Speaker 1: Welcome to Jay dot M, a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio Microphone check one to what is this? Welcome to
Speaker 1: Jay dot the Podcast. I'm here with Layah st Clair. Hello, people,
Speaker 1: and agent great and dance. Yes, the five nine assassin
Speaker 1: with the rough neck business. Wait, I'm like, I think
Speaker 1: I cut lay off. What are you gonna say? Book? No,
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, what's up? Book, that's all over you. Okay,
Speaker 1: just just make it sure, work, just make it sure.
Speaker 1: I don't want to cut you off lying. I want no,
Speaker 1: I want no smoke with you. Well a little bit.
Speaker 1: We haven't done it and so out. Sorry, it's crazy.
Speaker 1: I really can't wait to see y'all in person, though,
Speaker 1: I'm happy to see you right in this moment, but
Speaker 1: I feel that it's time. Okay, we've been on the zoom.
Speaker 1: It's time to see one another. I'm going to warn you.
Speaker 1: I think I warned you before, but I'm warning you now.
Speaker 1: I'm going to bite you. I'll take a bite. I'm
Speaker 1: going to bruise. Yeah. It's too much love we have had.
Speaker 1: We have shared too many thoughts and feelings together. Damn zoom.
Speaker 1: That's right now, You're gonna get bit you, Finna get it. Okay,
Speaker 1: you're about to get it. I'm mark because you know,
Speaker 1: this thing is like it's gonna be there for the
Speaker 1: next two weeks. It's gonna go for red to black
Speaker 1: and purple. One. Oh my god, I got a new bruise.
Speaker 1: Like it's fading now, but I got a new bruise.
Speaker 1: I was like, what did I though, that's that light
Speaker 1: skinned thing, that problem when you come from. When did
Speaker 1: this happen? I don't even know. I don't understand y'all's
Speaker 1: skin problems. But I know that because I'm looking at
Speaker 1: this Zoe and I you're you're a fair carmely I'm
Speaker 1: a carmely color. I just said. But I had a mother.
Speaker 1: I had a mother who was was quite light, and
Speaker 1: she had issues with that too. She would literally have
Speaker 1: a bruise and we'd be like, mom, what did you do?
Speaker 1: She's like, I just I get these bruises living. I
Speaker 1: don't know what. I don't know why this happens to me.
Speaker 1: But I'd be like, mone, that's terrible. That thing is perfect.
Speaker 1: You hit something, she said, I did. I don't know what,
Speaker 1: and I do not remember. But and of course, growing
Speaker 1: up because I had like skinned mama as pf okay,
Speaker 1: I was not one of those. Yes, we had we
Speaker 1: put on something block. That's what my mother had to
Speaker 1: have it on or she would peel so a lot
Speaker 1: of it in the eighties and nineties, like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: my mother, my mother did. My mother did. The first
Speaker 1: time you saw a black person burn, that ship blew
Speaker 1: my mind, Like I saw a black girl bubble and
Speaker 1: I was like, I don't even know because the doc
Speaker 1: a dumb chick baby or on to get a better
Speaker 1: more than I was like yes, like sis, You're like,
Speaker 1: sister Melanin is not like completely yes, it's not. It
Speaker 1: does it, it's not. But I didn't know that. I
Speaker 1: didn't know. I got sunburned on my chest one time
Speaker 1: and it completely like it changed the color of my
Speaker 1: chest like forever. I had no idea. I was like,
Speaker 1: why is my chest hurting it? I had no idea.
Speaker 1: I didn't know, not for nothing, but the increase of
Speaker 1: the ozone layer become missing. Black people are more endangered
Speaker 1: than ever and they have no idea that. Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, Actually,
Speaker 1: I will tell you that I didn't have my first
Speaker 1: experience burning in the past five years where I had
Speaker 1: my shoulders, and I was like, oh wait, this is painful.
Speaker 1: What is this um that hurts? I know, White people
Speaker 1: said somewhere laughing at us, like what the funk? How
Speaker 1: Like how y'all didn't know that the sun burns because
Speaker 1: it's whatever did before. And that's how you know that
Speaker 1: the sun is getting stronger and the ozone layers getting weaker.
Speaker 1: That's how you know because all these years, all these
Speaker 1: years in the sun just turning different colors like crazy,
Speaker 1: all some long. I remember some green one time because
Speaker 1: like a like a army green, because they had so
Speaker 1: much chlorine in the water. And we had gone to
Speaker 1: a family reunion and I swim. I swear with my
Speaker 1: cousins all day until the sun went down, and even
Speaker 1: after that, sometimes to three o'clock in the morning, we
Speaker 1: were swimming. I took that bathe in camp Off, Yes,
Speaker 1: bathe and cap. I took my baby and I had
Speaker 1: a line right here from being in the sun. Just
Speaker 1: you remember that you got to do that. Well. I
Speaker 1: never had a swim cap. My mother would just braid
Speaker 1: our hair, but I always wanted to. I always thought
Speaker 1: that any it ain't never worked. Caps. Moms loved them
Speaker 1: a little bit more and when you put it on
Speaker 1: a hurt. It hurt, and then you'd be mad because
Speaker 1: you were to do all that pain to put it on,
Speaker 1: and then your hair still wet. It's like still wet.
Speaker 1: You ain't missed nothing. Changing colors like that, you know,
Speaker 1: changing to some green person because of the chlorine in
Speaker 1: the water, Like deep that's on the skin. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: so good. It was like a you know, Motel six,
Speaker 1: one of them drinks, so they had that. They probably
Speaker 1: had bleaching. What I feel like when we were little
Speaker 1: and we grew up, you know, in the eighties, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. And I think about like black
Speaker 1: women and what black folks period and how we talk
Speaker 1: about color is the most interesting situation. It's like if
Speaker 1: you talk to old people, they got certain ways of
Speaker 1: saying things and talking about things, and talk to our generation.
Speaker 1: I remember that. You know. My husband always says, I
Speaker 1: don't know when the light skinned boys went out of style.
Speaker 1: He was like, but when I was young, that used
Speaker 1: to be like a cool thing, and now it is not.
Speaker 1: And I think to myself, when we were little, we
Speaker 1: had such a terrible view of our skin tone and color.
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean it was just awful, And for
Speaker 1: me and for everybody on this call, you know, and
Speaker 1: having a conversation about colorism is really a deep thing
Speaker 1: because it's like none of us really had to experience
Speaker 1: what it was like on the other side of that
Speaker 1: for real, for real, like to really be young in
Speaker 1: the eighties and have to sit there and have people
Speaker 1: talk about your skin color in such a negative and
Speaker 1: derogatory way. Black people go through such ways that it's
Speaker 1: not even just uh, it's not even exclusively to dark
Speaker 1: skinned folks, and it's not even exclusively to life to
Speaker 1: skinning folks. It depends on the decade. I feel like
Speaker 1: it also depends on the way your family looks, because
Speaker 1: because when I was growing up, I definitely thought I
Speaker 1: was darker than I am because all my family member
Speaker 1: they was lighter, and my dad was really dark. And
Speaker 1: so for me, my grandmother said would say, you know,
Speaker 1: your father's handsome, and he's so black, you know, so
Speaker 1: these things that was normal for people to say, you know,
Speaker 1: for and so in my mind, I'm thinking, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: dark because I'm darker than all y'all, and that's my dad,
Speaker 1: you know, and I'm closer to his color that I
Speaker 1: thought than I was to my mom. It does depend
Speaker 1: on the environment, what was said to you and what
Speaker 1: were the thoughts around those things. Maybe even also to
Speaker 1: like what part of the country you lived in that too,
Speaker 1: But it also has to do with with the time,
Speaker 1: Like like life said that, you know in the fifties,
Speaker 1: Oh honey, you needed to be fried by died ladies
Speaker 1: decide you need to have that that hair popping, you know,
Speaker 1: you had to get pressed baby, and the lighter you were,
Speaker 1: the prettier you were period, That's how That's how it was.
Speaker 1: And if you were on television, you know, you had
Speaker 1: to be a maide. There was really nothing else for
Speaker 1: you to do. I made a mammy, you know, something
Speaker 1: of along those lines, and nanny that was nothing else.
Speaker 1: When was the first time you saw a brown skin person,
Speaker 1: like truly brown on television? Do you remember that? Okay?
Speaker 1: And then here is the night I'm sorry that just
Speaker 1: popped in my head. Yeah yeah, well Sydney Portier was
Speaker 1: it was brown. I for my earliest recollection of black
Speaker 1: people on television would happy like cartoons? Oh god, the
Speaker 1: Tom Jerry of it all. Yeah, I think I probably
Speaker 1: my first I think black people that I oh no, no,
Speaker 1: Sesame Street. That was the first black person. Gordon, Yes, Gordon,
Speaker 1: who is dead still around, Yeah, Mr Gordon. I think
Speaker 1: it was the late night television. Um, you know, trying
Speaker 1: to think because you know TV used to go off.
Speaker 1: TV used to go off. I will tell you with
Speaker 1: something special about Woopy Goberg when on TV for sure,
Speaker 1: for sure? Yeah. Yeah. And she was the lead a
Speaker 1: Beauty Jumping Jack. She was the lead that that is,
Speaker 1: you know, until Ghosts until but she rocked that. She
Speaker 1: rocked that. Yeah. Yeah, she's the star of that movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but she was the first of her I feel like
Speaker 1: that had that look that it was okay, mixed the hair,
Speaker 1: but I still don't even think it be. It's like,
Speaker 1: it's interesting the representation part, right, people get we get
Speaker 1: the representation, and that feels good. But on the playground,
Speaker 1: it's still if you dark you African booty snatcher, it's
Speaker 1: still if you light skin, it's still if you light skin,
Speaker 1: you think you you think you better than everybody, or
Speaker 1: you might end up getting beat up or something just
Speaker 1: showing up light skin. I mean in real life, in
Speaker 1: the way that we we interact with each other, you know,
Speaker 1: or I want to marry this type of person so
Speaker 1: I can have pretty babies, oh my god, or you
Speaker 1: got that good hair? Or you know, are you real
Speaker 1: pretty for a dark skinned girl? Or you know what
Speaker 1: I mean like And these are things that really, in
Speaker 1: my opinion, we still dog whistle these things to this day.
Speaker 1: People may not say those exact words anymore, but it's like,
Speaker 1: come on, we even down to like the natural hair
Speaker 1: movement where it's like when you see a lot of
Speaker 1: the models for natural hair, they got a certain kind
Speaker 1: of natural hair. That curl pattern is the number one,
Speaker 1: not the four right, that's the number one. It's not
Speaker 1: a number four. It's a four y that needs me
Speaker 1: a strong for seed. We're just start That's funny. I
Speaker 1: think as of this year, we are just starting to
Speaker 1: see women in commercials but a little bit of force,
Speaker 1: a little bit, and typically those women are paired with
Speaker 1: white men. God, come on with your truth, jail, and
Speaker 1: nobody got time for listen. I to be to be
Speaker 1: light skinned, and I'm telling you that this is that's
Speaker 1: new for me. I just I didn't even believe it.
Speaker 1: I didn't believe it. This is this is new to me.
Speaker 1: I just found out I'm light skinned. Damn. Like even now,
Speaker 1: to say it out loud, it's just like jagging me up,
Speaker 1: because but what's wrong with this? Because there's I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that there's anything wrong with it. I'm saying I
Speaker 1: really didn't know. I don't know. How could you be
Speaker 1: that delusional? I look at myself. I washed my face
Speaker 1: every day, you know what I mean. I get in
Speaker 1: the shower, I see myself. But I just never thunk
Speaker 1: it just a little bit more diluted than you did before.
Speaker 1: Something is missing, something that's missing. I just didn't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know because all of my well i'll say
Speaker 1: most of my really close girlfriends are brown. Yeah you know,
Speaker 1: I got I got one light skinned homie. You know
Speaker 1: that's been around for more than than ten fifteen years.
Speaker 1: But don't you find color and black folks so interesting?
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting when people see a person and
Speaker 1: they see their parents and they're like, it's no way
Speaker 1: that that child came from these two people, not knowing
Speaker 1: that like this child, they may be dark and their
Speaker 1: child may be light, but they had a like parent here,
Speaker 1: and you know, just the way, yeah, the way the
Speaker 1: whole thing works. Yeah, I've had a couple of friends
Speaker 1: that have been accute, not accused, but you know you
Speaker 1: must be mixed. Oh yeah, what are you mixed with?
Speaker 1: What do you mixed with? Black and black? Black and black?
Speaker 1: Black and black? But then also too, there's always this
Speaker 1: assumption that light skin also means you know, like we
Speaker 1: talked about the hair thing, were just like, I know,
Speaker 1: light skinned people will foresee hair, you know what I'm saying. Like,
Speaker 1: it's like black people have just as all these different
Speaker 1: combinations of the ways that we look that and we
Speaker 1: had to discuss it. But you know, we've been moved around,
Speaker 1: We've been moved around, mixed, added all of these different things.
Speaker 1: We have so much variety to the way that we look,
Speaker 1: you know, what we consider to be black or look black,
Speaker 1: or be black, all of the all those things start
Speaker 1: to come into questions and really like, and we're talking
Speaker 1: about the DNA tests. You know, I had a good
Speaker 1: girlfriend who her test came back. She's like European mad
Speaker 1: as hell, she's mad as hell, but she black black girl.
Speaker 1: And you know, once you get into those type of percentages,
Speaker 1: you could you can look at yourself as being quote
Speaker 1: unquote bi racial. At that point, you feel me then
Speaker 1: there's some people who just identifies black, you know, identify
Speaker 1: or I'm black, and and that you might look at
Speaker 1: them in their face and their face is so light
Speaker 1: that you wouldn't necessarily immediately say, oh, that person is
Speaker 1: is black. You know what I'm saying is so I
Speaker 1: just think we we we have to be able to
Speaker 1: get to this point where we really embrace all of
Speaker 1: the ways that we can look at all the ways
Speaker 1: that our beauty looks, because I don't think that we
Speaker 1: even keyed into how much diversity there really really is.
Speaker 1: It's not we still always talk in terms of light
Speaker 1: skin and dark skin. You've got light skinned people, You've
Speaker 1: got dark skinned people. Because really, Jill, I can see
Speaker 1: how I mean, I'm gonna give you a little bit
Speaker 1: of a break on this. I can see how you
Speaker 1: could have been a little thrown by being called light
Speaker 1: skinned because maybe you felt I'm just brown. I'm just
Speaker 1: like you know, I'm I'm the brown girl trying to
Speaker 1: look at her. I'm looking at her skin. To me,
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to get You're a good friend. That's
Speaker 1: what you're doing being a good friend. I'm telling you,
Speaker 1: how could I how could I not know that sounds
Speaker 1: so nuts even to me, But I just never really
Speaker 1: I thought about it. I didn't, I didn't think about it.
Speaker 1: I was just brown. What was the illest thing somebody
Speaker 1: said to you about your skin tone or about skin
Speaker 1: tone to you that sticks out to your mind? Well,
Speaker 1: as of late, my family is busting on me for
Speaker 1: being light skinned, you know, with with this newfound and
Speaker 1: I'll say new because you know, the television hasn't been
Speaker 1: representing properly in my opinion, in every sitcom, you know,
Speaker 1: the husband is is some kind of brown skin and
Speaker 1: the wife is some kind of light skinned with one
Speaker 1: seed curls, you know, like seriously, no, right, like every
Speaker 1: think of them. Let's go. It was. It's interesting, they're
Speaker 1: trying to make a little change. You just made me
Speaker 1: think of what, Yeah, of the new Gossip Girl with
Speaker 1: with like with Kevin Hart and that beautiful woman I
Speaker 1: don't know her name who was also in them. You know,
Speaker 1: it's having lapide and young girl as a lead. You know,
Speaker 1: seeing brown skinned women being loved is it's like a
Speaker 1: whole new concept, you know. And when when the new
Speaker 1: I'm Viv came, I was mad, right, how dare you?
Speaker 1: How could you do that. She can't even be brown,
Speaker 1: like I'm viv We loved mass well read, but it
Speaker 1: was all hot. We was all a little bit filth,
Speaker 1: a little betrayed by that boment, Like, yeah, crazy, because
Speaker 1: we know vivis brown. She made them brown babies. You
Speaker 1: know she got one light skinned daughter, but her stand
Speaker 1: is brown and her daughter is brown. So how are
Speaker 1: you gonna were all the way in fantasy? I love it,
Speaker 1: But no, she's only saying, she only saying will all
Speaker 1: of us thinking, even everything, None of us understood where
Speaker 1: Denise and Sandra came from. None, we all wonder why
Speaker 1: they were so light. I'm telling about what you didn't wanted. Yes,
Speaker 1: did y'all not come on? No? No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no no never the grandfather or grandmother, the grandfather mother? Yes?
Speaker 1: And and um yes, the Huxtable. What's his name? I
Speaker 1: keep wanting to say Bill, But Joe it was Joe
Speaker 1: Williams was Claire's daddy, And um no, that and close
Speaker 1: father was Brad. I was light, Yes, yes, Russell, Russell
Speaker 1: Russell wasn't as a light as he was. Like we
Speaker 1: let that go. It's okay, y'all, We let because all
Speaker 1: the way down to Rudy and it was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: you're doing a color for Sindough, right, we do that.
Speaker 1: We have a color spectrum in our family. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: have a friend who's who's twin sisters. One is light,
Speaker 1: one is dark, Pierre for nothing. My father is one
Speaker 1: of nine and my grandmother was as dark as his
Speaker 1: background we're looking at. But he is lighter than jail,
Speaker 1: you know. So it's kind of like that's why I
Speaker 1: was saying earlier about the beauty and black and what
Speaker 1: we can make. And people are so even we get
Speaker 1: confused as to what we can do. Right, you gotta
Speaker 1: give it to the one who do it, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm meaning, like so many flowers in the garden.
Speaker 1: So I think even when you talk about TV, right,
Speaker 1: And we had this conversation with my daughter was talking
Speaker 1: about movies that she was looking forward to, and like
Speaker 1: people who are casting for these movies that she's looking
Speaker 1: forward to. So there are several movies that are coming
Speaker 1: out that are in the works and she's just like,
Speaker 1: if they cast that person and who with light skinning
Speaker 1: curly here, I'm gonna lose my mind. And so it
Speaker 1: caused this conversation in my household about colorism. And it's
Speaker 1: my thirteen year old who was talking about it, and
Speaker 1: she tried to explain to my husband. She was like,
Speaker 1: you know, Dad, the problem is that, you know, not
Speaker 1: that people don't see beauty, she said, but there's so
Speaker 1: many dog whistles. Basically, when they do cast our skinned
Speaker 1: women's people, they cast him in these ways that make
Speaker 1: them look aggressive, angry or you know. And it's gotten
Speaker 1: better over the years, but it's like and he he laughed,
Speaker 1: and he said, you know what, it's funny because they
Speaker 1: talk negatively to men about being quote unquote light skin.
Speaker 1: They're not looked at as manly. He was like, whereas
Speaker 1: when people talk a dark skinned man is always presented
Speaker 1: as a really strong character. And the game in the Jam,
Speaker 1: remember that it was like light skins out right, or
Speaker 1: or even New Jack City, because I always tease Christopher Woden,
Speaker 1: you know, and about that whole you know, the the
Speaker 1: juxtaposition between him and him and Snipes and so you know,
Speaker 1: and we were talking about that and see my daughter, right,
Speaker 1: and my daughter broke it down. She said, the reason
Speaker 1: why that is, dad, is because it all goes back
Speaker 1: to black women. She's like, light skinned black women are
Speaker 1: considered more feminine, more so off, more beautiful, she was like,
Speaker 1: and you know, in the world of television and media,
Speaker 1: she was like, and so when you have a light
Speaker 1: skinned man, his features are considered softer, more feminine. So
Speaker 1: she was like, so this is why this happens, and
Speaker 1: how how light skinned men get um, you know, portrayed
Speaker 1: as being softer and being not as strong, she said.
Speaker 1: But think about how that looks for women, she says,
Speaker 1: So when dark skinned women are presented in media, and
Speaker 1: she then they're they're presented as more masculine, less feminine,
Speaker 1: she said, And this plays itself out in the real
Speaker 1: world in a very real way. So you get dark
Speaker 1: skinned girls who are punished more in school, you get
Speaker 1: dark skinned girls who are considered more aggressive, you get
Speaker 1: she said. So this is really important why we have
Speaker 1: to be clear on the way these messages are sent
Speaker 1: to us about our skin color. And she was like,
Speaker 1: in media, and my husband's mind was blown. He was
Speaker 1: just like, Oh, won't they do it those I know
Speaker 1: one of the actresses, and she's probably excited about that.
Speaker 1: I know, I was excited about to see her, was
Speaker 1: Dominique fishback seeing her and uh Judas and the the
Speaker 1: black Besidah, and that they had the love and the
Speaker 1: respect and the banter, the intelligence. That was a really
Speaker 1: lovely way. I mean. And and that's a girl who
Speaker 1: looks like your girl. She looks like you and she myself,
Speaker 1: she's beautiful. Yeah, yeah, I love that. That was that
Speaker 1: was on point. That was the point when he was talking.
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, yeah, I feel like she beat
Speaker 1: but no, this is only the one of the twins.
Speaker 1: We'll be back after the break. Let's think about this.
Speaker 1: Most of the successful black men that you know, oh
Speaker 1: here we go, their wives are typically light skin Yeah.
Speaker 1: Only Denzel, Thank you, Denzel, thank you, saying well, sam
Speaker 1: thank you, saying well, thank you, thank you, Samuel. Look,
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like I'm I'm a trader on
Speaker 1: my team because I have I do. I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm a trader on my team. I'm finding out I'm
Speaker 1: light skinning, and I'm like, oh man, wow, I've always
Speaker 1: had an affinity to brown skinned women. Those are the
Speaker 1: ones that I seek out at at the party. Those
Speaker 1: are the ones that I ended up hanging out with
Speaker 1: that realize because I wanted to be that. So I
Speaker 1: was you know, you know, attracted to those kinds of
Speaker 1: friends because they were they were brown. I never considered
Speaker 1: it until I looked at my best friend, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: And I looked at you know, the girls that I
Speaker 1: will hang out in high school or whatever, and I'm like, oh, snap,
Speaker 1: you know it has been well. I mean, like I said, man,
Speaker 1: my girlfriends, my cousins will be like, you know, they
Speaker 1: walk in the room, ain't nobody said a word to
Speaker 1: him like, oh, she's stuck up. So this is the
Speaker 1: eighties and nineties when we're growing up, so you you
Speaker 1: probably definitely internalized some of that, thinking I have a
Speaker 1: better chance of making a friend with a girl who's
Speaker 1: not light skinned because she's gonna think she better than me,
Speaker 1: or she's gonna be stuck up, or she's people were
Speaker 1: thinking Jill was thinking that she was better than them
Speaker 1: because she was a shot sitting around like why y'all
Speaker 1: don't like me? Exactly? I don't understand what's happening here.
Speaker 1: I don't like and you think you belt tea what
Speaker 1: you mean? Yeah, I don't understand this. And and the
Speaker 1: conversations that grown up has had about babies. How about
Speaker 1: that look at the ears they don't know how doctor,
Speaker 1: they're gonna how it donna get Yeah, but that wasn't
Speaker 1: necessarily like yeah, not like that. It's a bad thing.
Speaker 1: It's just like you you can see how dark you know.
Speaker 1: Not We're not bad, it's just our obsession with it
Speaker 1: with color. Why why is this even a conversation. Let
Speaker 1: me tell you something. You give me a fat five
Speaker 1: brown skinned baby, I'm done. I'm in for the day.
Speaker 1: Allow you, sweet wonderful thing. I don't know, I haven't
Speaker 1: offinate fix Listen. It's real, it's real. I have an
Speaker 1: affinity to to brown skinned babies and brown skinned people.
Speaker 1: I just do. I don't want to tell you. And
Speaker 1: my my dude is light skinned with freckles, is he?
Speaker 1: I know it's a shock to me too, and some
Speaker 1: of the most I hate to say this, but you
Speaker 1: know what about the other the other theory too, about
Speaker 1: how light skin folks sometimes how the biggest mouth, which
Speaker 1: is why sometimes some of our biggest I need to
Speaker 1: throw the questionnaires in the game. Do y'all think it's
Speaker 1: a little bit of survivor's guilt? I hate to say,
Speaker 1: this is a little bit of the house privilege, where
Speaker 1: you feel like you cane a little bit more empowered
Speaker 1: than the thing. I just never thought about it, and
Speaker 1: I never thought about my skin color. I didn't think
Speaker 1: about it. But you've definitely seeing other people. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're looking at the people around you thinking, I mean,
Speaker 1: you gotta I mean, haven't thoughts about that though, like
Speaker 1: how it played out in front of you? Though, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Yes, for sure. Mostly I
Speaker 1: thought about who was pretty and why, you know, who
Speaker 1: was handsome and why, because even it was to me,
Speaker 1: I wasn't. Look. I was in North Philly, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: we all broke, we all here, we're all trying to survive.
Speaker 1: I ain't worried about color because we're all black open here,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. I just didn't. It didn't
Speaker 1: occur to me when you got in the world about
Speaker 1: color like it is either we're black, we're black, we're
Speaker 1: everybody here black. But I'm telling you, I noticed when
Speaker 1: my mother worked. My mother works the secretarial pool for
Speaker 1: many many years, like an administrative assistant. She worked in
Speaker 1: a several law firms, and back in the eighties, y'all
Speaker 1: remember how you know, cubicle situation and everybody big area
Speaker 1: where the cubicles are and you know the offices are
Speaker 1: behind it, and real a d story. You walk in
Speaker 1: the receptionists is light skin, right first person. All of
Speaker 1: the people whose cubicles are closest to the front, light skin,
Speaker 1: you walk further to the back, dark skin. It's like
Speaker 1: everywhere I turned as a kid, I saw colorism, and
Speaker 1: even now DC it couldn't have no choice because it
Speaker 1: was a class thing too at some point, a class thing,
Speaker 1: a color thing. And even still you gotta figure as well,
Speaker 1: like I'm gonna earlier, like instances of education for us
Speaker 1: as black folks happened to the kids who were the
Speaker 1: black children of slave masters. They were the ones that
Speaker 1: were taught to read those they were the ones that
Speaker 1: had that went back to what I was saying whispering
Speaker 1: to you that I didn't never a little comfortable, I
Speaker 1: was gonna say when we talked about revolutionaries and activists
Speaker 1: and things of that nature, especially we talked about the
Speaker 1: past and a lot of them, see, you know, from education, Alice,
Speaker 1: you know you know what I'm saying. Just it seems
Speaker 1: like would that be one of the reasons that you know,
Speaker 1: I feel a little bit more empowered, a little bit
Speaker 1: more free and maybe because more generational education and wealth
Speaker 1: to access. Yeah, access, because I mean if you look
Speaker 1: at the early colleges and stuff like that, obviously you
Speaker 1: know there's the infamous paperbag test. There's all those different
Speaker 1: things that happened, you know amongst the educated elite blacks.
Speaker 1: W WE DWO boys talked about it a lot. He's like,
Speaker 1: you know, yes, around black folks it matters that I'm
Speaker 1: light skinned, but around white folks, I'm just black, don't matter,
Speaker 1: you know, always dealing with that, you know, that situation
Speaker 1: in terms of y'all just started like this, this this
Speaker 1: growing headache in my head from thinking about how hard
Speaker 1: others have fought to keep us separated and hate ourselves.
Speaker 1: Like this ship is ill and it's and it's it's
Speaker 1: so contagious that it's gotten to the continent and they
Speaker 1: are like bleaching, there's cad. I am. It is very serious.
Speaker 1: Even sometimes when I see, like I follow a lot
Speaker 1: of makeup pages, even though I don't do makeup. I'm
Speaker 1: terrible at it, but I follow the pages. And eventually,
Speaker 1: when you follow a lot of makeup pages, you'll get
Speaker 1: to some pages where it's a lot of where women
Speaker 1: on the continent, and what you notice in terms of
Speaker 1: the makeup style is a lot of heavy foundation. A
Speaker 1: lot of times it's very light. Yes, it's like it's
Speaker 1: a little which is the the whole ashy song? You know,
Speaker 1: you can't be classy if you make up ashy. You
Speaker 1: know that's a that's a thing. I'm come getting under
Speaker 1: the I'm I'm on my way under the table. It's
Speaker 1: it's a whole song. It's like big on take top,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. I'm sorry to choke poof
Speaker 1: be Gone. You make them too strong? That's the lyrics
Speaker 1: to song, Yes, be Gone make them too strong? You
Speaker 1: make them too strong. That's the those of the lyrics.
Speaker 1: You can't be classy if you make up ashy. Like listen,
Speaker 1: shout out to Rihanna right now for creating colors that
Speaker 1: actually worked with all of our skin tones. Yeah, for long,
Speaker 1: you know, there would be that ashy color, particularly with
Speaker 1: brown skin women. And now at this point it's like
Speaker 1: it's a choice. You're you're you know, trying to be lighter.
Speaker 1: I noticed when some people do my makeup that they'll
Speaker 1: make me lighter. And I'm like no, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's not what I want. Don't do that to me.
Speaker 1: I'm not Let's talk about Instagram filters and I'm just
Speaker 1: here to be a black woman in the ball. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm here for that. I didn't I don't this the
Speaker 1: other stuff. Listen, they'll shoot me just like they shoot you.
Speaker 1: Please believe it. But yeah, let's I've told let's talk
Speaker 1: about filters on social media. That's a big deal. Girls,
Speaker 1: all across black, white, whatever, they will use a filter,
Speaker 1: do you know. I'm guilty, but we all have used
Speaker 1: a filter. But let's discuss how that filter immediately makes
Speaker 1: you lighter. You're about to make me open my ship.
Speaker 1: I'm like those filters. Yes, those filters make you lighter.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be lighter. I don't know what
Speaker 1: she's talking about. Hold on, lord, I gotta. I don't
Speaker 1: mean you just to teach me about the filters on
Speaker 1: the things. Okay, Well, maybe it just it provides a
Speaker 1: glow on the cheekbones and the t zone, you know,
Speaker 1: So that with me, filters on Instagram, Instagram, on Snapchat
Speaker 1: and all that, when they put on you can feel,
Speaker 1: you can feel right here, and you can feelter a
Speaker 1: picture on your regular phone. That's that's an option. If
Speaker 1: you take a photo, you can alter the phone me
Speaker 1: after you take a photo. Yeah, like video, and I
Speaker 1: don't here, I don't know how well. I'm not trying to.
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm not trying to look lighter. Listen. I
Speaker 1: had such appreciation, such an appreciation for my grandmother in
Speaker 1: her skin tone. I thought that was the prettiest thing
Speaker 1: I ever saw in my life every day, every day,
Speaker 1: and I didn't want to. I didn't think outside that
Speaker 1: I could be anything other than what she was period.
Speaker 1: And then you know, I knew for me to like
Speaker 1: it irked me when somebody at school, like when I
Speaker 1: was a kids, when somebody in school did not see
Speaker 1: the brown skin beautiful girl, when they didn't see her,
Speaker 1: that irked me. I'm like that that's pretty, but automatically,
Speaker 1: if you were light skinned with long hair, you were
Speaker 1: already you know, you were beautiful, just automatically. And I
Speaker 1: was like, not so much, yeah much, not so much.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't see it, but that I could see.
Speaker 1: I could always see brown. So you never played with
Speaker 1: the towel on your head. You know, it was a shirt.
Speaker 1: It's a shirt, mom, was a shirt, yeah, mom, shirt, Mom, yeah,
Speaker 1: cross in the fan, Yeah I was. I was Susie
Speaker 1: from Soul trained um with her, the lady with the
Speaker 1: long long hair, Yeah, the Asian lady with Sometimes I
Speaker 1: would put like a little a little scrunch you on
Speaker 1: it too, fancy scrunchy design, because being a black girl
Speaker 1: is vicious. It is a hard situation to be a
Speaker 1: black girl and to look at your skin and your
Speaker 1: hair and actually in your gut and your conscious and
Speaker 1: your subconscious feel that it is beautiful and it is
Speaker 1: the most beautiful and and I just can't sit here
Speaker 1: and pretend that, even though things have gotten better, that
Speaker 1: that wasn't a huge part of my growing up. It
Speaker 1: just was. My mother said, I don't know, did you
Speaker 1: get the I ain't buying you know, white dolls. Oh no,
Speaker 1: we weren't allowed to have like we were not allowed.
Speaker 1: I was not allowed to have white dogs. Yeah we know.
Speaker 1: My barbie wasn't black. I had a Barbie. Oh no,
Speaker 1: the my child, my cabbage passed dolls. I mean I
Speaker 1: had dark skin, and cabbage passed dogs to me too.
Speaker 1: My mother was bad. What I told you. I borrowed
Speaker 1: my girlfriend's cabbage friends down all the babysit and take
Speaker 1: it back. She had a carriage and everything. It was great,
Speaker 1: it was it was enough for me. I didn't have
Speaker 1: the cabbage patch am. I just had. I just had
Speaker 1: and some clothes, clothes, you know, I needed. I needed
Speaker 1: clothes for me. It's why what? And I enjoyed my
Speaker 1: life And now you can buy the Cabbage Patch Company
Speaker 1: if I want to, if I want to, if I
Speaker 1: want to. Growing in the guard and sorry, I just
Speaker 1: thought about the sock. It was rough. I strove, if
Speaker 1: that's the right word. I just never wanted to be
Speaker 1: one of those girls. They urged my soul were getting
Speaker 1: to it. They I never wanted to beat that. They
Speaker 1: bothered me so round, thinking that you're so cute because
Speaker 1: you light skinned with hair. That just urged me, like
Speaker 1: are you funny? Are you cool? Do you have a personality?
Speaker 1: The do you know? What are you into? You know,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you know, this girl walks in
Speaker 1: and everybody's like, oh she she So the anxiety being
Speaker 1: viewed that way, yes, the anxiety you felt from being
Speaker 1: viewed as a light skam girl and how people thought
Speaker 1: that that what that meant made you go so hard
Speaker 1: in the opposite direction that girl. But wait, so I
Speaker 1: gotta even deeper question because I know Jill. A lot
Speaker 1: of times people confuse this video girl for you, and
Speaker 1: she that's who she is, That is the perception of her.
Speaker 1: Is that why you get mad when people ask are
Speaker 1: you the girl in the Glamorous Life video? Because the
Speaker 1: way that she's prose in the video, she is the
Speaker 1: light skinned girl that don't want to talk to nobody,
Speaker 1: and she stuck up into I'm sorry, I just went
Speaker 1: real deep, but I was just cious, well that that's
Speaker 1: a character that you know, I don't I don't care for. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get it. I know I asked, But I've
Speaker 1: always been in that, you know what I mean. So
Speaker 1: there's times when like even Hazel Rochelle is I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's because she's life, you know, because she's
Speaker 1: you know, a singer or successful or whatever. You know,
Speaker 1: she's got an air about her that irks me. But nonetheless,
Speaker 1: that's that's not my job played your character. It's my
Speaker 1: job to play the character, you know. So yeah, even that,
Speaker 1: like I just never on a new platform. I'm just
Speaker 1: saying I just wanted to shout that out was another platform,
Speaker 1: you very much, and we just got picked up for
Speaker 1: a third season. Yes, I mean yeah on two TV shows.
Speaker 1: That a time girl that way. She works hard for
Speaker 1: her money, so you've got to treat her right. Come
Speaker 1: more on, somebody, Lord, let me manifest multiple streams of income. Listen,
Speaker 1: come on, come on, Lord. We come to you as
Speaker 1: humbly as we know how, and we asked that you
Speaker 1: put multiple streams of income into the pockets. So these
Speaker 1: here black in man, just because we like skin, not
Speaker 1: just because not just because we like skin? Can we
Speaker 1: get it for the brown and the browner and the brown?
Speaker 1: I will play an angel or devil. Lord, thank you
Speaker 1: to the table. I quit you all day. You can't
Speaker 1: quick you can you can't quit me. I'm I'm in here.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, we're twenty years and a't ain't nobody going nowhere.
Speaker 1: Were twenty nowhere. I ain't going nowhere. We're gonna take
Speaker 1: a quick break and then we'll be right back. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, I really feel like you just figured me out.
Speaker 1: Do you figured that I never really put together like
Speaker 1: your business animosity? Because I don't. I never wanted somebody
Speaker 1: to judge me based on what they thought you know,
Speaker 1: I don't like that. I don't like boxes. I hate them.
Speaker 1: I hate them. See if you want to sometimes a
Speaker 1: motherfucker if I have to be you know what I'm saying, Like,
Speaker 1: there's differ I think that's all three of us, don't
Speaker 1: We don't want to like like that box. Because that's the
Speaker 1: thing that's the problem with colorism. It's boxes. You're automatically
Speaker 1: this or that. If you're if you have if you're
Speaker 1: a brown skin girl with natural hair, you automatically smell
Speaker 1: like shade butter. You might not use that. You might
Speaker 1: use something completely different, you might not. Yeah, but let
Speaker 1: me just say that all being a sister who was
Speaker 1: a little in the middle a cormel if you will,
Speaker 1: that's when it all boils down to. That's what all
Speaker 1: boils down to. The hair. See, that's what you can't
Speaker 1: talk about colorism. What iout talking about the hair because
Speaker 1: you said something right there. Because for me, if I
Speaker 1: wear my hair natural, it's hay queen. You know what
Speaker 1: I mean. You wear your hair straight. You don't get that.
Speaker 1: But let me say this, and and and the conversation
Speaker 1: of the day, A lot of conversation of the day
Speaker 1: is about respectability and we're talking about colorism. But like
Speaker 1: I said, if we extended into stuff like hair in aesthetics, right,
Speaker 1: you started talking about that, that whole idea of you know,
Speaker 1: what is professional, what looks a certain way? And if
Speaker 1: you associate straight curly hair with light skin right at
Speaker 1: some point, but now anybody can have that look, so
Speaker 1: it may not be light skin, but it comes from
Speaker 1: those thinking that thinking of what is you know, what
Speaker 1: is adjacent to white and what that and that being
Speaker 1: you know, more acceptable, that being more beautiful, that being
Speaker 1: beautiful natural wig even though you have your own natural
Speaker 1: foresty going on under here, but you like, I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's gonna be acceptable to see you, right,
Speaker 1: to make it a little bit more acceptable, a little
Speaker 1: bit more quote unquote approachable, more beautiful, and just it
Speaker 1: the hair situation, I think we can't fairly talk about
Speaker 1: this and unless we talk about the hair part too,
Speaker 1: And like I said, the respectability aspect and what is
Speaker 1: the more palatable version of the black woman that people
Speaker 1: can you know, that they feel is representing and doing
Speaker 1: the right thing and being the type of black women
Speaker 1: that we want other people to perceive black women as.
Speaker 1: Because that's where it comes that's where the colorism thing
Speaker 1: came in with my mom's job. It's like, oh, the
Speaker 1: most palatable black woman for us is this light skin
Speaker 1: when we're gonna put her in the front, so it'll
Speaker 1: be really careful about that. It may not be known,
Speaker 1: but at Jet Magazine, Ebony and Jet, there were no
Speaker 1: brown skinned women in the building. Well his wife and
Speaker 1: in the building the well, if they were there, they
Speaker 1: were cooking. No, I wasn't saying. I was saying that
Speaker 1: he when I visited Ebony and Jet that the headquarters
Speaker 1: in Chicago, I think it's gone and they are dark
Speaker 1: in the kitchen. No, Jill, you find it's it's interesting
Speaker 1: that you said, because I visited too, and they are
Speaker 1: it was. It was no brown skinned women at all.
Speaker 1: And I remember saying that to Mr Johnson, like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's so nice to be here. Is there. We
Speaker 1: we took the whole tour of the entire building. I
Speaker 1: was like, there, it's beautiful brown skin women. You say that,
Speaker 1: I did what he saying. He was like, yeah, but
Speaker 1: I didn't see them in the fashion fare room. And
Speaker 1: then I asked the sister and I was like, are
Speaker 1: there any brown scanned women? She said, no, oh, they
Speaker 1: that white supremacy show. I just man, it is a
Speaker 1: powerful dry I mean, and can I say Angel that
Speaker 1: that term has been used a lot more lately. I
Speaker 1: mean in our news, in my real house, Real Housewives
Speaker 1: of Beverly. No, I'm sorry of New York. Shout out
Speaker 1: to Ebony Kay Williams. We're starting to understand the granddaddy
Speaker 1: of it all. But think about it when we get
Speaker 1: dressed up to go somewhere, and I am absolutely wholeheartedly
Speaker 1: guilty of this. There is a wig involved, you know,
Speaker 1: there is some kind of hair involved, whether it is
Speaker 1: you know, I prefer to have some braids or you know,
Speaker 1: some some bolocks or not even those, but you know,
Speaker 1: there's so many different kinds of braids. I prefer that
Speaker 1: to have that. But I also enjoy, you know, wearing
Speaker 1: my wigs too. Now the gag that I cannot do
Speaker 1: a straight wig, I can't do. I can't. It has
Speaker 1: to look like black girl hair. Now, I've seen that
Speaker 1: that's not saying in the nation, and why I wanted
Speaker 1: to appreciate it. It It was like a nice little kink
Speaker 1: in the curl. It has to be, you know, whether
Speaker 1: and I got a lot of flak for that. They
Speaker 1: were like, why you got up? Oh yeah, why she
Speaker 1: got on that hat, you know, which is what I
Speaker 1: call wigs anyway, hairts because it ain't my hair. It's
Speaker 1: a hat for my purpose, you know. In The Winner,
Speaker 1: I wear a scullet. You know what I'm saying. Decision
Speaker 1: What was the decision process though, Jill and wearing the
Speaker 1: wig versus your real hair, like your hair, and like,
Speaker 1: what was the why? I'm just curious. Up number one,
Speaker 1: I got a lot of damage in my hair from
Speaker 1: the other TV show that I was shooting. We did
Speaker 1: a lot of cooling back, a lot of pulling back
Speaker 1: because I didn't want heat in my hair, so we
Speaker 1: pulled her. And by the time I got to Nationwide,
Speaker 1: I was like, I don't know, I don't, I don't,
Speaker 1: I don't, can't pull nothing else back. I'm trying to
Speaker 1: hold on the Mommy said just right, yeah, yeah, we're not.
Speaker 1: We're not gonna do this. In site, I probably would
Speaker 1: award different one, but you know, it was what it
Speaker 1: was at the time, and I liked it, and honestly,
Speaker 1: it kind of reminded me. Damn, it reminded me of
Speaker 1: Blair from that's what Blair actually didn't have some good
Speaker 1: reminded me of, you know, I mean, like a good style,
Speaker 1: like she had that bouncy that thing was. It was
Speaker 1: a lot of hair, you know, and that's all the
Speaker 1: Facts of Life girls. Yeah, she was the one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she had you know, I could easily say, oh no,
Speaker 1: Natalie's hair was always popping to please believe it, y'all
Speaker 1: just did. We didn't talk about it. Natalie always whoever
Speaker 1: was the stylist on that show. Actually, let's just talk
Speaker 1: about it because even to whose hair was always looking good.
Speaker 1: But yeah, whoever was doing hair on the Facts of
Speaker 1: really had their life together. The garret ship was always tight.
Speaker 1: Everybody was tight. Everybody was tight on that show, everybody.
Speaker 1: I think the thing about wigs is wigs don't bother
Speaker 1: me in terms of Black women, Like, whatever we decide
Speaker 1: to do with our hair, I'm just talking about our
Speaker 1: politics about hair, like just you know, obviously black women
Speaker 1: can do whatever they want. But it's like, even down
Speaker 1: to the edges conversation, it's just like taming your edges
Speaker 1: because that even that has come up recently. It's like,
Speaker 1: why does everybody's edges have to be tamed. Tell you
Speaker 1: don't understand my way to have it. My edges are
Speaker 1: not tamed wild because a black, a black woman angel
Speaker 1: should not have tamed edges, and he doesn't. My life,
Speaker 1: it's been a it's been a struggle from having boyfriends
Speaker 1: to suggest, like you you're gonna wy, don't you just
Speaker 1: carry a brush, which I've had. I've had at least
Speaker 1: two boyfriends suggest that I carry a brush with me,
Speaker 1: and but so yeah, and so for us who can't,
Speaker 1: because yeah, because I can do, that's jail and that's cool.
Speaker 1: But if you sweat should change. And so sometimes I
Speaker 1: just don't feel like going through the motion. That's an
Speaker 1: extra ten minutes or you're getting ready, and I just
Speaker 1: got a full on headache from that memory. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: It's no, No, it's okay, because somebody is getting the
Speaker 1: as swift retrospectively. And but it's a big The edge
Speaker 1: thing is a big deal, and especially now that girls
Speaker 1: can really play it down like there's some edge and
Speaker 1: B and I say this to the stylist that I
Speaker 1: work with, hair stylists that I work with for for film,
Speaker 1: like I I don't want baby here. There ain't no
Speaker 1: baby here on my whole body. I'm a grown ass woman.
Speaker 1: I got grown here. I don't have baby here, and
Speaker 1: I'll be trying to make those curls. It's so hard.
Speaker 1: It's a squirrels. Is a fight, it still is a
Speaker 1: fight for all of us to be our authentic selves. Now,
Speaker 1: mind you, everybody adds some akoul tramon to their beauty
Speaker 1: because the beauty is still defined by what men like. Still,
Speaker 1: but what white men like, particularly because black men don't
Speaker 1: even know that they are. Your eyes are white men's eyes.
Speaker 1: Like that's the partner sucked me up. It's like, carry
Speaker 1: a brush. I'll beat you with this brush. I'll beat
Speaker 1: you with the brush. How about I'll carry the brush
Speaker 1: to beat you with it? How about that? How about?
Speaker 1: Do you like me or not? Do you like me?
Speaker 1: Do you like your mama? Is the question? Do you like?
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe their mama was, you know, permed and you know,
Speaker 1: getting her hair fried every Sunday. You know, it's just
Speaker 1: about the rest of your We're carrying the stuff from
Speaker 1: the fifties and the forties and the sixties and the seventies.
Speaker 1: We're still we're still carrying this stuff and that we
Speaker 1: didn't start really wearing our hair until the seventies. That's
Speaker 1: that's something, you know, that's somebody's lifetime. And then everything
Speaker 1: about they were scorned. You know, these rebels, these these
Speaker 1: revolutionary saying it in such a negative way. You know,
Speaker 1: we're still we're still fighting to wear our hair to
Speaker 1: work girl. And then there's clearly there's the internal fight.
Speaker 1: That's the fight because I'm I've just been in therapy.
Speaker 1: My god, I don't think it's not about myself. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much. Friends. I just had to tell my
Speaker 1: girlfriend the other day who was scared to take her
Speaker 1: braids out because she got to be seen on her
Speaker 1: zoom and like her real I was like, what do
Speaker 1: you We can't do. We can't be thinking about them
Speaker 1: like that. No more. Like I think about it sometimes
Speaker 1: when I'm watching the makeup tutorials and I see girls
Speaker 1: contour so hard that nose down, that comment is just
Speaker 1: like wow, it's just so many little things that we
Speaker 1: do that kind of keep driving home you're not. Your
Speaker 1: beauty is not. Everybody else is trying to be like
Speaker 1: us all the while. It's crazy. It's like we're trying
Speaker 1: not to be like us, and they're trying to be
Speaker 1: like us, what, Yeah, it's it's a rough one. I
Speaker 1: didn't really give myself a bridge because I don't have
Speaker 1: no bridge. I just got a little I don't know
Speaker 1: what this thing is on my face. You know. They
Speaker 1: used to ask me in elementary school. They used to
Speaker 1: ask me how did I breathe? Because it's that flat
Speaker 1: right here between your little so they'd be like, how
Speaker 1: you how you breathe? As I said, I'm congested right now. Yah, Well,
Speaker 1: I got the opposite. I got my daddy's nose. I
Speaker 1: have a giant nose, and my nostrils are always flaring,
Speaker 1: and so I've always been so for me, the giant
Speaker 1: you're talking, I don't see that. I'm seeing the flare.
Speaker 1: Before that she said that, I was like, I might
Speaker 1: have seen the flare, but that's okay. We must accept
Speaker 1: from your nose to caress one's nose. It's all beautiful.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful, I mean, but we just don't, like I said,
Speaker 1: it's just a little ways. I used to the internalized
Speaker 1: fight about the way, about the way that we look
Speaker 1: at our obsession with that, about our complexions, about our features,
Speaker 1: about our hair, and it's there's a constant fight with everything.
Speaker 1: And so to me, again, if we don't really look
Speaker 1: at that and pay attention to it, then we don't
Speaker 1: realize is how much we heavily police ourselves as black women.
Speaker 1: Before you even think about how we're thinking or what
Speaker 1: we do. We're policing the way we look. We're policing eggs,
Speaker 1: you know, just just how we present in the room,
Speaker 1: from the from the hair to the features to want
Speaker 1: to make sure we're heard and not just looked at.
Speaker 1: That's right, It's like we're trying to be heard. I
Speaker 1: don't want to be distracted because you don't know what
Speaker 1: this is and you want to touch this, and uh,
Speaker 1: it's just like the it amazes me what, you know,
Speaker 1: how much we have to think about every single thing
Speaker 1: and how we're being watched all of the time, critiqued
Speaker 1: all of the time. There is this little meme on
Speaker 1: TikTok that was going around and the sound said black
Speaker 1: people are never lonely because there's always a white person
Speaker 1: all up in our business. And it's like and what
Speaker 1: it did was show black people chilling doing nothing and
Speaker 1: then focusing on a white person somewhere in the background
Speaker 1: staring at them. And it's the funniest thing. But it's
Speaker 1: like profound because that it makes you think about that
Speaker 1: term the white gaze and how we are obsessed with
Speaker 1: the white gaze, Honie, that white gaze, baby, baby, and
Speaker 1: you got to be pushing back at that on a
Speaker 1: consistent basis, on a consistent basis. It's one thing we
Speaker 1: did not always go win. You're always you're not. You're not.
Speaker 1: You're not you're not because you've been You've been living
Speaker 1: with it and perpetuating it longer than you've been pushing back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, so you're better at perpetuating it than you
Speaker 1: are at not so pushing. So so that thing. You've
Speaker 1: been living with that thing a long time, and it's
Speaker 1: generational in the past. Now listen, I remember perming my
Speaker 1: hair because I had I had purmed my hair for
Speaker 1: the most part of my life because my hair my
Speaker 1: cousin was a hairstylist, and you know, when she was
Speaker 1: in school, I was a guinea pig, so I had
Speaker 1: all the styles. I had to jerry girl, I had
Speaker 1: to snap back, I had, I had the lop sided diagonal,
Speaker 1: I had it all. She she she hooked me up
Speaker 1: on a constant basis, shout out to day. But when
Speaker 1: after I shaved my head in college because I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't want this, I don't I don't want this.
Speaker 1: And that's when my grandmother came in the house with
Speaker 1: my hair cropped, and my grandmother told me to get
Speaker 1: out of her sight. I was not ready for that.
Speaker 1: I was not ready for that. And I also was
Speaker 1: not ready years later when I purned my hair because
Speaker 1: I felt like and I just felt like and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, I was so fine, Oh she we
Speaker 1: gotta allow space for and for that either that bothered me,
Speaker 1: it made me feelable. Yeah, but that's when grandmother's I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: I understand that that, but now you understand, like our
Speaker 1: grandmother's a whole human beings from a certain time, and
Speaker 1: we're told about their beauty as well. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean think But but it's the feeling how it makes
Speaker 1: you feel in that moment when you when you're when
Speaker 1: you're getting in touch with your authentic self at that
Speaker 1: time in your life, and and your elder is rejecting
Speaker 1: that even even though you know you know why, you
Speaker 1: know why, but this is a feeling. But it makes
Speaker 1: me sad, honestly when I see it happening now in
Speaker 1: the world to our to our girls and our women
Speaker 1: when they are just trying to get in touch with
Speaker 1: whoever their authentic self is and they get told, no,
Speaker 1: that's not professional, No that's not this. No you're not
Speaker 1: a queen if you look like that. No you're not
Speaker 1: so and so. No you don't look neat, No you
Speaker 1: don't look you know. It's like I get really that
Speaker 1: hurts me because, like I said, as black women were
Speaker 1: being watched and judged and critiqued so much, if you
Speaker 1: can find that moment where you say I don't want this,
Speaker 1: and then you get in touch with something that you
Speaker 1: do want, you can look and you can look at
Speaker 1: yourself and say yes, so you know what I mean, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I think I think you should be able
Speaker 1: to do that. I think you're able to do that
Speaker 1: and go with that, go with that feeling it. You
Speaker 1: can't change your skin tones. It is. And I tell you,
Speaker 1: if you feel like you can't be appreciated, or if
Speaker 1: you choose to wear your hair the way you wear it,
Speaker 1: if you choose to appreciate your skin, and I hope
Speaker 1: you do. You know, whatever uh complexion you are brown
Speaker 1: skin sister, and you feel like, you know, you say
Speaker 1: whatever complexion and go brown skin, sister, I'm brown, I know.
Speaker 1: But just and if you if you black, you brown somehow, baby, Okay,
Speaker 1: I got you, all right. So you're saying a general
Speaker 1: browns I'm talking about brown skin girl, no matter how girl,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about brown skinned women. And I mean and
Speaker 1: I don't mean specifically brown, I mean black women of
Speaker 1: all different shades. Real rap, that's what I mean. If
Speaker 1: you feel like you can't be appreciated for all your
Speaker 1: shine and glory, Honeycota Italy. Okay, this girl, just now.
Speaker 1: Look then, my mama was in a sin. I see
Speaker 1: your white women and they didn't see them, watch women.
Speaker 1: All they saw was but listen, but listen more, but listen.
Speaker 1: Listen where am I also in Jamaica? Also in Jamaica,
Speaker 1: Got sore? Where you're appreciated, got darn it? Yes, come
Speaker 1: on and shake her shimmy, yeah yeah yeah. Just this
Speaker 1: for your ego boost to know that this is this
Speaker 1: is a clouded vision of you, and even maybe your
Speaker 1: vision is clouded too. Show to those women that are
Speaker 1: brought it to lightlight. I mean, I know it's controversial,
Speaker 1: but even Tessa Thompson, who was like, I am so
Speaker 1: conscious of my life skating privilege in this situation. Wow,
Speaker 1: it's a thing. Yeah, I haven't reached that place yet.
Speaker 1: I just found out. I was like skinning, I'm sorry
Speaker 1: a few months for me and I'm I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: you're a different kind because you're still in light scan
Speaker 1: but you're still nappy too. So sometimes it's a little
Speaker 1: different in my life. It's it's really interesting to be
Speaker 1: in Tennessee with with natural hair out here. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: response is different. I get called girl often. I hit
Speaker 1: him on when I was in Nashville, white man. I
Speaker 1: was like, wait, white man, I never had I been
Speaker 1: a girl in a very, very long time. But I
Speaker 1: appreciate your compliment. Now get me whatever I'm asking for.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Good one. You ain't here them.
Speaker 1: I don't know he's talking, Tom, but I'm doing don't
Speaker 1: do things differently. I'm not trying to. I'm trying to
Speaker 1: not trying to fight you. I'm trying to educate you. Baby,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm not a girl. On that note, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for listening to Jay dot L today. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much. We enjoy having these conversations. We're always
Speaker 1: like laughing and crying and uplifted and changed, changed just
Speaker 1: a little bit. I like that. I appreciate that. How
Speaker 1: do you eat an elephant? One by it time? Hey?
Speaker 1: Hey everyone, it's producer Eaves here again at the end
Speaker 1: of the episode. And what Asia mentioned about the social
Speaker 1: media filters making skin look lighter. That is an issue
Speaker 1: that people have raised. Of course, there are the overall
Speaker 1: problems of how filters affect self image, confidence, esteem, and
Speaker 1: our perception of beauty standards. But skin tone is one
Speaker 1: thing that is still super relevant and a problem, and
Speaker 1: it goes way back with light skin biases embedded and
Speaker 1: photography and filters since their early days, and it goes
Speaker 1: even beyond skin tone and into Eurocentric beauty standards in general. Yep,
Speaker 1: the trance of white supremacy is strong. I'll drop a
Speaker 1: few lengths about it and about colorism in the episode description. Hi,
Speaker 1: if you have comments on something you said in this
Speaker 1: episode called eight six six, Hey Jill, if you want
Speaker 1: to add to this conversation, that's eight six six four
Speaker 1: three nine five four five five. Don't forget to tell
Speaker 1: us your name and the episode you're referring to you
Speaker 1: might yeah hear your message on a future episode. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening to Jill Scott presents j dot il
Speaker 1: the Podcast. This podcast is hosted by Jill Scott, Laia
Speaker 1: st Clair and Aga Graden Danceler. It's executive producers are
Speaker 1: Jill Scott, Shawn g and Brian Calhoun's produced by Laya
Speaker 1: st Clair and me Eves Jeff Cope. The editing and
Speaker 1: sound design for this episode we're done by Christina Larenger.
Speaker 1: J dot Ill is a production of I heart Radio.
Speaker 1: For more podcast from I heart Radio, visit the I
Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
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