@utonomous th💗t

[e-janestudio]

Some recent thoughts on beauty in meatspace

Everyone that says beauty is shallow must not feel the radical difference between being treated like a threat versus a person who deserves respect depending on how they’re adorned. Today, every man that encountered me was nice, almost respectful even. One man happily moved out of the way for me as I passed him on a very narrow side-walk. Still, that niceness also felt like a violence at times. I went to the gas station near my house to buy toilet paper and there were two men in the store as well, and I couldn’t talk to the woman ringing me up in peace because they had so many “nice” comments about my “pretty little head” and how I should’ve worn a hood if I was cold but clearly had a hood but wanted to “be cute”.* I was so uncomfortable that I stuffed my change in my wallet and ran out while dropping a few pennies and dimes. My social anxiety flared up big time and suddenly I remembered the main reason I stopped performing normative beauty is because I am a queer Black woman alone in the world and most cis men scare me and sometimes, when I just want to be a pedestrian, I don’t want negative or positive attention, I just want to be left alone and try to convey that with an unadorned appearance. But when I don’t perform normative Black beauty standards, I get perceived as very masculine and then I’m afraid because people look at me angrily, like they maybe look at many Black men and queer Black women who present masculine everyday.

I’d also like to honestly acknowledge that I like performing beauty, as an extension of softness, because it cheers me up and I’m not that interested in masculinity because I feel like I perform it often out of a fear of femmephobia or in attempt to get a type of respect that men don’t give performatively femme people (not giving femmes respect is a way of acting out femmephobia).

Beauty and softness go together, as they are both things traditionally seen as feminine. It is interesting that both seem like they were not intended for my body (the body of a slave descendant) except in an attempt to please white people/maintain employment, meaning performing them for myself and other Black women and femmes feels powerful. Still, when I go outside and encounter cis men, the power in the gesture disappears, except that I know it hides my queerness and maybe renders me a little less vulnerable in post-Tr*** america. But being beautiful comes with its own set of vulnerabilities. I couldn’t tell any of the men that talked to me today to fuck off for fear of their anger. I am afraid to die and so I am vulnerable and at the behest of the men that can kill me.

The more I think about beauty, the more I feel it is not shallow, it is complicated and nuanced and tied to how many find joy and survive. Also, unfortunately, beauty is often codified, even inside of Blackness, via the way colonization defines our bodies. Ie. colorism

*the men and women referred to are all Black, for clarification. I get tired of qualifying everything with Black in a story esp bc white media doesn’t say “a white woman” or “white man” too often. Blackness is the neutral and starting point in all my thoughts.

[autonomousthot]

A few notes on colorism

1. Adrian Piper notes in "Passing for White, Passing for Black" that lighter skinned ex-slaves were trained in specialized skills during slavery and able to get better jobs after slavery and therefore were able to ascend to the middle class faster/develop their own middle class. Darker skinned ex-slaves were left to labor and domestic jobs. I think that explains why it seems darker skinned Blacks haven't gotten seats at the table so quickly as a whole/as a majority. I also wonder how we fix this obviously historic systemic oppression.

Even in my family, the disparity is obvious. On my mother's side (my light side), I am technically a legacy at Penn, even though my mom is from the projects of southeast DC. I have an ancestor with the last name Claytor (her father's last name) who got a Phd in mathematics there back in the early 20th. c. He had wavy hair and seemingly light skin. On my father's side (my darker side)*, and especially via his last name, I'm probably first generation Ivy League, I'm first generation Master's degree, undergraduate degree and one of the first who really even left the south comfortably.* On my mother's side, my late uncle was also an artist (though he never left the experimenting/learning phase) and had a degree in mathematics, and when he served and traveled to Italy for the military, he came back with a small copy of Rodin's The Thinker. On the other hand, my father (also deceased), while arguably brilliant, dropped out of high school and did night school to get his GED and be an electrical engineer. Although he bought me paintings of Black ballerinas as a child, he also told me Black people don't study art.

2. It is unfair that darker skinned Black people aren't encouraged as much, are policed more (especially in educational spaces) and underestimated. Colorism in America is historic and it affects one's quality of life. For many, it determines how hard they'll have to work to survive. I'm not okay with it. I'm also not okay with how often I am the darkest person in a space.

3. I went to a Barnes & Noble this fall and as I checked out the magazine stands, I began to notice a pattern. Kerry Washington (who I am fairly close in complexion to) was the darkest Black american woman on a cover and every other Black american woman who wasn't light skinned seemed to be her complexion. I've started to notice that on TV women do not get darker than Kerry Washington, with the exception of Michaela Pratt on HTGAWM and Stephanie Edwards on Grey's Anatomy*.

In DC, a friend once told me, "You are the brown paper bag". He was much darker than me and it was summer and I was beginning to tan. I keep a brown paper bag in my studio, so I know he is wrong, I am definitely darker than the literal brown paper bag but his observation was still accurate. In 2016, liberalism totes my complexion as diversity, as inclusive, but liberal media gets a little too excited and all of a sudden we just have a new color line. Now, you don't have to look like Beyonce or Dorothy Dandridge (in hair type and complexion) to be considered beautiful in a mainstream (white) context, but you can't be much darker than Rihanna and they'd prefer if you looked like you could be from "anywhere" and that your hair curls up "nicely" when wet unless you're okay with wigs and sew-ins. It's a problem. We need real Black diversity rainbows that show our RANGE from lightest to DARKEST and also that show an array of phenotypes and it would be really great if we prioritized AFRO phenotypes as the standard, not the exception.

The faces our media prioritizes are the faces people prioritize because they're the faces you see the most ambiently as media permeates our world.

*To clarify: My father's father was very dark skinned and from the Carolinas, his father (my great grandfather) was a sharecropper. However, my father's mother and her whole family were lighter skinned (not one-drop like my mom, but clearly part Indigenous peoples and lighter than the brown paper bag, like my mother's family) and they owned property in DC through my grandparents (who I never met bc my dad was also very old when he had me) until I think the 1970's or 80s. The main difference between my father's mother and my mother is that my mother's family has more white blood it seems. My grandmother (my father's mother) was very proper and my darker skinned father couldn't deal and left home early, starting his life on a very different path. His mother, like my mother, had a failed relationship with his darker skinned father.

*If there are others, I never met them, they are unknown to me.

*please send me more examples if you know of any Black women actresses darker than Kerry Washington.

*Viola Davis is obviously the exception to all of these rules but SHE WENT TO JUILLIARD, meaning she is very excellent and has had SUCH A LONG CAREER BEFORE GETTING HERE (AND BLESS HER)! Taraji P. Henson (also about Kerry Washington's complexion) didn't have to go to Juilliard. No shade to Taraji because her accent sounds like my mom's and she's from DC and I love her. AND IT STILL TOOK TARAJI LIKE 20 years to be famous. She had her breakout role in 2001 in Baby Boy and I saw that movie a million times and even I am guilty of not knowing her name until Empire.

*also forgot to mention that Shonda Rhimes, a darker skinned Black woman, is responsible for most of the darker skinned Black women on television. We are left to constantly do the work for ourselves.

[e-janestudio]

current feelings about the election and life in gen

[e-janestudio]

softness and Black women

softness for Black women is a political act in a world that constantly tries to harden us, to anger and frustrate and confuse us. because the world thinks my body is less worth protecting, less worthy of freedom, of dignity, of agency and that makes me angry, so angry that I worry my anger will give me cancer. softness in the face of all that rage is political, it is an act of survival, of resilience, it is the understanding that you can resist loudly and remain physically soft, intact, preserved, delicate, you can dare to treat yourself like you’re fragile, like you might break, like you need rest and love and care.

[e-janestudio]

Daydreaming 💕

being soft 

breathing

lace as camouflage 

[e-janestudio]

Thot Fantasy Microsite + mix

“Thinking about all the Black femmes who start out in some type of sex worker position and become musicians/artists/thinkers/leaders and how that relates to my own hussle and how beautiful hussleling is esp considering how state oppression makes it hard for Black femmes to make substantial money or money equal to their white and brown counterparts, let alone men, in other types of labor. to refuse the role of domestic worker or secretary and to choose sex work as a way to make your body the source of your income is a radical act esp when the patriarchal (or matriarchal) figures in your life only act to oppress you further, though still inside of this radical gesture there is potential violence, and also many questions of ability and access and historical perceptions of Blackness, but this mix is for all Black femme sex workers and especially the #thots” - Mhysa

[e-janestudio]

The Obvious Problem With Blackface And The Art World's White Gaze

The art world still has a very serious race problem. It's time to start caring.

This just came out. ‪#‎cindygate‬

Thanks to Priscilla Frank at The Huffington Post for doing the issue justice and big up to Elle Perez for going to the museum and photographing the placard <3

– Since encountering the blackface works, Philadelphia-based artist E. Jane has used the hashtag #Cindygate to spread awareness of the racist moment in Sherman’s oeuvre. “Cindygate is an attempt to refuse white contemporary art’s narrative of Cindy Sherman, which until last fall did not include the ‘Bus Rider’ series,” she wrote in an email to The Huffington Post.“Last fall we updated Cindy Sherman’s Wikipedia and added Margo Jefferson’s critique [of ‘Bus Rider’], which has since been updated again and the critique moved to a section called ‘Controversy’ with the art defended by the Museum of Modern Art’s Eva Respini,” Jane added. “Watching someone from MoMA defend Cindy Sherman in blackface really hurt and made me feel they had successfully silenced us. But we refuse to be silenced and #cindygate as a hashtag holds the conversation together. It is a place to keep the perspective that says showing blackface as art isn’t OK.”

To E. Jane, this explanation, rather than serving as an admission of offense or an apology, offers only a mitigating defense. “The fact that Cindy Sherman could claim youth as an excuse to perform in blackface, claiming, ‘I was 22, naive and unaware of potential offense in these characters,’ allows for racism that hides its hand,” she said. “Art institutions often allow this, like in the case of Joe Scanlan’s ‘Donnell Woolford’ performances, Eleanor Antin’s ‘Eleanora Antinova’ performances and Martha Wilson’s ‘Martha Meets Michelle Halfway (2014).’

”The very existence of Sherman’s blackface photos poses two damning alternatives: Show the work, and thus hang outdated, racist myths in storied museums. Or omit it, and bury uncomplimentary, racist histories that should not be forgotten. E. Jane expressed that, in her ideal world, the work would neither be exhibited nor covered up.

“I think Cindy Sherman, in showing those ill-conceived images, represents her own oppressive thoughts, which maybe Black publics don’t need to see,” she explained. “I think what would be the least harmful would be to not show the work and instead show a quote from her explaining that she once made racist art and acknowledges that it was wrong, since it must be accounted for in a retrospective. I don’t think the project’s existence should be hidden, but I also don’t think the work itself should be shown.”

–

What steps can we take to improve? To create an art world that looks out for artists and viewers of all ethnicities and classes? To acknowledge the fact that, as Artsy pointed out, few African-Americans occupy curatorial positions at mainstream museums, few African-American artists get major solo museum shows, and many works by 19th- and 20th-century African-American artists are undervalued by the art market relative to those by white artists of equal standing?

“Care,” E.Jane said. “I think care is so important. Caring for one another means considering the feelings of others, especially those who you historically have been able to oppress and terrorize, and asking yourself when you make art, ‘Am I caring for all my publics when I make/say/do this?’ I think the violence of art world ignorance is that it creates this messy bind where people think they are being inclusive, do something wrong and then think they should never try to be inclusive again for fear of messing up instead of thinking about what went wrong and planning to do better in the future.”“

[e-janestudio]

Cindy Sherman defended her use of blackface in the bus riders series by claiming she was ignorant of the violent implications and naive in her attempt to be inclusive. Here are some of my responses to her new statement about the series as well as her statement. The work is currently up at The Broad in LA. 

[e-janestudio]

Softness as a political act

So soft you’ll never make me do your mule work ever again

So soft that men will fumble over themselves to protect me

So soft that other femmes will comfort me when I cry and not say “stop crying”

So soft that you’ll feel guilty for your racist stare/so soft that I won’t feel it

[avantglobe]

the fugitives and the avant garde

“The avant-garde won’t save you, but the fugitives might.” - E. Jane / E. Scraaatch 

is there a stake in refusing the name of the avant garde?

here’s the difference in direction b/w these two terms for e. jane, as i read them thru glissant: 

1) the avant garde – perhaps the foremost part of the “moving, transient root” of the conquerer (Glissant 14), a progressive movement toward the future 

2) the fugitive – the one running backwards, the one made to march, the maroon, the “circular nomad.” or even the migrant or homeless who settles in parks where tourists can see them, and where police come to break them up. futurity a question mark. 

[rienfleche]

“If the state, capitalism & surveillance want us to be visible somebodies, it might be a good time to be undercover nobodies.” - Reina Gossett “…a glorious nobody hovering at the end of the world.” - Saidiya Hartman, as quoted by E. Jane

[autonomousthot]

I love this! 

[autonomousthot]

She identified and behaved as a 'free person'

From the police statement on Korryn Gaines 

[autonomousthot]

Wrote this on fb yesterday:

If I have to read one more tragic mulatto story as if interacting with white folks is as bad as workfare or pretty much anything happening to Black women who don't benefit off mixed privilege. Like grad school was so hard for me, white men made me cry but seriously I will never write an essay about that mess because I have too much work to do for Black women whose worth should not be determined by their status at an institution or proximity to whiteness and who are generally overworked and under appreciated (thanks Welfare Queen stereotype and thanks slavery) by everyone around them.

Yesterday I read about Rebecca Walker and Lisa Jones and how hard it is to be mixed and at the same time we were all finding out a Black woman was killed in Maryland.

Though Black, my mom is brown and though being darker it hasn't been as easy for me, even I have benefitted from that fact in PWIs and at jobs before I decided to stop telling ppl and stop playing it up. I'm sorry but I'm so tired of reading about how white folks don't see mixed kids as their equals and I'm also always wondering if the mixed kids in PWIs see Black folks that didn't go to PWIs or who live in the hood as their equals.

I just wonder why the tragic mulatto narrative is still so persistent in times of real tragedies (like our deaths).

[refinery29]

How racism affects mental health — and what we can do about it

Gifs: Unapologetically Bria Bea

[e-janestudio]

I don't want integration, I want a new world. #BlackLivesMatter

sorry guys but i don’t think we should have to be integrated to feel safe. that’s super colonial. that implies that i have to love my colonizer in order to be protected. there are days i am frustrated and tired and for health i cannot be integrated, i cannot have conversations with people who do not see my humanity in hopes that they might see it after meeting me. i have been existing in predominantly white spaces for the majority of the time I’ve been pursuing higher education and my work. i really always just wanted to be accepted, but acceptance feels hard won and mostly at the sake of your own.

i’ve had white “friends” tell me I wasn’t really Black when drunk with me. In an effort to see my humanity, I’ve had many white friends attempt to erase my Blackness, something I was raised to love and be true to at all costs by my daddy, something I will never sacrifice for my survival. so i navigate holding on while existing in predominantly white spaces for work and detach from the people around me who seem to only want me for what they see as my exceptionalism. I want to be loved for being me, for being Black and resilient and tender and caring, not for my specialness, because it implies you think the people unlike me deserve to die. I have not encountered an integrated space where i was not expected to check my Blackness at the door in some sense.

I’m not saying that I don’t have white friends. I have white accomplices for sure and they are the rare few good people that have shown me empathy and compassion and cried with me when days like today have gotten too hard. I also have brown friends that help me move through space safely and protect me without me asking. but that is not what people generally mean by integration. they mean the white man sitting in my studio telling me i must talk to HIM about the problems plaguing Black life and how it relates to my work OR ELSE the “bad guys” win. Integration is white folks holding me hostage at dinner parties to explain to me how they are not implicated in gentrification. Integration normally feels something like being a slave in the big house who smiles often at the masters knowing that if you don’t smile you will be kicked out and never thought of again because you are clearly ungrateful.

I don’t want integration, I want a new world.

[autonomousthot]

Wrote this on FB earlier today. 

<3 

[e-janestudio]

I've been watching all these Jesse Williams talks and I'd just like to say:

Fetishizing mixedness aids anti-Blackness. It aids the notion that some lives are more valuable, which is false. When people talk about folks claiming mixedness, it worries me. At least, it shouldn’t be a requirement. Some of us are happy to choose Blackness, regardless, and that affects how we are treated by white supremacy also. Some of us are mixed and darker than the brown paper bag and NOT half white. Some of us have one brown parent and one Black parent but were just raised Black.

Hannah Black said “race unfolds like fate out of accidents of birth”. No one chooses to be mixed and not everyone has to “accept” it as some category as if this were apartheid South Africa and there’s another box to check. I’m all for acknowledging privilege but that isn’t the same as calling for mixed kids to be “proud” of being mixed. I, personally, will never be proud of that. I’m Black and proud.

[autonomousthot]

[Claudia] Jones contended that if all workers are exploited because of the usurping of the surplus value of their labor, then *Black women -- bereft of any kind of institutional mechanism to conquer this exploitation, and often assumed to have to work UNCOUNTABLE HOURS without recompense -- live a life of superexploitation beyond what Marx had identified as the worker's lot.

Carole Boyce Davis, From the text Left of Karl Marx, chapter 1 "Recovering the Radical Black Female Subject"