Being a Black Woman.

It can sometimes feel like an unnecessary weight to me. Being black is super *heavy*. But a black woman? There are everyday microaggressions built within society that try to finagle the individuality of black women into a monolith. The pressure to conform to the foolishness is ridiculous. And if we *do* display certain behaviors, then fingers are pointed at us, lik...see you're just another <insert false belief about black women>.

You must be: Strong! Even when we're weak! And suffering. Complaints equal weakness. Getting help means weakness. And weakness means we're (somehow) less than - "Your grandmother made it through how come you can't?"

You must be: Vulnerable! Even to the detriment of our own Physical and Mental Health! We must shrink ourselves so that others feel big!

You must be: Proud of your blackness!
Aggressively proud!!! We must love, The Good The Bad and The Ugly! Or we hate ourselves and the culture!

You must be: Infatuated with Black history! Never EVER forgetting the HISTORY is slavery!!! Ever. We must read books about slavery, we must watch movies about slavery...and looking to the future means we don't care about what our ancestors did, to get us to where we are! And we hate ourselves and the culture.

You must be: Submissive! To our men! To our children! To our work-superiors! If we are not submissive, the (destructive) assumption is, you're just another one of those "loud-mouth angry black women"! And don't deserve any good things, especially a healthy, loving relationship! Also we don't get to define what submissive means. Be we must BE submissive.

You must be: A caretaker of other folks issues and their feelings...ABOVE OUR OWN! Because apparently, being a black woman means, you are responsible for other people's feelings! Like the "mammy" from olden days! We're supposed to *empathize* with every other cultural issue/problem but when *we* discuss ours, *we* are pulling the Race Card!

You must be: Supportive of (A...L...L) Black Men! We have to love black men more than we love ourselves! Even the ones that have *put* themselves into bad situations because of their OWN poor decisions (that have nothing to do with a white man or a black woman)! If we don't love black men more than ourselves...we hate black men, we hate ourselves and we hate our culture! And we (apparently) don't deserve love.

You must be: Responsible for every action taken within the community! When black men choose to be abusive towards their spouse...it is the black woman's fault. Should have been more submissive!
When black men have sex with multiple women and make multiple babies...it is the black woman's fault. Those thots should not have open their legs. When black men walk away from *whole* families (for whatever) and the sons/daughters grow up wild...it is the black woman's fault. She should have raised those babies better!

You must be: Proud of your coil-y hair and wear it naturally! Wearing our hair bone-straight or in any other style that is not its natural state means you *hate* yourself! And others who look like you.

You must be: Christian! And conform to the societal structure within the church. Practicing any other religion makes you an odd duck and you may be ostracized by the very culture you were born into!

We can't win for losing. It's tedious!!! The weight of the misconceptions. The weight of the stereotypes. The weight of the expectations. From inside and outside the culture. Being a Black Woman? It's a lot!

See, fuck all of that...I just want to be Edith.

Created 12/9/18