All About Growth

[micahthepoet]

The Curse of Pretty

Only a man would think beauty a blessing. in her eyes dwelt the same fear that bore it's way into a salve women realizing they weren't invited to the big house to watch the children/ the same fear that makes women find religion in covering their faces. the same fear that calls for protest in a world that doesn't see them with their ears cause they're too busy looking at something else. Only in a topsy turvy world should something to be afraid to be ascetically pleasing. the flowers don't hide in spring. This isn't about feminist rights, this isn't a rant about how women need to cover up and shut up, this is just me laying out an idea given to me in conversation. She said, "I want to be beautiful. I don't want to be objectified.”  Let's look at this. The definition of "beautiful" is: pleasing the senses or the mind ascetically. Deep right? Pleasing your senses and/or mind/ the definition of "objectify" is: to express (something abstract) in a concrete form. See how that makes it shallow? Take something abstract, like a person. and turn it into something concrete, and simple. Rape culture was bred in all of us, except, the victims of rape. America is a capitalist society we capitalize on what people want. People like things so beautiful that it takes their breath away; and people like people so beautiful that it takes their breath away. The curse of pretty women my friends is this: the world loves to look at a beautiful woman and beautiful women live in constant fear of that fact. However, the world EXPECTS them to be beautiful, as pretty as they can be. The world sells them make up, fashion, surgery, images, sex symbol role models, anything to help dress them up, just so they can undress them with their eyes. 

Here is the injustice. Propaganda is used during war time to boost morale or faith in the cause. The definition of "propaganda" is: "chiefly derogatory information, esp. of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view." Ask yourself how many people in rap videos look like the African Americans you know? As long as there is propaganda on a subject there will always be a following in it made up of people who really think it is real. Pretty women have always been advertised as pretty, like the only pleasure she could possibly give is concrete and simple. "Look at the women the we adore!!" says the world. "Don't worry, we gave her mascara to mask her tears, we gave her foundation so we won't see her worry lines, we made her head smaller and her behind bigger, and even if she fills that little head with enough knowledge to put a double Dr in front of her name, we made sure she'll worry more how she looks instead of how she speaks. We taught her that the only way we'll love you is if you're pretty not complicated. Then the world kidnaps her, rapes her, beat her, stone her, breed her, cut her, just for showing her face, just for doing what we say. After her rant she breathes deeply and looks at me. I am helpless to solve her quandary. She wipes her tears and smiles, “It's ok. There's just no cure for the curse of pretty."    

[micahthepoet]

Love me some Love

This morning, I woke up and felt an overwhelming wave of loneliness and longing splash over me. I felt like a failure in everything and everyone I had ever loved had been a mistake. At first I thought to reach out, if I'm lonely don't be alone. Simple right? Instead I closed my eyes and dwelt on the feeling. I found it was the same feeling I felt in a crowd of people, when I would wake up in a lovers arms, hell, when I was being intimate. I decided then to reach IN. Wholeness is not found in others it's found in you. It's found in something as basic as stopping yourself and saying, "hey self, you're awesome." People are meant to reaffirm your greatness not prove it. Reject the idea that you need someone to love you and love yourself. Maybe then when someone really does love and appreciate you, you already know what it looks like and you'll be able to do the same for them because it's what you've been doing for you all along. Simple. Right?

[micahthepoet]

Sacrifice is so Sacrilege

So awhile ago I was talking to my mom, venting about some bullshit as usual, and she rolled her eyes and sighed. When I asked her what was wrong she simply replied, "your problem is you don't understand sacrifice. " At first I took her critical assessment of my ranting as an insult. I know about sacrifice. Then I really thought about it and read about it for a couple of months. I read about a woman who had 6 siblings 4 of them younger than her. Her mother and father worked where they could to provide for their family but they were just getting by. The young woman wanted to be a doctor. But instead of going to medical school or even college at 18 she signed up for the military, signed away her dreams of scholastic achievement. I thought about how maybe the determination for a better life might have out weighed her disappointment. I then thought about my mother who told me when I was in high school she denied herself lunch and walked to work everyday for a month to buy me a laptop that I had been asking for. I read that sacrifice by its third definition means to give up something valued for the sake of something else regarded as more important or worthy. In essence my mother's hunger was nothing compared to my materialistic needs. Think about anytime someone has went without so that you could have. Think about how many times you've gone without so someone else could have. Honestly think about it. Then, I thought about how the idea of sacrifice effects black people in America as a community. Again I learned something from my mother. (she's great with this stuff) She had been paying this black man and his son to do her lawn and cut back some trees. While they were working, a rock had flown from under the lawn mower and shattered her back door. The man and his son offered to pay for the damage and finish the lawn at a discount. This whole time these other guys (I won't name their race) kept coming by asking to do the lawn. Their price was lower and they would have most likely done a quicker and better job. When I brought this up to my mom she just shrugged and said, "I rather uplift and invest my own people than another's simply out of convenience. If we don't even give our own a chance how can we expect people that don't look like us to?" From this I learned that we as a community don't sacrifice much at all. We don't boycott rappers who have stock and jail and who's interests are in sending as many people there possible. The beats cool and we just gotta be cool. So we'll say whatever, "kill that nigga, I suck dick, rob that bitch for looking at me funny, fuck bitches get money." We don't do things to prove we are not what anyone looking at us says we are cause people pay too much to keep us silent. We don't stand up and say I don't care if I don't eat, if i can't find find a good job, if my kids don't have the best life, you can't buy my dignity. We are missing sacrifice. So we get to dancing. I read the MLK bio a while back and was surprised to learn his family wasn't all the way gun ho about his activism in the civil rights movement. It scared them. He sacrificed is own safety, his families happiness and safety because he believed that we a people could be better. After studying sacrifice I have been tremendously humbled. I have realized the ways I have been part of the problem. I just wonder if I will be able to carry out my deed of sacrifice when the time comes.