Fat Fashion Fun: It's My Body, and I'll Wear Leggings If I Want To

Frequently, I've seen on Twitter, Facebook, and other places on the internet phrases identical to "Fat women have no business wearing leggings and skinny jeans." For all people who believe this, with all due respect, you're full of shit.

As you well know, I love my skinny jeans. I also ABSOLUTELY ADORE my leggings. They're comfortable, and they're cute. Most of all, I look cute in them!

And just to show you how cute I look, here are a couple of pictures showcasing one of my greatest fashion visions. Ladies, wear your leggings; wear them with pride!

Note: Excuse the cluttered room and box of pads. However, ladies I co-sign Always Infinity with every fiber of my being. |nods|

I wore this dress to my college graduation. I re-appropriated it for a more casual affair.

The dress is from Dots.

Long-sleeved black shirt from Old Navy.

The bracelet is from Ashley Stewart.

This beautiful necklace, like most of my jewelry, is from Claire's and so are the wonderful earrings.

The shoes are the same wedges I wore in a previous post.

Feel free to comment on my greatness!

For Lindsay: Halle & the One-Drop Rule

My good buddy Lindsay asked me about how I felt about Halle's recent comments regarding her daughter Nahla and the so-called "One-Drop Rule." Here is my treatise.

Here is the conversation in question, cited in the March 2011 edition of Ebony Magazine:

Ebony: [Nahla's] father is French-Canadian Gabriel Aubry. Do you consider Nahla to be Black or multiracial? How do you think about it?

Berry: What I think is that that's something she's going to have to decide. I'm not going to put a label on it. I had to decide for myself, and that's what she's going to have to decide--how she identifies herself in the world. And I think, largely, that will be based on how the world identifies her. That's how I identified myself. But I feel like she's Black. I'm Black and I'm her mother, and I believe in the one-drop theory.

There's no set-in-stone way to raise a biracial or multiracial child, and trying to raise a child who is secure and happy is hard enough without having to help him/her work through the confusion that often comes with being biracial or multiracial. I laud Berry for not wanting to place labels on her daughter; however, I have a problem with implementing a practice used by slave-masters to oppress black people in one's parenting.

Of course Nahla's black. Halle's half-black, and she'll undoubtedly identify with her mom's heritage. Also, society will see her as black because she has a mother who self-identifies as such. However, Nahla is also white. Her father is white. It'd be erroneous for any of us, including Halle, to act as if that part of her doesn't exist and that we treat her as if that part of her doesn't exist. How can we ask any biracial or multiracial child to shun any part of her/him?

I can't help but wonder if Halle's seeing her daughter as black has to do with the recent firestorm with her ex and Nahla's father Gabriel Aubrey. I wonder if she's so embittered by their break-up and his wanting more custodial rights that it colors the way she sees her child, that Halle wants to see her daughter as identifying more with her in this custody battle than her father. I wonder if it's a way to make her daughter love the part of herself given by her mother more than the part of her given by her father.

So of course having black blood makes you black; however, that doesn't mean that a child has to choose or be exclusively one race or ethnicity. We have to allow children to choose their own identity, and it shouldn't be influenced by society. If we allowed others to define us, we'll be forever miserable. We have to live this life; we have the right to decide who we are, whether we identify as black or white or multiracial. We have the right to love every single part of ourselves.

Let's leave behind slave practices. Why use the antiquated "One-Drop Rule" to govern our relationships and self-identities, a rule meant to oppress that is still doing so by forcing children to deny a part of themselves?

I don't know everything about Halle's situation, but there is more here than is being said. I wish we would stop operating with worthless and baseless traditions that do more harm that good when it comes to how we relate with each other, how we perceive each other, and how we receive ourselves.

That's my answer, Lindsay, and I'm sticking to it!

Church Observations (Part Two)

I always knew that I was going to do a sequel to my post Church Observations. Let's be real: so much crazy and annoying stuff happens in church that I could write hundreds of posts on it. I've been waiting to write this sequel, gathering information and briefly changing my attention from the service to write these things down lest I forget.

Without any further ado, here's Church Observations Part Two.

Check the rhyme every time.

1.) How are you going to tell me to worship and communicate with God and then keep talking? You're distracting. Shut up, and let me talk to Jesus!

2.) You might be praising God, but you're still a parent. Get your damn kid! You can't bring teenagers to church with you to watch your kid. You can't leave your infant on your seat and have your friends in the row in front of you to watch your kids. Stop it.

3.) Your kid is misbehaving. That kid is autistic. Sit down, and shut up.

4.) You don't know what I've come to do? (You don't know what I've come to do?) You came to clap your hands (your hands). You came to stomp your feet (your feet). You came to do your dance (your dance). I came to sit my ass down (ass down)!

5.) It's unfair to ask and expect women, especially those with DDs, to "leap for joy."

6.) The sound people mess up everything.

7.) Tyler Perry and the black church have made people think any and everybody can act and write and be funny. Sigh.

8.) Why do we need to cut the music and hear the audience sing? Why does that get the worship leader on a high, especially if this is supposed to be about God? Hmm...whatever.

9.) Church litterers are full of shit. You hate when your kids leave their toys all over the floor of your house but you and they can leave church envelopes and gum wrappers all over the floor of the sanctuary?! HAVE A SEAT, SIR!

10.) I can't praise God with your fucking camera in my face! Go tape the choir! Shit.

11.) That's such an upbeat song about murder. Of our Savior. But, hey, do you. |files nails|

12.) So you're just going to keep talking and not listen during church? Rude!

13.) Your homophobia and heterosexism is not cute, and nothing can make me stop listening to your sermon quicker. By the way, you can't and shouldn't be cured of homosexuality!

14.) Your stance on mental health is appalling. People who suffer from depression aren't depressed because they don't have material items. Some people have chemical imbalances. Some people have been raped. Some people have had shitty childhoods. Some people are fighting past and inner demons. Go learn something. Besides, Jesus gave us medication and therapy for a reason. People who are sad about not having material items are usually just sad.

15.) Gospel songs can be so corny some times.

16.) So we're texting in church now? Okay.

17.) So...when do you want to end this song? Any time soon?

18.) By the way, I think this prayer can end now too. I think Jesus understands that you're thankful. You don't have to keep repeating it.

19.) Everyone, going up an octave does not equal singing louder. It doesn't. It doesn't.

20.) Stop talking about things you don't know anything about, such as The Big Bang Theory (the scientific theory not the great television show) and evolution. You're misleading people and telling blatant lies to your congregation that they're just going to sop up and spread. Talk about what you actually know about and leave the deep shit to the more and better educated.

21.) Isn't it funny how a person can catch the Holy Ghost and run around screaming in church and we don't even bat an eye?

Who's ready for Part Three!?

Finish What You Start

On January 31 I finally finished my [insert number here]st/nd/rd/th novel Pacemaker, affectionately known as PM. It's, in my opinion, one of my finer pieces, an establishment of myself as a capable and creative writer.

There was a problem, though. I'm not at all satisfied with the way it ended.

Here's the full story. There was no reason in the world for it to have taken so long for me to end the novel in the first place. I had been working on the novel since June of 2008 and the last six months or so I've sat in the same exact place in the novel, almost at its culmination, for no reason. Because of this, I resolved to end PM by the end of January.

I kept this in mind but it really didn't become palpable to me until January 29th. I panicked a bit; I had procrastinated and needed to get this done. I needed to finally end this novel so I can continue working on The Lie (TL2) and keep thinking about Like. I spent the 30th barely thinking and the 31st writing. By 11:58 on the night of the 31st, I was done, but I wasn't happy. All throughout the day, I had fought finishing the novel tooth and nail, fighting, kicking and screaming. I hated the writing process; I hated the way it ended.

I knew this wasn't right. I remembered the writing process when I ended Smoke in the Midnight Sky (SMS). As sad as it was to end the novel and how personal writing the afterword was, I knew I was writing something I wholeheartedly believed in. I believed I was writing well; I enjoyed writing its end. It was all quality, and it was a work I was, and am still, proud of. This didn't happen this go round.

I found out what was the problem though. I always see advice to writers saying "Don't think; just write" and kept that in mind as I hurriedly finished PM. I, unfortunately, just don't work that way. If I write prose, I have to constantly turn things around in my head before I write or type it out. I need to plan every word a character speaks; I need to visualize the scene; I need to match words to character movements; I must channel emotions into each word so the reader can sense as tangibly as I can.

At the same time, it became less about enjoying writing and more about meeting a deadline. I was racing the clock. I was trying to get it done, and that cramped my writing style. I was trying to figure out why I wasn't writing as well as I have before, and it was because I wasn't focused on the right thing. I was looking at the finish line rather than paying attention to how I was racing.

We writers know that the end product, the finished work of art, is the goal; that's our bread and butter. We can't make money without it; we can't sufficiently reach an audience without it. However, you have to know what kind of writer you are and how you work, accept it and not go against it. We have to meet deadlines but not to the disadvantage and sacrificing of how we perceive our art.

PM is done for now, but I have some editing to do, and this end will not suffice. I know I'm capable of more and better. I owe myself and my readers this. When PM is ready to be done, it'll be done. And this is the way I work. This is the way I write.