair you had before, and how hair and healing are connected mentally, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually. 

Here, in a place hundreds of miles from home, at an event co-hosted by a friend I made at a school I had a 9% chance of getting into, which I learned about via a website that I stumbled upon when lamenting the fact that I didn't know how to make friends in the real world, I found just what my mother needs. My eyes started welling up just as I was listening to her talk, and I waited patiently while she had another conversation later in the evening just so that I could speak with her, shake her hand, and tell her that she is an inspiration. 

I want so badly for my mom to come down to go to the event on Sunday, but she has decided against it because it's a lot of travelling for her to do by herself. My Nana offered to drive her, but she's already driving her to Philly for her appointment with her oncologist on Friday and to Dover and back twice the following Thursday to move my sister in to school, so she didn't want to put that on her too. I understand all of that, but I'm still disappointed. This would be so good for her. I might go anyway just so I can pass on the knowledge. 

Though I am never anything but the picture of optimism to my mother, I feel safe enough here to say that meeting someone who has been through this again and again and is THRIVING did wonders for me. I want her to know that her very existence is helping. I want to help her help other people. I very nearly want to *thank* someone for the peculiar series of events that led to us meeting on Saturday, because few other introductions have every felt so wholly right. 

My Sexual Commandments

In the midst of a larger drunken conversation (the subject of which I'll probably return to shortly because it's interesting) I had with RG Thursday night, somehow the subject of my "rules" about sex came up. 

RG: ...Is there a list?
Me: Yeah, sort of. I don't have it like, written down, but I have rules.
RG: Like what? Condoms...?
Me: Yup. Protection is always rule number one. And I like to have sex in my own space, if possible. And rule number three is possibly even more important than rule number one--I have to actively want to be doing it. 

And then the subject came up of whether I need to change/add rules now that I'm living in  "the HIV capital of the country". ...Which is a legitimate point. More legitimate, I think, than just changing/adding "for the real world," which I'd been debating but had intellectual issues with because I don't like suggesting that Princetonians are less dangerous than the "real world". 

So, without further ado, a list:

1. Thou shalt always useth a condom. Thou shalt additionally always carry one in her purse, because thou knowest not what might happen. 
2. Whenever possible, thou shalt sleep with someone for the first time in thou's own space, as it alloweth for thou to be in control of the situation. 
3. Thou must actively desireth to be engaging in sexual activities with the person(s) with whom one engageths at the time of engagement. Thou is forbiddeneth from being "meh" about sex.
4. As a corollary to rule 3, thou must immediately cease and desist in all sexual activities with anyone who make you feel anything other than wholly positive about thyself and thy actions.
5. (This was actually a rule already, but I forgot to list it on Thursday.) Thou shalt not go down on strange genatalia. In the past, this has meant rando dick--in the future, it shall mean all fun bits of whose status one is not confident about. 
6. Thou shalt not be discouraged from having conversations about sexual health with new partners because it's awkward. The conversations one might have to have because they DIDN'T talk about it are a lot more awkward, I bet. These conversations  may need to happen earlier with girls (if applicable).
7. Thou shalt get tested every six months or after any semi-risky behavior with a new partner, whichever is more frequent.

This seems pretty exhaustive to me, but if you can think of anything it might do me well to add (and which doesn't go against any of my sex-positive philosophies), please do tell in the comments!

Photo

Reblogged from Serenity in Perspective

I need to register to vote in DC...

Reblogged from Jack & Jill Politics

To anyone who has ever criticized a Black woman for caring too much about her hair

Have you all gathered here? Do I have your attention? Okay, then let me direct it to the comments that I wish I couldn't believe that people are making about 16-year-old Olympics Gold Medal winner Gabby Douglas's hair. 


Actually, before I do that, let me reiterate: this little girl is sixteen. She's from Virginia Beach and left home at the age of 14 to live with a foster family in IOWA, of all places, so that she could train with top-tier gymnasts. She's one of the five gymnasts on the US Women's Gymnastics Team to just win a gold medal for our country. I have complete confidence that none of you will ever do anything this badass in your lives, so please, enlighten me, how you have the audacity to watch this little girl spin and fly through the air like it's easy and then criticize her HAIR?

on another note, gabby douglas gotta do something with this hair! these clips and this brown gel residue aint it!
— C. Renée (@misDOScentavos) July 27, 2012

People are talking about her "beady beads" (the tiny curls at the nape of her neck), about her "needing a perm," asking why her parents couldn't have gotten her micros or box braid extensions...


This little girl just represented our country in what I understand is, to most people in the world, this epic global battle and KILLED it. She is actually on top of the world. But none of that matters to people who not as an Olympian, not as a gymnast, not as a young woman, not even as a young Black woman, but as hair that must be representative of something (everything) else. The fact that she just landed perfectly from that routine (which could be replaced with any other accomplishment imaginable, let alone one that requires idk, intense physical activity) is irrelevant when weighed against a tiny curl being out of place.


This is what Black women are up against in daily existence. This is why relaxers as a multi-billion dollar Black female consumer market make sense. This is why going natural is a radical act of self-love and societal defiance. This is white patriarchal oppression to the highest--it has done its job so well that we've taken over the responsibility without even realizing it. 


Now, all you critics who are reading these, I would like you to join with me in a gesture of understanding what you have done wrong. Please raise your right hand so that it is about even with your ear. Repeat after me, "I, [name], am ridiculous for perpetuating the idea that Gabby Douglas is her hair and nothing more, and ridiculous further for projecting any sort of meaning onto her hair in the first place." Now, please move your hand rapidly to the left so that it may make stinging contact with your cheek. 


#Imdone

#win!

...but actually.

Photo

Reblogged from Treasured Tresses

New life resolution

as inspired by this Thought Catalog post:


I want to only spend time with people I enjoy thoroughly, and only attend events I find delectable. I don't want to roll with whatever comes my way. I want to make active choices, and I want to choose well. If it's not doing things for me, I want no parts of it. I want to want to be doing what I'm doing in a moment in that moment.


That's higher-level taking care of yourself, in a nutshell.

My mother, who recently shaved her head after one too many bouts of crying while throwing out the strands and strands of her post-chemotherapy hair that came out in the comb every day, to me on the phone yesterday:

I have to admit, My, I felt like you. It was so nice to go out in the rain and not have to worry about my hair. 

She also recently sported her nearly bald head in a Wawa, instead of wearing her bandana or a wig. She said people were staring at her, and it was hard, but I could barely hear that over the sound of my swelling pride.

An update on my real-world friendships

Reblogged from Choosing Pancakes

That was me whenever I thought about my post-grad life before graduation and for my first few weeks of living in this city. I was stressed out about how I've never made a friend out of anything but proximity (and forcibly inserting myself into the life of a person whom I think is cool, evidently, which evidently has worked in the past) and I didn't understand how to bridge the gap between meeting people and befriending them. 


...Soooo I'm still making friends out of proximity, haha. This time, proximity being my office. I went to Jazz in the Gardens at the sculpture gardens near the National Archives with some people from work (none of whom I actually knew very well) and met a fellow Princetonian who works in another department! I've gradually been making more and more social visits to my work friends' offices and convincing people that eating alone in their offices when there are literally 300 other hungry people nearby is just silly. This culminated in me hosting a dinner party at my house on Wednesday night. Eight girls from my office--the five that I'm closest to and three that I didn't actually really know, all went to the grocery store with me after work to pick up the ingredients for shrimp fettuccine and cooked and ate and laughed and were merry together. They fawned over my house, too. (Side note: everyone keeps doing that. It makes me really happy.) And afterwards, about half of us went to this little...park is a strong word...more like vacant grassy lot near the office where they show outdoor movies on Wednesday night and watched The Incredibles. One of the girls, whom I hadn't known super well, baked ninja-shaped Incredibles cookies, complete with the red icing and little yellow i's on their chests. It was ADORABLE. 


I am now friends with three of them on Facebook and have one's number. She texted me on Friday night to see if I'd be interested in doing a singles "events and adventures" group with her...uh, duh. So, these developments excite me. 


I've also been hanging out with a decent number of Princetonians: most notably RG, but I've also seen AM once and will see her again Tuesday along with some other 2011s. I went to a concert with DA two weeks ago. I finally saw BK at the Princeton Club of Washington Nationals baseball game event last Sunday, and met/hung out with a Black 2010 guy I hadn't known before (who is unfortunately only in town for the summer). I had dinner with one of my assistant activities chairs from Quad last night (and learned that Ethiopian food is delicious). RP is in town on business for the next few months Mon-Thurs, and I saw her last week and will hopefully see a lot more of her over the next few weeks. MJP was here last week with her program, and when FS was here for the 4th, I saw him, too.


And in all of that hanging out, something has occurred to me: there is something incredibly refreshing about spending time with people who already know you, even if you aren't particularly close. I don't feel like I'm putting on a show for the new friends I'm making in DC or anything--even when I'm socializing with my work friends, I feel like I'm being myself. But still, I am ever in the process of introduction with them, I suppose. It's more stories and backtracking, more "a friend of mine from college" instead of "[name]". It's as if I'm demonstrating who I am and what I'm about, rather than simply living and breathing it like I can with people who already have some established sense of those things. The familiar feeling, combined with the catching up, reminds me that I didn't leave myself behind in all the changes of late. It is wonderful to literally bring the past into the present and watch it still fit. 


(I get to do this to an even higher extent next weekend: TN is coming to stay for two days! This also involves me taking my first paid-time-off day. I feel so fancy. Like, what, I'ma not come to work and you're gonna pay me like I came? What is this awesome world?)


But before you're all, "Omg, Maya, you're living the dream!", I have a confession to make. I'm unsure about the placement of that comma, and my post-college social network is beginning to look a lot like my pre-college social network. For those who aren't familiar with Maya of olde, this means that RG is the only non-White person I'm consistently spending any time with. Also, to the best of my knowledge, everyone I've spent time with is straight. And I don't really know how to remedy either of these issues. My housemates are White, my office is Vanillaville with a spattering of Asian/Indian, and though I know some of the other black recent Princeton grads in the city, RG is the only one I was close to in college. I came to rely on communities of people of color and a collection of individuals who fall outside of normative heterosexual boundaries during my time at Princeton, and I am fiercely adamant that those are not communities that I want to lose. I joined a couple of Meetups for women of color and/or Black women in the DC area and those for LGBT folks in the area, so hopefully some sense of community will come out of that, but from my experience at the Live Soul meetup for Musiq Soulchild, I'm scared that that crowd might be considerably older. So if anyone has any suggestions on that front, I'm all ears.