Very rarely do I address digital ignorance being that it’s
so prevalent it’s sort of like an intellectual pandemic. The whole Gabby
Douglas hair thing has really hit a nerve and as an African American woman it embarrasses
and depresses me. I’ve read the articles on Gawker and Essence but I decided to ignore
the media and just chant “Go Gabby!”
as loud as possible but, late last evening while trolling Facebook I was
grossly perturbed by a comment left on a high school friend’s page. My friend
had posted in short a “Go Gabby!” status,
and only a few seconds later someone she knew made a negative comment about Gabby’s hair. My friend addressed
it quickly. Her comment was polished,
articulate and an all-around amazing comeback. I was still pissed, pissed so much I did back to
back comment posts on how I was embarrassed that it wasn’t another race mocking
how Gabby looked, it was us, more specifically
African-American women. Not African-American men who have taken social beatings
for not being loyal to African-American women and no longer considering us
beautiful. Not Caucasians, not Asians,
it was women that had the same skin
tone/shade/color and background of Gabby. Many of these women who could
technically be Gabby’s mother were making fun of her hair. They were slinging
back handed compliments, at first saying Go Gabby but in the same breath,
making fun of her hair which sadly I believe they thought there were doing
something good. We all have that one person, I won’t declare them a friend more
like a frenemy, who will say “Oh you looked great, but you look a little fat in
that dress.” Unfortunately, the art of the back handed compliment is more a
female trait than male trait. In all of my thirty plus years, I have found that
women more specifically, insecure or in the case of Gabby Douglas,
unaccomplished women, have a tendency to believe that granting a compliment to
another woman is a sign of weakness and that rather than let another woman or a
fifteen year old girl bask in glory, they have to negate their positive prose
with a negative remark.
On Thursday night I cried
tears of joy for Gabby Douglas not because it’s the Olympic games, where I get
so emotional for every American win, my
homeboy calls me Team Bucket of Water and not just because we are of the same race.
The tears of joy came when I saw Gabby’s family in the stands, knowing all the sacrifice
that they probably went through financially and emotionally. Training for an
Olympic sport can cause serious wear and tear on families where the entire
inner workings of a family revolve around an opportunity that only comes once
every four years. Many families go into
massive debt, sibling rivalries tenfold and often there is divorce going into
the quest for Olympic gold. Many
Olympians refer to their social awkwardness and family dysfunction as collateral
damage. Although my childhood athletic status was limited to Double Dutch and Redlight/Greenlight,
I’ve watched my fair share of Bob Costas Olympic stories since the 1988 games
in Seoul to reflect. The Costas stories
of these Olympians are all similar, with the theme being perseverance, focus,
discipline, sacrifice and so and so on. I choked up while watching Gabby’s brother
hug his mother before the final score for the Women’s Gymnastics All-Around. In
his glaze I saw an older brother who was nothing but proud for his little
sister. An older brother who was not hugging his mother to soothe her nerves
and doubts. That young man hugged his mother as a way to say “See Mom, it was
all worth it. You see this crowd, you see this energy, and you hear these
chants. This is not just for Gabby, this is for the Douglas family.” Once Gabby
was declared the winner, and what turned me into a red eyed mess was Gabby’s testimony
to God and her sense of humbleness that touched my heart. Here was this
teenager, who was connected to her sport, to herself and to God and she made no
qualms about it. She made me feel immature and I’ll be 32. I
thought of myself at fifteen with my braces, my lack of confidence and my lack
of faith on God and this teenager had inspired and uplifted me. If Gabby
Douglas can give glory then I should too.
After seeing some of the tweets about Gabby’s hair, I
decided to do some research into some of the tweets and in this case, a
profile pic is a thousand worlds. From the poses, to the string of tweets a
majority, I won’t say all, but a majority of these women were less than
physically stellar. What makes me a judge of beauty you ask.
Well, I believe I can give an unbiased account
of what is attractive because I work in a grossly superficial industry and
also my zodiac sign is Libra. Does that make me qualified; I like to think so, specifically
because Libras are known for their love of beauty as well as their diplomacy
but I’m giving an educated opinion based off of my career I’ve had ten plus years
of unbiased capabilities to detect overall attractiveness. What I saw were tweeters that were out of
shape and not that soft on the eyes. From the grammar usage in their tweets, I
also deciphered a lack of a command of written English and not a lot of depth
in their thoughts. Before Twitter, those
thoughts could easily be dismissed as you wouldn’t hear them but in this
digital age, the dumbest people are always the loudest, and in this case, they
have to post their views to social media. So while they mocked this gold medalist, I saw
a cabal of out of shape, low social status, unaccomplished people fueled by self-hatred.
Yep, I went there, we hate ourselves, we hate ourselves so much that you don’t have
to look to the media to do it for us, we are the best at doing it ourselves.
Between blogs, YouTube rants and of course Twitter, you can no longer blame Don
Imus for mocking African American women, if it’s something we do well is
tearing ourselves down. It’s not just
the Olympics, it is everywhere this systematic mental civil war. Nothing breaks
my heart more than to step into a room and receive hostility not from Caucasians but
from one of my own. The stares, the tension, the hostility from strangers that
look like you are not only ridiculous but it can be downright puzzling to my
Caucasian counterparts. The crabs in the barrel exercise is done so well within
the African American community that it has become a spectator sport for us as
well as the majority. The KKK is still around but they no longer have to burn
crosses on our lawns that cost money, it
is cheaper and easier to let us destroy ourselves.
What these fools should
have said was thank you Gabby for not snatching out a weave and fighting in
public like those amazing weave wearers on Basketball Wives. Nor did they
say thank you Gabby for not being on 16
and pregnant, or even better, thank you Gabby for not acting like a mega mean
girl on My Super Sweet 16. What these fools of Twitter would rather do than jump for joy for Gabby is mock a teenager as
if our teenage years were full of professional hair and makeup artists. Grown
women who post ungroomed pictures of themselves, mocking a teen is beyond sad,
it’s abominable. I can’t wait for the Olympics to finish and let the true media
blitz begin. Gaby’s going to hit the
talk show circuit, and rocking those gold medals like “What!” and that perfect wave she does with her hands secretly she’s
saying “Hi hater” all while you walk
to the bus stop, singing “I’m ridin’
around and I’m getting it”.
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