Colonize This!: Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism (23 page)

 

The picture is a sad but common one. It is black and white with no borders. Two women are in the foreground. One lies on an examining table, belly exposed, as the other leads a device over her abdomen. The device slides over cold gel and the ultrasound screen displays the motion of a sometimes amorphous shape through a black and gray haze. But the woman on the table is still. Her face stares intently at the active life on the screen, the life that is nurtured by her womb. Her face is motionless, almost paralyzed with fear. She has dreaded this moment, which for some may have been a time of anticipation and excitement. She torments herself with the question that will follow this. Is it another girl?

She already has two daughters at home, which is quite enough for her husband and in-laws. This time they are not taking any chances. She cannot “waste” another nine months in the production of a non-male child. They would choose an abortion instead. Plenty of other families took this recourse and so would they. They would have an abortion. They, not she, would make this obvious choice with her body. They, not she, would decide to end this process that she had started. As she lies there, demoralized, she wonders how her mother-in-law in particular could deny the rights and emotions of another woman, of another mother. She is not just an incubator or a vessel through which a lineage can be sustained. She is a woman. She is a mother. She is a thinking and living being. Her resistance and frustration mount. She vows to break her stillness one day and thus break the chain.

 

The
burkha
is a black, amorphous cover, leaving only the eyes visible. It drives most Western women crazy. For some reason they always ask me how I feel about it, even though I am not Muslim. I suppose to them I look close enough. Today I sit in a café with two Western women who are disturbed by the burkha. I explain to them that it is a tool of oppression in some countries and in others, some women choose to wear it. They shudder at this thought as they sip their lattés. One is encased in makeup and wears a tight shirt with capri pants. Another wears a midriff shirt and jeans with her hair flowing over her neck and around her face. I explain that many women in the world use the burkha as a symbol of power, as a statement of their value system. Women who wear the burkha refuse to be judged by their body or face. They want to be seen as another being, not as a sexual object. In this way, the burkha can be a tool of empowerment.

The women across from me listen with blank faces and confused stares. They argue that it is their right as women to wear what they want and how they wish to wear it. I agree and feel that this is precisely my point. I realize that these women in front of me are oppressed in many ways by society’s perception of what a beautiful woman is. They respond to the abundant images of barely clad women with “perfect” bodies and fine-tuned makeup. They sit before me as conformists to their own cultural values. They sport the latest fashions and revel in their sun-soaked glows. I pity them; their oppression is so subtle they cannot even recognize it.

 

It is a warm day and the beads of sweat fall down my patient in labor. It is the morning after a twenty-eight-hour shift and I should be home in bed. As a resident, your bed is your best friend and you want to visit it any chance you get. But this patient only speaks Punjabi and the nurses have asked me to stay and help with translation. Although I have not slept for the whole shift and am exhausted, I want to stay and help this woman. I think of how terrifying it must be for her to go through this painful process without the ability to communicate with the medical personnel.

She is near the end of labor and her screams escalate. Her husband is here, but he sits on the opposite end of the room, acting as though he has no idea what his role is. He, too, speaks no English and sits dumbfounded by the intensity of the image before him. I remember my mother telling me that they never allowed men in the delivery rooms and that is why Indian men are not sure what their role is in childbirth. But I cannot empathize with him as he watches his wife yell out “I am going to die” in our common tongue. I rub her back and think of what must be going through his mind. How can he not comfort her as she agonizes before him? I go over to him and lead him to the bed. I place his hand on her back and show him how to rub her and give her some attention. He looks lost, as if this is not something he has ever done. He obliges me for a while. But when I leave for a minute and return, I see he has found his old seat again, his seat of comfort where he has no obligations.

The nurses remark that it must not be part of his culture to comfort her. I wonder if this is the same culture to which I belong. Is it a culture in which an individual is able to show no consolation to his partner in a time of distress, one in which roles are so segregated that even during one of the most important events of their marriage, he will wait for her to finish her job before he starts his? In response to her cries I hear him mumble under his breath, “You will be fine!” Again, I lead him over to her, place his hand on her body and tell him that he is not to move this time. He should sit here, caress and support her. He stares at me and shows offense at a young woman directing his actions. But he does oblige. How could he not? I am not trying to impose some feminist rhetoric on him. I am merely instructing him on how to be human and that transcends all cultures.

 

A child is born in India. She is a beautiful, innocent bundle brought into this world as a testimony to two people’s love and commitment. She is the couple’s fourth daughter, and they are overjoyed that she is healthy and happy. They were hoping for a son, but they are just pleased to have been blessed with another life. They understand the ability of women to succeed in the home and society, to build strong families, to sustain communities. They appreciate the gift they have given to the world and sing its praises. This is the snapshot I hope to take one day.

 

 

Kristina Gray

 

 

 

 

 

I never knew her name. I still don’t. But I remember I wanted to be her friend so badly back then. Maybe I still do. At the time she was the only black girl at Suitland High School with purple streaks in her hair and the rock and roll swagger to match. Even in our overcrowded school of twenty-seven hundred other mostly black students, she stood out. I’m sure the other kids noticed. But I was in awe. I studied her every move and wished that somehow I, too, could one day be just as punk as fuck. I used to rehearse what I’d say to her if we ever ran into each other in the bathroom. I would compliment her new hair color, then lean over and whisper, “Your secret’s safe with me.” We didn’t know each other at all, of course, save for the occasional awkward glance shared in the hallway between classes. But I was on to her. I could tell she was just like me. Another black girl who knew the joys of power chords and thrashy, rock-fueled angst.

I used to dream about us skipping school together, slipping out of the doors by the gym, so we could spend all day listening to the Breeders and old Joan Jett records. We’d make our own zines, swap faded vintage T-shirts and in hushed voices we’d admit that Tupac wasn’t really that cute anyway.

We never did skip school together. I never even got up the courage to say hi to her. Instead, I spent that last year in high school admiring her from afar, secretly wishing I could share my love of the Sex Pistols with someone, anyone.

 

It’s not easy being a brown-skinned girl in love with rock and roll. Listening to “white music” has always been akin to treason in the black community. Never mind that we were the architects of much of what is today labeled rock and roll. My CD collection makes me a sellout. Like most black people, though, I’ve always been around white music. I bounced around to Culture Club when I was young just like every else, and my mom still owns her “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” record. But while other black folks regarded the music as mere novelty or Top 40 fodder, I fell head over heels. As a kid, I watched MTV religiously, absorbing just as much
Headbangers Ball as Yo! MTV Raps.
I knew how to do the running man and could quote Eric B. and Rakim. But I also loved singing Guns N’ Roses into my hairbrush-turned-microphone and perfecting my Billy Idol-inspired sneer in the bathroom mirror.

I learned early on that I had to keep my rock and roll tendencies a secret. Nice black girls just didn’t listen to Faith No More. I was supposed to spend my pre-teen years swooning over bubblegum boy bands on the cover of
Right On!
and copying the dance moves I saw on
Soul Train.
I tried to like Bobby Brown. I really did. And I wanted so badly to learn the words to Salt-N-Pepa songs. But as much as I wanted to fit in, I took a perverse pride in knowing I could go back and forth between black and white worlds barely noticed. I wasn’t passing so much as sneaking, blurring racial lines as I embarked on my own covert rock and roll mission. By day, I was humming Boyz II Men. But by night, I was rocking out to heavy metal from inside the privacy of my quiet suburban bedroom with its pale pink walls.

Presumably, I had nothing in common with the longhaired white boys whose music I was beginning to lust after. I rarely, if ever, understood any of the lyrics or high-pitched growls coming from their mouths. But somehow I identified with the screeching guitars and badass attitudes from bands like Poison and AC/DC. At the time their music felt like raw energy, more potent than anything else my eleven-year-old ears were used to. Rock and roll was as wild and explosive as I wished I could be. The music transported me from my docile world of piano lessons and Judy Blume books into a make-believe land of high kicks and big hair. For the first time, I learned it was OK to get loud and get angry—at least in my bedroom. Rock and roll was showing me how to scream at the top of my lungs. It was rowdy. Out of control. And it reeked of white male privilege.

Bands like Bon Jovi were middle-class guys born with the innate understanding that they owned this world. Even as a kid I could tell these were white boys in the purest sense of the word. They flaunted their entitlement all over my MTV in skintight leather pants as they strutted across the screen belting out disposable pop songs. Of course, it would be years before I actually had the words to describe what I first noticed back then. But no amount of women’s studies courses or feminist literature would ever be able to fully explain what I had already instinctively detected at the age of twelve. These boys had the luxury to forget about color, culture and class every single day of their lives. Perhaps I believed that through their music, I could vicariously forget about race, too. For a few brief moments each day, I could step outside of my brown skin, unzipping it like a heavy winter coat. I’d turn up the music and dream not of being black or white, but a rock star.

It was almost like being in a state of complete racelessness. Part of me loved it. For once I didn’t have to worry about being too black or too white. I wasn’t expected to be the model minority from the family with an eerie resemblance to the
Cosby Show.
Nor did I feel pressure to be a finger-wagging, neck-rolling, tough-talking sista. I was just there. Pumping my fist and throwing up the devil sign to a Def Leppard song.

 

But no matter how hard I tried, I was still an outsider, equally as unexpected as uninvited. What had begun as “race music,” made for and by people as dark as me, had now transferred ownership into the hands of white boys and girls. And even though it was still OK for those same kids to listen to rap and r & b, I was not supposed to be rocking out to their music. Black girls had no place in the rock and roll hierarchy. I knew white men were the guys in charge. That much was clear. Their job was to piss off parents, wear the flashiest outfits, play the hardest riffs, do the hardest drugs and fuck as many (white) girls as possible. Women? They weren’t in the band. They were “with the band.” White girls were groupies who flung panties on stage and gave blowjobs on crowded tour buses. I didn’t know where black girls were supposed to go. After all, I never heard my story in any Van Halen song. Rock and roll, at least in its current incarnation, had not been built with me in mind.

It also had not been built with budding feminists in mind. Growing up in a black household, I never heard the F-word used too much. Like my love of Mötley Crüe, most black women in my life saw feminism as a white thing. It wasn’t meant for us and it didn’t include us. But even though they couldn’t quite quote Gloria Steinem, the women in my family led by example, showing me how to defiantly make my way in a world that told black women we didn’t matter.

Their unique brand of proto-feminism served me well, too, as a kid. That is, until I sat down to watch the newest Warrant video. In an instant, I unlearned everything my mother and grandmothers and aunts had taught me all along. It turned out being a girl had nothing to do with being fearless or beautifully independent. Being a girl meant having perky breasts and long blond hair. It meant being seen and not heard. Weak and thin. Sexy but not assertive. Boys liked you better that way. We were merely accessories wrapped around the lead singer’s arm.

I didn’t want to believe it. These were not images of women I was used to seeing. These girls seemed so frail, like vacant automatons designed to service early nineties rock gods. They were nothing like the women in my life who had always juggled work and family but never once referred to themselves as “working mothers.” The women I knew fought to desegregate their local schools so their daughters would have access to the same education afforded to white children. The women I knew cleaned white women’s homes so their own could afford to eat. The women I knew had seen men leave but had somehow managed to keep their families intact. I wanted to be strong like them. I wanted their round hips and weathered smiles. I didn’t want to be like the bikini-clad girl in front of me gyrating to a never-ending guitar solo. She didn’t seem interesting at all. But I couldn’t help but be intrigued. Something told me she commanded more attention than I ever would.

Luckily, by the time I got to middle school, grunge had come along and kicked metal’s shiny ass. It wasn’t so cool anymore to have girls with bad perms shaking their asses on MTV (that was left to the hip-hop videos on BET). In high school I ditched Metallica for Elastica and secretly dreamed of being like the alternateens I read about in Sassy. Rock was still the music of teenage rebellion, but kids weren’t just fighting for their right to party anymore. We were moody and cynical and fed up with dead-eyed suburbanism. Like other kids my age, I took solace in the warbled words of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” But I knew no matter how many flannel shirts I owned, I would never completely relate to Kurt Cobain or the rest of the alternative nation.

When I went away to college, I figured I was destined to finally meet other black girls who would nurture my inner bohemian. Instead, I found segregated cafeteria tables and white girls who crowded into my dorm room just to watch me braid my hair. In an effort to blend in with the girls around me, I began trading in my rock and roll for waifish girly folksters. Eventually, I realized the music was as whitewashed and bland as the girls I wanted to be like. I grew tired of muted sounds from willowy blondes and went back to the loud, raucous music I’d always loved.

By then I had already declared myself a feminist, but now I wanted to be a riot grrrl. I started listening to women like Sleater-Kinney and Bikini Kill, who rocked harder than any of the boys on MTV. I wanted their razor-sharp cool and suddenly felt empowered by their buzzing guitars and throaty moans. They were everything girls weren’t supposed to be. They were brazen, loud-mouthed and opinionated. Just by getting onstage, they were making a powerful feminist statement. Finally, someone was singing about everything I never had the guts to say.

 

When I discovered the riot grrrl scene, I felt that much closer to being accepted in my own little rock and roll world. I had missed the movement the first time around, falling into it only by accident years later. I thought it was strange, however, that the scene had started right in my own backyard in Washington, D.C.—a city that is predominately black—and I was just finding out now. How come it took riot grrrl nearly ten years just to reach me? Why hadn’t its message been spread around to the rest of “Chocolate City” and its very black surrounding suburbs? Didn’t the girls I grew up around who lived in Section 8 housing and were pushing baby strollers by the age of fifteen deserve a revolution grrrl-style, too?

At first I thought I would find salvation in punk rock feminism. Instead, I found myself once again on the outside looking in. Despite the movement’s shortcomings, the music was still liberating, and it felt so good to finally reclaim my voice, my body, my agency. I didn’t want to get my ass grabbed at hip-hop clubs anymore. I didn’t want to hear “Show us your tits!” at another arena rock concert. I wanted to be as brave and defiant as the women I was seeing onstage.

In between listening to bands like Bis and Jack Off Jill, I took women’s studies classes at my tiny liberal arts college. I loved being surrounded by so many beautiful young women of different shapes, sizes and colors and felt so very safe in those classes. But I also felt bogged down by all the rhetoric and theory, eventually deciding it was all way too out of touch. I didn’t need another book on white male capitalist heterosexist patriarchy. I could just blast X-Ray Spex’s “Oh Bondage, Up Yours.” I remember sitting in class one day listening to my sixtysomething professor discuss the word
bitch.
She explained how there was no male equivalent for the word nor was there was a word in the English language to describe aggressive women other than bitch. I raised my hand and asked, “What about riot grrrl?” She didn’t have an answer so much as a wrinkled look on her face. Then she muttered, “No one really uses that word” and stared back down at her lecture notes. But I wanted to use it and hear other young women use it too.

Around the same time I joined my college’s women’s group. I participated in Take Back the Night and made shirts for the Clothesline Project. At a local middle school I mentored eighth-grade girls, who confided in me about abusive fathers and older boyfriends who went too far. I also started making my own zine, turning cut and paste words into my own photocopied manifesto. Where riot grrrl and rock music in general had failed, I was creating my own little community inside the pages of zine after zine. I didn’t have to be invisible anymore. I didn’t have to feel underrepresented or alienated. I didn’t have to explain myself if I didn’t want to. I could put an article about being pro-choice next to one about hearing my favorite jungle DJ spin at a rave. I could talk about walking through slave castles in Ghana in one breath and making mixtapes in the other. For once I wasn’t restricted to stereotypes or tokenization. I could tell my story and represent the full spectrum of what it means to me to be a black girl.

 

I realize now there must be tons of other girls just like me out there who make their own zines and listen to “white music.” I’m not ashamed of my record collection anymore. In fact, I love flaunting my rock and roll ways. I am a young black woman who calls herself a feminist and loves to shake her hips at sweaty punk shows. Sometimes that makes people uncomfortable. But I like knowing that I’m crashing the all-boys club and raising some eyebrows. In a two-tone world where people are only allowed to act either black or white, I am proudly checking the “other” box. Rock and roll doesn’t just belong to white boys anymore (or, to a lesser degree, to black guys like Bad Brains and Lenny Kravitz). Black women are allowed to do more than rap about our “ill na na” or moan our way through slow jams and gospel songs. We’ve been rocking and rolling since the days of Memphis Minnie and Etta James. Besides, according to
Time
magazine, white kids now buy 70 percent of all hip-hop music, so I think I have the right to a Le Tigre CD.