Chloe Bailey recently dropped her newest single “Treat Me” along with a music video. Well, the chaste police have spoken and have found great problem with the music video and, for some, the song and style of singing as well. TikTok is full of comments including:

“You are too good to turn out like this”

“It feels awkward”

“Meanwhile Halle hasn’t lost her senses yet, she still carries herself well”

“Too much, too soon Just want to see a beautiful young lady with talent but classy”

“Not sure all this was necessary”

“Pretty tasteless”

“You’re gorgeous without doing all that”

“The industry ruined her”

😪

Sometimes people don’t even recognize their own misogynoir.

2020 has been a year already and we have not even touched September at the time of this writing. For me personally, I started this year in frustration and grief about my body. I started off healing from a surgery without noting the toll it would take on my mental health to not be able to move the way I wanted to move and to be in a different consistent pain.

Looking back, this sounds like a foreshadowing of the year ahead.

This beautiful baby girl with hair that looked to us to be unkempt by Eurocentric standards of beauty, had us up in arms and ready to fight. As far as I can tell, whether or not we were ready to fight the folks at H&M for being seemingly disrespectful or ready to fight other Black folk for seeming to admonish this girl, it all seemed a trauma response to me. 

 For those of you who don't know the CROWN Act is also known as Creating a Respectful and Open Workplace for Natural Hair Act. What I love about this act is that local government is actually taking steps to make sure there is inclusion, pride, and choice in the workplace. They’re making sure (well, trying) Black folk can remain Black folk even in places of business.

All my melanin sisters are walking around with a new glow and confidence because they received external validation through a song, and I can’t help but wonder why Beyonce needed to say Brown skin girls are beautiful and worthy for them to believe it!

I feel like there is a constant whirlwind lately where I talk about Blackness and beauty. Where I think about, discuss, and consider the lightness and darkness of skin and how that is read by others based on eye color and hair texture and hair length. It’s funny to me that this should feel like my life, when this WAS my life when I was in the midst of writing my dissertation almost 3 years ago. It seems like I’ve run a full circle of not having to think much about it, in the academic sense, to coming right back into thinking about in the mental health, relationship, sexuality sense...which I guess is all academic anyway. 

Blac Chyna is right now, the base of jokes, and name calling, and head shaking….