My World is My Stage

See what I did there? lol.

Anyway, I saw The Help over the weekend and it evoked a lot of thought out of me. It’s really hard to talk about it. I have a menagerie of feelings. I’m proud to know that we, as a people, have endured the life of the home servant. It makes me SO sad to know that after that, we still have so far to come. It pains me that the movie was more about the white women and their lives than it was of the Black women. I know that the movie didn’t focus on the Black men of the day but I wanted to hear from them. I am both happy and pissed the fuck off at some of the relationships the maids developed with the kids and women they were paid to take care of. I’m saddened that Hollywood will turn anything into a fucking love story! THE ACTING (by some) WAS FUCKING AMAZING! There weren’t that many moments that I realized that I was, in fact, watching a movie, so the production value was good. I don’t love the movie but would add it to my personal collection.

If you know me you know I don’t go to the movies. Before I give you more detailed reasons know that my NUMBER 1 reason is that it costs too much for me. I don’t get paid a lot and I’d rather spend my little bucks on other shit. My other reasons is that I’m just overall dissapointed in what the movies offer. I got so mad while watching the previews (I tweeted, twice! and three times about it and will talk more about that experience later on) that it carried over to the first 20 minutes of the movie. Granted, the first 20 minutes also pissed me off. Those images of Black women having to acquiesce to every whim of these white women irked the shit out of me. It made me uncomfortable, in a good way. I was forced to face my history and I wasn’t able to turn away.

At my new job, I’m working on this play Neighbors that does a similar thing, only with blackface. It makes audiences confront our own complicity and doesn’t let us just shrug it off but makes us sit in it, like a baby who has to stay in their soiled diaper for hours.

Theatre, and art in general, should challenge us, make us think, make us feel, make us talk, inspire us to make change (in ourselves and in the world around us) and entertain. While I disagree, in some sorts with a lot of the plot pieces in the movie, I overall felt like it satisfied my aforementioned criteria.

If you are on the fence on whether to go see this movie or not, please do. If not only to give Viola Davis, Cicely Tyson, Octavia Spencer, Aunjanue Ellis and others credit for their hard word, but to have the experience of confronting your understanding of self in relationship to others, in the context of the experience of Black women working in the domestic service.

I have to do more research on the origins of the movie and the book and will come back on how I feel like the movie did in comparison to the book. I’ll also give my review of the movie. Look out for my post about the previews before the movie and why that adds to the reasons I don’t go to the cinema. Busy week. I hope to write it all…(current history says I won’t…)

If you’ve seen the movie (or read the book) what do you think about the movie?

Over the last month and a half I’ve been on a tireless search for an apartment here in the DMV (that’s D.C./Maryland/Virginia for you out of towners. lls). So while working on my D.C. lingo, as evident in my “laughing like shit (lls)” one sentence back, I’ve been trying to find the perfect place to call home. Now this is no small task! Anyone who has moved into a new city, or has had to venture on their own, completely understands what I’ve had to go through. So, indulge me as I quickly recap this extensive and exhausting process.

As many of you all know, I work in the non-profit theater. Also, many of you all know, that the DMV has a very high standard of living. What does that mean? It means apartments are expensive and I don’t make no damn money! I work two jobs, and try to get as much overtime as possible at my main one, just to keep up this crazy lifestyle I live. While I’m on lifestyle choices, I have four words; Do It Big April. My crazy schedule, which seemed to start the minute I moved here, has prevented me from finding a place…well until now.

As I searched for a place, I looked for a few things: I wanted a comfortable place, a place I could afford, a place where I can be by myself, whenever I wanted to, but also a place where I would feel comfortable inviting company over. I wanted somewhere safe but I didn’t want to be out in the suburbs. I needed to be close to my jobs and to my DC/Alexandria communities. As the list of wants started to get paired with available options, I started to realize that I was a little bit over my head. So, I asked for help from my two Leading Ladies.

One of my Leading Ladies actually identified the apartment that I will be moving into. Y’all, she does so much for me and I appreciate that…A LOT! The other Leading Lady, and the reason for this blog, also provided a lot of help in this process. My mother came in town for a visit and to also help me choose an apartment. Just like any mom, she came in with her own list of priorities and wants for her ideal apartment for her only child. As we shopped around, looking at places, I started realizing that Moms and Apartments have a whole lot in common.

My “perfect” apartment, like my mother, would be comforting. Providing the right amount of support but never becoming a burden, my ideal apartment would be a welcome retreat from life’s stresses. Never demanding too much of my time or resources, my mother and my apartment, would understand the strain of my daily life and would help ease that yoke. Understanding my desire for safety, but my propensity for adventurous/reckless living, my apartment, like my mother, will support my bad decisions while making sure I’m always safe while I’m doing it. Big enough to accommodate all of my invited guests but personal enough to cater to only me, my mother’s and my apartment’s flexibility has been/will be so very important to me.

As I move into my new place, and ultimately fleeing my “mother’s nest,” it feels good to know that the qualities I found in my mother I also will find in my new place. As a single mom, Wynette has been the epitome of strength and support; leading me through and up until this point. I thank her for all that she has done. My Leading Lady, Wynette, Happy (Early) Mother’s Day. I love you.

So if you’ve followed this blog, you know I normally talk about politics, society, education or whatever. Today, I’m not doing any of that. Today, I’m shooting straight from the hip…literally.

I LOVE NATURAL HAIR! Yea, I said it. I’ll say it again, I LOVE NATURAL HAIR! More importantly, and equally as important, I love the women who choose to rock it. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love women who abstain from rocking the natural, but don’t nothing (so what, I use a double negative; sue me!) get the job done like a woman who wears her hair au natural.

There is something to be said about a woman who chooses to rock her hair in a huge Afro. Turns me the hell on! Or a woman who sports some Bantu knots or twists. Please don’t get me started on women with Dreds! I didn’t like it as much at first, but a beautiful woman, wearing some neatly done dreds just might be enough to have me marry her on the spot!

I think the thing I love most about women with natural hair is the “get up and go” factor. Now I understand that not all women who wear their hair natural can just spend five minutes doing their hair and look fabulous, but this post is about those who can. 

To know me is to know that I’m a man of many affectations. One of the things I love is sex. And why shouldn’t I? I mean, it’s pretty awesome. Sex for me is an uninhibited, unfettered, “do what feels right” type of activity. With that being said, if I want to grab a handful of hair, or have place your face in a pillow, I’d like to be able to do so without having to be told “STOP! You know you can’t do that to my hair!”

Don’t get me wrong, I ain’t big into all that, but I go with the flow, and every now and then, that’s just how it goes. More times than not, the women who rock the natural hair are down with it. Now maybe it’s the overall “fuck it” attitude that seems to be associated with my natural women that allows them to ignore the possible hair repercussions, or maybe it’s their hair’s ability to “bounce back” after a night of bouncing off the walls, but whatever it is, I LOVE IT!

To add to that, I don’t like the headscarf either. I mean, really? How you trying to be all sexy with me, but you got a huge, multicolored, grease filled headwrap on?! That doesn’t get it done sweetheart. Again, I realize that some of my natural women choose (or have to) wear the scarf to bed, but those who don’t (especially/at least the nights you trying to get it in) I appreciate that. There is nothing sexy about trying to play in your hair and all I’m doing is rubbing on silk/polyester/whatever those things are made out of!

 To all my natural women out there, PLEASE keep doing what you do! If no one else loves it, you know you have an eternal fan in me! To my women who are thinking about making the transition, you can read any blog, talk to other women, do whatever makes you happy, but if you want my opinion, I’m all for it! Oh and to my women who still get perms, Jamil got love for you too! Just do me a favor, go without the headscarf one night, we’ll get your hair done once we finished ;)

-Jamil Jude