Posh Parle @poshparle - Tumblr Blog

When Ya First Love Don’t Love Ya Back

Hip-hop has always been my first love, before I even realized what being a woman entailed. I knew more about music than I did about myself.... As I am growing into a person I love, I realized my relationship with hip-hop is somewhat detrimental. I’m sitting here vibing to Life After Death and I couldn’t help but for the first time in my life actually seriously contemplate how invested I am in this thing I call my first love. One of my solidified Top 5 dead or alive used to serially abuse his artist/girlfriend Lil Kim. Then I remembered one of my favorite producers (Dr.Dre) having assault charges against Dee Barnes, and my problematic favorite, Tupac, with his sexual assault charges.

Loving something that seemingly doesn’t love you back is always confusing.

For my entire life I’ve drowned out the disrespect with hard 808s and clever metaphors that still get me as excited as the first time I heard them. While I become more aware of the struggles I face as I woman I just can’t let one thing go: Hip-Hop.

I don’t know if this relationship I have is damaging or just me indulging in the first thing I can remember really loving.

I imagine this is what Stockholm syndrome must feel like, falling wildly in love with the thing that is keeping you hostage and stagnant. These negative stereotypes reinforced in my favorite genre do nothing but harm and endanger the strides so many black women have made to make my life a little easier.

But I still will let “I’m a Dog” by Gucci blast through my speakers and defend it as “just a song”.

I am typing this still extremely confused about where I stand.

I can’t just let it go, but sometimes it really feels like my first love doesn’t love me back.

Potential kills.

“Girl, he’s just confused but I know what he wants.”

“He means well, he just is having a hard time.”

Stop.

Stop making excuses, stop eating them. Stop feeding yourself bullshit on a plate and expecting it to miraculously turn into the truth.

He’s been sorry a million times, when is he going to be right?

Y’all been “just kicking it” for 6 months, when are you going to want more?

You have been cooking his food, cleaning his home, washing his clothes and every time you bring up “what are we?” he just avoids the question and assures that you both “know” his role in your life and vice versa...

but the truth is ... he knows, you just don’t.

A man who is ready to be your man will say that, will be that, will act like that, he will not play around with titles, and he will not beat around the bush when you ask exactly what you two are doing.

A man who is ready to be your man will tell you that.

So stop overthinking his small acts of confusion and reinterpreting it as

“oh he is just scared to be hurt”

“he just doesn’t know how to express his emotions”

“he wants me, I know he does, he just has never felt this way about someone before”

No. He just isn’t ready.

And the part that hurts the most is that he may be ready for the next girl,

You two may breakup and he can marry the next person he’s with.

and that is ok.

Its ok because he was never supposed to be that man for you, he was who he was because that was he was supposed to be...

and you cannot dwell on that, or who he is with now, or what you did wrong, or why it didn’t work, or what you missed, or what you’re missing...

accept that he was in your life for a reason, and he is gone for a reason.

Its ok to be hurt, and to get hurt, but prolonging the hurt is what makes one crazy.

Dear Hollywood, Black Girls Are Not All The Same 5 People.

Dear Hollywood and everyone else who writes the same, redundant, “woe-is-me” Black girl narrative,

I am tired.

The SAME story is being annoyingly recycled about black women on screen, big screens, small screens, netflix screens...all of it.

You have the same 5 types...always.

The “I’m way too independent and I am high up in some corporate company so I can’t even fathom being with a man because I am way independent, but then I open up to some guy who isn’t really stable but has so much potential and I nurse him into the man he is supposed to be” black woman.

The “Something tragic happened to me in my childhood so now I am bitter forever and I hate everyone until some man comes and helps me open up about my feelings and I feel so much better and go to church now” black woman.

The “I am meek and mild and a great wife and my dark skinned husband is awful and he beats me and I don’t know my worth until another man comes and shows me that I deserve better” black woman.

The “Token black girlfriend/best friend/nanny/voice of reason with no real life of their own but only wisdom/ ‘cute’ slang phrases to help the main character accomplish and complete whatever journey they’re attempting before the credits pop up” black woman.

And lastly The “I am so successful and my life is going great but I either sleep with a married man or cheat on my husband and eventually everyone finds out and I am immoral and an awful person for it” black woman.

As a BLACK WOMAN, who has had equal and ample time in both “the hood” and the suburbs... I AM TIRED.

As a BLACK WOMAN with many and many examples of diverse black women in my life... why must I be subjected to the same stale 5 regurgitated “types” of black women?

Not only are we seen as the same 5 people, but we are also almost always “fixed” by some man who came in the picture, revealed our weakness, and “pulled us out of our deep intricate black girl problems”.

As if black women have not had to pick themselves up and dust themselves off since the beginning of time.

Stop making our strength some crippling factor and reason as to why we can’t “get or keep a man”.

We are not all the same.

We breed diversity.

Our hair changes like the seasons.

Our skin changes with the seasons.

Black women represent the beginning of the world

... and y’all continue to label us with the same 5 played out life pieces.

If you are going to paint our struggles on your canvas, make sure your brushes are not soaked with the preconceived notion that my story will be like my sister’s.

Where are the stories about the butterscotch veterinarian that is happily married but struggles with the idea that she will never be able to get pregnant because of ovarian cancer?

Or the stories about the talented chocolate flute player who is losing her ability to hear?

Where are the stories about the mocha first generation American girl born to Nigerian parents who expect her to uphold traditional values while she also is trying to adapt successfully to her American surroundings?

or the upper middle class caramel girl from an Atlanta suburb whose perfect ‘Jack and Jill’ family is completely blind to the fact that she has an eating disorder?

We have different narratives...we are different people... we have different struggles.

So before you write in your “fill in the stereotypical blank” black girl story....

Maybe ask one of us our own.

“Do I want to?”

Whenever I see Tumblr posts about being in love, they are often times some overdramatic exaggeration of these hyperbolized feelings that seem almost hefty and burdening. Like love is a suitcase that hotel concierge would be irritated to lug to the 11th floor or 30 lb. oxygen tank that a feeble grandmother has to wheel around because her arms are no longer capable of carrying such a load.

“Love consumes you. You begin to breathe in sync with the person who captured your soul.”

Love didn’t happen to me that way. We never breathed in sync, more like his first then mine then his again, almost like as I inhaled him he was exhaling me, and as he breathed me in, I breathed him back out, an exchange of power.

It happened in the most disguised way you could fall for somebody, I didn’t fall face first, but rather glided down into the feelings.

It started as daily conversations, I spoke, you spoke, we spoke. It was that simple, we just spoke often. We spoke so often you knew me. You knew I loved hip-hop and hated tomatoes, you knew my middle name and that Harry Potter was my most secret addiction, you knew my dad is my best friend and my little sister is a prodigy, you knew me. It was natural, we just did it. We just got it. You got me and I got you.

I knew your favorite movie was Any Given Sunday and I knew your favorite cake was tiramisu. I knew your little sister was a replica of you and I knew you hated tuna. I knew you didn’t care for ketchup and you loved Greek mythology. I knew your dad sparked your love for music and you’d rather fall asleep on the phone rather than just saying you’re tired and hanging up. You got me and I got you.

It was just simple, like kindergarten math to a calculus professor. It was just simple, I didn’t feel consumed with you like Romeo with Juliet, I didn’t feel like I couldn’t breathe if you weren’t around, but rather my breaths wouldn’t be a fun. They would be exasperated and boring, they wouldn’t be the same breaths I let out when we died laughing at whatever had us cracking up at the time, they wouldn’t be the same breaths that I sarcastically gasped whenever we watched a movie together and I successfully guessed the plot for the 88th time. It was simple, life would go on if you were to vanish, but would it be as fun? Would it be as exciting? Would I laugh those same laughs or gasp those same sarcastic breaths?

Love for me was not a question of “can I do without you?”

But rather

“do I want to?”....

#love

poshparle

In Response to “Howard Girls Just Want to Pop Out”: Howard Glo’d Me.

As a black woman throughout my entire high school career… I had never felt …enough. I was always too light, a little curvier than other plank board 9th graders and my sense of style was awful :(. As a person that made me feel bad, useless, and also made me excel in school because I felt like being smart was the only thing I was “good at”. I wasn’t athletic, I couldn’t play an instrument or sing, and I wasn’t pretty. “You are just so smart” became a compliment I grew tired of hearing because it was never accompanied with anything else. I HAD BEEN SMART SINCE I WALKED INTO A SCHOOL BUILDING. When was I going to grow into a woman I was proud of to look at in the mirror? Someone I actually considered beautiful?

My senior year of high school I became so used to not caring how I looked that I stopped trying, I wore sweat pants, a t-shirt, and my hair in a ponytail EVERY DAY to school. My mother eventually made a rule that I could only wear sweats twice a week. I looked like I was in mourning. Nothing had died but my self confidence. I lost any ambition to attempt to make myself feel or look prettier.

And then I got accepted into Howard. Both my mother and father went to Morris Brown and began to stress how much my outward appearance then mattered because I was not “the smart black girl in that one AP class” anymore, I was entering a realm with intelligent black women in every size, shape, color, and background. My world would flip. Upon entering Howard U, I lost roughly one or two pants sizes. As my waist started to morph and senior year started to come to a close I began watching Howard videos and looking up the hash tags and seeing exactly who I would be spending my college career gawking at.

These women were something I had never seen before, respected, beautiful intellectual, charming, and just well put together all around. At that moment I realized what I had been missing. I did not think I could be pretty and smart at the same time. I would pick one in my head and smart was always chosen over pretty.

I chose Howard. With choosing Howard that means finally choosing pretty and intelligent, smart and beautiful, I could do my makeup and attend class and no one would judge. As a black woman I felt better, my aura was more laid back, and for once I looked in the mirror more often just to see my changes, and I was finally content with what I saw looking back at me, a woman who chose to watch makeup tutorials and read Malcolm X speeches. I became in tune with my beauty as a black woman and I left that insecure intellectual back home with those baggy gray sweat pants and messy bun.

“Howard Girls Just Want to ‘Pop Out’” was a complete and utter disregard of who I am as a person. If you scroll through my actual tweets where I can type actual words rather than just the “media” tab on my twitter (@ThePoshLife_) you will see the inner most workings of my mind which very rarely include tidbits about my makeup or hair or short dresses or anything of that nature. If you know me, you know I actually hate popping out because I am a MESS in heels (SHOUT OUT TO MY HOWARD SISTERS THAT DO HOWARD HILLS IN HEELS, TEACH ME PLEASE!) My twitter is typically filled with my long winded rants about various social issues, political issues, environmental sustainability issues, and Kanye West lyrics. So no, as a Howard woman I do not “just want to pop out”.

I want to pop out and learn myself and learn others and write emotional poetry and be on the Forbes top 30 under 30 list and graduate and work for either Apple or Google and be a beautiful successful black woman in a technical field and be filled with magic and glittered finger tips and honey colored melanin.

Oh, and did I forgot… I wanna pop out too :)

-Posh Parle.

blackgirlsyoutubetoo-blog

The most mind boggling part is that you’re easily one of the prettiest girls on campus JUST BY BEING YOU, and they made you feel like you were ugly. Smh. But preach girl, preach. I try to tell everyone, the Howard Effect on confidence is amazing!

poshparle

Thank you so much!!! I am just now seeing this !!

poshparle

Dear “My PWI has a lot of black kids so I basically go to an HBCU” Twitter,

My twitter has been engulfed in flames for the last few hours and I’m attempting to put it out so I can go back to my regularly scheduled tweets that include Kanye West lyrics and late night food cravings.

This all started because I saw a photo of college aged black men dressed very well, the picture was great until I read the caption “HBCU tendencies at a PWI”

That set my fingers ablaze.

I was infuriated.

When I was choosing between Howard and a pretty well known private PWI in southern Cali, I had to literally weigh my options. Once money was not a factor in my decision I had to look at the auras of both campuses and see which I felt more at home at.

Howard gave me chills I had never felt before, black people were not only dressed well and aesthetically beautiful, they were comfortable.

An unusual sense of confidence and comfort in their own skin attracted me to the university to see exactly where this comfort came from and how I ( a southern black girl who had been called an “oreo” her entire life) could be so me in my blackness.

When I got to Howard I figured it out.

Black culture was innately engrained in Howard U.

My professors were black, my readings were on black politicians and authors (some of which attended my university), the studies I read about were about black people and how scientists some times skewed the results with black people solely based on natural bias… I was literally everywhere.

And by that I mean black professors, black administration, black education everywhere I went. I was consumed in myself for the first time in my life and that is where the comfort came from. That unusually easy feeling I felt was because I was hard pressed in the campus, my history, my struggle, and my journey was never diminished or looked down upon, not hyperbolized or over exaggerated, it was normal. For once being black was the norm in every outlet.

So when I saw “HBCU tendencies at a PWI” I was immediately enraged, in no way, shape, or form could the magic of an HBCU be displayed simply by black men being well dressed.

HBCU’s are more than what we look like, it is bigger than dressing well and being militant everywhere.

HBCU culture is every aspect of the campus being infused with black culture all the time. The learning, the well dressed students, the professors, the stroll teams, the swag surfs, the protests, the parties, the long financial aid lines, the Soul Food Thursdays, the dances, and “Before I Let Go” by Frankie Beverly and Maze being played to end a party.

Of course individually these things can happen anywhere and aren’t exclusive to an HBCU, but together, all of these things happening all at once, on the same campus, at the same time makes up the “HBCU experience”.

It seems as if the world only notices the magic left in HBCU’s when a twitter video goes viral of us collectively turning up, forgetting that we are students deeply affected by what happens on our campuses.

You can be black anywhere, no one is taking that away from you. Black culture is engrained in black people all over the US.

HBCU culture isn’t. HBCU culture is more in depth than being well dressed and being able to turn up when a throwback comes on. Stop taking that and equating it with HBCU culture because it’s bigger than that.

HBCU culture is black culture. All black culture is not HBCU culture.

So no, you do not “basically go to an HBCU” because your campus is majority black, or turns up to certain music.

Your PWI is not better than or lesser than my HBCU, just different.

Appreciate the blackness in both.

Student’s choose colleges for many different reasons (finances being one of the largest).

So appreciate YOUR school for what it is.

If you go to a socially conscious PWI,

APPRECIATE IT FOR BEING THAT.

But don’t compare that to an HBCU that has a different history.

Choose a school that is right for YOU and love it for it being YOUR perfect match.

It doesn’t have to be “almost an HBCU” for you to enjoy it.

YOUR love for YOUR school is just that.

You are just as black if you attend a PWI as you would be if you attended an HBCU.

I would never say you aren’t black if you do not attend an HBCU. (this was a common theme in people misunderstanding my tweets)

Being black starts with YOU, not your college.

Be comfortable enough in your blackness to know that you are black regardless of what shade of brown you are, the texture of your hair, and especially your college choice. Your history never leaves you.

- @ThePoshLife

thereezychronicles

I went to a PWI for undergraduate and a HBCU for grad school. i loved my PWI experience and loved my HBCU experience, it is really awesome to be in an environment where almost everyone is black.

However her argument of “HBCU culture” is bullshit. at my PWI, we celebrated our BHM. We had a specific black homecoming and we had performers come that catered to a black audience.

We had a “Yard” which we affectionately called the set. and we set-sat and jigabooed and it was a blast. We had probates, the strolls.

The concept of HBCU culture is the environment where you can be unapologetically black - no matter what that means - without white stares. the magic of homecoming, the fashion shows, the rushing to be greek, the pledging even though they claim they are non-hazing organizations.

But those same things occurred AT PWIs, all the time, because we wanted to create our own niche of blackness too.

Do you not know how many people who went to HBCUs and do not know their history?

When I was at Howard University, there were so many people who were apathetic to Civil Rights and the injustices occurring, feeling like they didn’t have to care because they “went to Howard” so it was black enough.

Ma’am, HBCUs are awesome. PWIs are awesome. but do not learn the word appropriation and throw it around loosely when someone says “HBCU culture at a PWI” because that means this person is making it a point to be unapologetically black in an un-safe space.

poshparle

If you have to recreate all of these experiences to enjoy being unapologetically black, you’re further proving my point, at my HBCU I don’t need a separate black homecoming or anything extra from the general student body becauase being black is the the norm.... THAT is HBCU culture and experience, not having to feel like I’m doing anything extra or separate to enjoy the black culture...

Dear “My PWI has a lot of black kids so I basically go to an HBCU” Twitter,

My twitter has been engulfed in flames for the last few hours and I’m attempting to put it out so I can go back to my regularly scheduled tweets that include Kanye West lyrics and late night food cravings.

This all started because I saw a photo of college aged black men dressed very well, the picture was great until I read the caption “HBCU tendencies at a PWI”

That set my fingers ablaze.

I was infuriated.

When I was choosing between Howard and a pretty well known private PWI in southern Cali, I had to literally weigh my options. Once money was not a factor in my decision I had to look at the auras of both campuses and see which I felt more at home at.

Howard gave me chills I had never felt before, black people were not only dressed well and aesthetically beautiful, they were comfortable.

An unusual sense of confidence and comfort in their own skin attracted me to the university to see exactly where this comfort came from and how I ( a southern black girl who had been called an “oreo” her entire life) could be so me in my blackness.

When I got to Howard I figured it out.

Black culture was innately engrained in Howard U.

My professors were black, my readings were on black politicians and authors (some of which attended my university), the studies I read about were about black people and how scientists some times skewed the results with black people solely based on natural bias... I was literally everywhere.