In Response to Tyrese and All the Many Letters to Women

If you look at old posts on this blog, like really old posts, ha...I used to go in, no holds barred; opinionated with no care in the world. I have grown, so I now add a little bit of tact to how I present things. Moreover, what would Jesus do? It is with all these in mind that I will do this post even though I told my siblings I did not feel like wasting my time with this issue. I mean, never mind that seconds, literally seconds after telling them I did not want to waste my breath on the issue, I went on a tirade. I pity them sometimes. Anyway, this has been really eating at me; it also feels like no one is going to do this. Plus to be honest, there are so many stupid letters to women all over the place: on how to find a man, how to keep one, how to look like the left leg of an elephant while simultaneously looking like the right leg of a hippopotamus. Yet no letter to men. So, this is one. So I'm here taking one for the team.

You're probably wondering, what exactly is THIS?

TYRESE.

This is Jesus making an appeal to Tyrese through me: stop it. Just stop it. Stop with masking misogyny with faux-deep messages. Messages that on the surface appear to embody some serious societal issues; that's until you strip them, examine them, and realize how empty, borderline insulting, completely patronizing, and just plain trite they are. I don't even know how he still has a platform. But welcome to the 21st century. Everyone has a platform, including me :-)

He posted one of such cliches again recently. Because I don't want to barf, I'm not going to repost it here. But for context and to get the real gist, check it out here. First of all dude, you must not have better things to do with your time than deeping your nose in the hair and makeup business of women. Like seriously, even I don't have that kind of time.

"You're not light skinned enough."

"Why is your natural hair so...kinky?"

"Your natural hair doesn't fit you" --Honestly, if this isn't the silliest thing ever; that the hair growing out of your head doesn't fit you?

"Why is your ass so flat?"

"You are too ghetto."

"Ugh why you trying to act white?" - to a black woman who speaks proper English.

"Jeez, why are you so educated; no man is going to marry you."

“You should cover up, but not too much. Just enough that you are sexy enough.”

“Don’t be fat. Oh, but don’t be too skinny either. We men don’t like bones.”

“You should totally make up, but of course not so excessive that we don’t recognize you.”

These are statements that many [black women] have heard from men like Tyrese time and time and time again. I will speak from the point of view of a black woman. And while Tyrese might have emphasized on "all races", make no mistake: that shade was for black women in all our weave glories lmao. Seriously though, for centuries, black women have been trying hard to contort themselves, and morph into something they aren't for the pleasure of  and to meet the expectations of men like Tyrese. Even if some of such black men are incredibly broken. Because when they are broken, they turn to the sistas. You see, the sista is supposed to hold him down, mold him, shape him, and most of all, wait while he becomes a man. Except the minute he becomes a man, he leaves.  He then begins to worship and glorify what society has termed "beautiful".

But people like Tyrese would not criticize the years of oppression women have had to and maybe even still endure. Instead, in the guise of helping said women, men like Tyrese further twist the knives in  the backs of women by further insisting  on a new set of standards for women. The most irritating is that people like Tyrese, after years and years and years of sleeping with women—the  very kinds he is criticizing— and smashing their metaphoric hearts into pieces; they then wake up someday whole and pure. Cue the angels. It is with this new found piety that they find "the most beautiful woman" to marry and of course degrade the ones who just were not enough :-).  If someone else wrote that essay; perhaps with better intentions, okay...fine, I guess. BUT, go look at the music videos of these very men who spew rubbish: it's filled with the exact kind of girls Tyrese criticized: unrealistic behinds; weaves so long, they touch the knee; bleached skins etc. So tell me again, what exactly is their point?

Should I decide to take relationship advice from some random person on the Internet, it will not be from Tyrese. See, we already know it's not wise to make drastic changes in the form of plastic surgery for anyone but yourself. There is no need to over-flog that; it's commonsensical. Along the same lines, it's just as self damaging to be "modest" or to burn your make up kit in a bid to keep a man. There is only so much you can do to "keep" a man. A man is a fully functional higher animal who decides on his own whether to stay or leave. We are in 2017; might I remind Tyrese that women don't simply exist for the sole purpose of being someday whisked away by a man. No.

That being said,  my personal advice is to not get plastic surgery [for vanity purposes]; it's really not that cute. But honey, DO YOU. Evaluate your reason, mental and emotional health, most of all evaluate the values you hold high. On that basis, live your darn life. Because even if you contort yourself into a freaking pretzel, men like Tyrese will probably still treat you anyhow and then go and marry someone else :-). Preferably the one who fits the world's notion of "beautiful". No shade.

It's just y'all decided and set the standards for what beautiful is. You can't turn around and blame women who try hard to conform and meet those standards. No bueno.

So girl: fix that weave, perm that hair, wear it natural, rock that fro,  slap that wig on, braid it, contour that face till  your nose is sharp enough to chisel your furniture, highlight till you are glowing more than the sun, if it makes you feel good. You are beautiful any which way. You also rock any which way.

Love,

and some magic

I