MANHOOD TEACHING: depth of respect
The famous French beauty,
Brigette Bardot, is an old lady now devoted to a cause that has nothing to do with beauty, fashion, or show business. The most memorable thing I learned from her was from her confessing in an interview that her beauty was for men or her youth. I can't remember the exact words, but what stayed with me was the apparent dialogue she had with the issues Beauty brings up within a woman famous or not. It seems women's reactions in life revolve around their reactions to men's reactions to sexual and sensual stimulation, and women's reactions of jealousy and resentment from other women towards beautiful women comes from sources I don't quite understand. Judgement circulates around women who are perceived as pretty or beautiful. Fear is heightened around women who are sexy and/or exude sensuality. A A few of the most famous women exuding feline (mysterious) and potent suggestions and sensuality have been
Mae West in her long dresses a hundred years ago, and
Eartha Kitt, who shook the world with her dark skin, cat eyes and the continuous suggestion whirling around her that says, "
If you are smart you'll figure out how to get this pussy, or I'll get you!"
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| Dorothy Dandridge !!!! |
Marilyn Monore, another arousal, captured jealous and judgemental women, horny men, and sophisticated men with the perpetual promise to forever pretend she can be lured into bed naively by what they say, and less by what they do. It didn't matter three men in dresses were prancing about with had hard-ons. She could pretend so well it convinced generations of girls and women to '
play like Marilyn' to get what they wanted. In real life it turned out to be a dangerous game and many women and girls suffered broken hearts, and date rapes in the games men played to get
laid.
Dorothy Dandridge and other Black women in the same era as Marilyn Monroe did not have the cultural luxuries Ms. Monroe had. The culture segregation created in Negro communities set high standards and expectations for their women. There were high tea parties, and debutante balls, sororities, fraternities, the proms, chaperoned dances, social clubs, the Negro YMCA, and church. Those who passed the paper bag test were the upper elite in the Negro communities, and they played a major role setting the standards of etiquette, education, dress, and conversation. There were very specific maxims every Black girl received from their parents, and the communities they lived in. Because communities are seldom generational, as my friend
Juliette Porter pointed out to me today, a loss to identity informs the tragic stories we hear everyday in the '
hood, for example, and on television on those horrid reality shows like
REAL HOUSEWIVES OF ATLANTA.
If one is paying attention to commentary, and comments made in public at distressing news where some Black person did something to '
embarrass the race' you can be sure that is a hint, a starting point for someone to start tracking from those words backwards to the source of Black intelligentsia, elegance, endurance, dignity, assurance, history, and strength of character. It is not that the best of Black American culture disappeared with integration. It changed forms. It lies in wait to be reassembled. It is like the mysterious teachings lost in the invasions that resurfaces in the life and words of a young man or woman a generation, or two later. The words, the old teachings were whispered into the ears of certain children at birth, into the ground of Black landowners, and into the stones who heard and recorded the stories of the best and the worst of our People. The best of Africa did not die on the shores of Turtle Island. It mingled and copulated with the traditions and deep spiritual traditions of the Red People and with the conquerors in such a way it transformed the United States from being copy cats of European culture in the 19th century into a distinct and emulated culture of the 20 and 21st century!
If any song is worth singing let it be sung through our women's lips, and carried out through their wombs we have scorned, and blessed and adorned with prayers and poems. Our relationship with the wombs of our women has trouble reaching the heights of awareness into the realm of the Sacred Feminine because of what we did as men trying to fuck and fuck everything, and what women did for a number of reasons good and bad to their wombs ending births, or using sorcery. - Gregory E. Woods
8.22.12
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| Dorothy Dandridge |
