by KV Thompson

“Don’t let the birth of your black daughter be the first time you respect a black woman” - Always Be Woke on Tumblr

My dad put me on a pedestal. In his eyes, I could do no wrong. I could tell that he cared for me by how present he was in my life. He was at every basketball game, every awards ceremony, every play, anything else that centered around his only daughter.

He respected me as an equal. He believed in my potential so much that many conversations were spent on talking about how much I was going to achieve and how successful I could be. My dad showed me how to be treated by a man, but he was flawed.
How he treated his daughter didn’t always transfer to how he treated women.

My dad was, for a lack of better words, a player. He was charming. Very charming. Growing up I noticed how women gravitated towards him. Women. Plural.

When I was a teenager I witnessed my dad have several women rotating in and out of the house. Sometimes it seemed like he had a new friend for every day of the week.

I don’t want to disclose all of his business (God rest his soul), but I witnessed him exhibit characteristics that he warned me about, the ain’t shit men I should avoid. For me, he was the perfect man. For women he courted (or whatever he was doing), he was exactly the type of man he didn’t want me to end up with.

He taught me to be strong and never fall for the type of man he was to other women. He taught my brothers that women were disposable.

The cognitive dissonance I experienced growing up caused me to rationalize the constant misogynoir I witnessed. Misogynoir from the hands of my father and brothers and close friends and other family members. It seemed all the men I knew were indoctrinated in the same poisoning patriarchal system.

I rationalized, “Maybe those women deserved to be played, but I’m different. I’m my father’s daughter.”

When he died I ended up with the exact type of guy my dad wouldn’t want me to end up with. Worse even. I had to realize I am not above any woman. I am every woman. We all deserve to be treated better.


We are bombarded with images of Black men holding guns with their daughter and her prom date. Black men are saying, “Respect my daughter, or I will end your life,” but are teaching their sons to be sexually irresponsible. Teaching their sons to be unemotional and detached with women and in their relationships, forgetting that we have to meet up one day.

Who will protect your daughter from someone’s son? A son that was brought up the same way you were. The same way you raised your son to be.

In Beyonce’s “Daddy Lessons,” she explores how her dad taught her to be strong with men. In the chorus she repeats:

“With his gun, and his head held high
He told me not to cry

Oh, my daddy said shoot/
Oh, my daddy said shoot”

Her dad told her to “shoot.” Which is reminiscent of images of daughters and their gun totting dad’s in prom photos.

Later she says:

“When trouble comes to town
And men like me come around”

Her father is preparing her to protect herself from men just like him. Like my father did for me. Like many fathers do for their daughters.
But daughters who have a great relationship with their father want a man just like their him. Daddy’s girls are going through the world looking for men that can live up to the expectations they set,  an expectation that can never be realized because not even our fathers lived up to the hype.

Don’t let the birth of your Black daughter be the first time you respect a Black woman because her being your daughter won’t stop her from being affected by your sins.


Photo: Parkwood Entertainment

KV Thompson grew up in St. Louis, MO and graduated with a BA in Cultural Anthropology from Webster University. She currently teaches 4th grade in St. Louis.

by Deonna Anderson

In 2014, writer-activist-producer Agunda Okeyo dreamed up Sisters of Comedy, a monthly showcase that features Black women comedians at Caroline’s on Broadway. Okeyo started producing the show, which was originally held at Gotham Comedy Club, because she’d been working in comedy clubs and wanted to have a bigger impact in the industry.

by Donnetrice Allison

Thursday April 21st around 1:30 p.m. is a moment in time I will never forget. A co-worker came into the copy room where I was scanning a document – I’m not even sure what compelled her to come in there specifically to tell me, but she said, “I just heard that Prince passed away.” I looked at her dumb-founded for a few seconds. My first thought, “If my dog died, how would she know? Did my husband call the main office?” Apparently, she noticed my confusion and clarified, “Prince, the singer.” I was shaken to the core. I returned to my office to try to complete the work I had intended to do that day, but I couldn’t concentrate.
Luckily, I am a college professor and my classes were finished for the day, so I had to flexibility to leave. I had to leave. I had left my cell phone on my desk when I went to the copy room and I noticed several texts and voicemails, some from folks that I hadn’t spoken to in months. But everyone who knew me knew – this day, this hour, this moment in time, would be incredibly difficult for me. Even my sister, who was all the way in Haiti on a missionary trip, texted me, “Are you okay?” I suppose this sounds strange to you – the reader. Why were my family and friends so concerned for me? Did I know him personally? No. Did he know me – touch me to my core at the most impressionable time in my life? Absolutely. I first met him when I was about 12 or 13, pressing my ear to a boombox speaker, rewinding, listening, and rewinding again – Erotic City. Was he really saying that on a record? Then, by the time I was 14, I fell utterly and completely in love with him, as I watched him sing to Apollonia, “Do you want, or do you want me, cause I want you?” Remember that look on her face, the tears in her eyes? I had that same look, the same tears, he was singing to me. The only difference – I was a little brown girl with big lips, a wide nose and kinky hair, when it wasn’t straightened by a hot comb.

In the weeks since Prince’s death, I’ve been falling in love with him all over again, listening to his music daily, listening closely to the words, allowing my three children to listen – to the non-sexual songs, of course – and watching my only daughter, who is right around the age I was when I met him, fall in “like.” She is intrigued with him. I don’t think it’s as intense for her as it was for me. But, I think more than anything, she is using this opportunity to get to know me – to understand why her mom is so impacted by this man she never met. I have also had the opportunity to reflect on Prince’s impact on little brown girls like me and like her. I am a media scholar and I specifically focus on media portrayals of African Americans. I have been doing so for more than two decades, but when I met Prince, I was clueless. I had no idea of the subliminal message his choice of women had on me.

Recently, I went back and reread a short story that I wrote about him when I was 14. The title was, “For the Love of…” And it started like this, “This is the story of a young college girl named Trina Taylor. She is in her 2nd year of college and she is 19 years old. She is mixed with Indian, white and black blood. She is the most popular girl on campus. She is also very attractive. She has grayish color eyes, light skin, long silky hair, and a petite model’s shape.” Needless to say, I don’t look anything like the young woman I described, but that was what the women that Prince was attracted to looked like – Shelia E., Vanity, Apollonia. So for the sake of my story, which was a love story between this girl and Prince, that is what she looked like. That is what “I” looked like, because of course the girl was me. Over the years, I watched his music videos, films, paparazzi photos, memorized by his beauty and the beauty of the women on his arm. And I never unpacked the reality that none of them looked like me. I never unpacked the reality that he had no brown girls on his arm, with thick lips, thick hips and natural kinky/curly hair. Did he love me like I loved him? I told myself that he did, because his music spoke to me and filled my soul, but when I look closely at who he surrounded himself with, I couldn’t be sure.

During the “Controversy” years, Prince played with perceptions. He sang, “Am I Black or white, am I straight or gay?” He seemed to enjoy keeping us guessing and questioning. He got rid of the afro he wore on the “For You” album cover, curled his hair, wore heels, ruffles and lace, and oozed sexuality. Yet, in recent years, he’d gone full circle. He returned to his afro, spoke out about Black Lives and sang a song about “Baltimore.” He became more vocal about his Blackness than he’d ever been, yet still, the look of the women on his arm changed very little. So what’s a Black girl like me, like my daughter to think? In today’s media climate, where images of Black women and girls are primarily negative – fighting, cursing and carrying on – I’m left to wonder: Who loves us? Did Prince? Again, I don’t know. And I dare not ponder that in his death. It’s still too painful a question to ask, because I still see him through the eyes of the 14 year-old girl whose soul he touched.


Donnetrice C. Allison, Ph.D currently serves as an associate professor of both Communication Studies and Africana Studies at Stockton University in Galloway, NJ. Dr. Allison has published several articles and numerous conference presentations on hip hop culture and media portrayals of African Americans - at national and international conferences. Dr. Allison is currently editor of the book "Black Women's Portrayals on Reality Television: The New Sapphire," published by Lexington Books.

by Jaylin Paschal





Photo: iStockPhoto

Jaylin Paschal is a journalism student and a blogger who is passionate about politics and prose. Contact her by email at creativeliberationblog@gmail.com or through Twitter @creativelbrtn.

by Kimberly Foster @KimberlyNFoster

Karinne Steffans-Short is complicated. She’s a skilled writer who pioneered her own sub-genre of non-fiction with Confessions of a Video Vixen. Now 10 years after the release of that book, public desire to peek into the exploits of famous and semi-famous personalities has only grown. Black celebrity tell-all happens everyday and fuels new media empires like The Shade Room.

But her work isn’t all exposé. It is careful self-reflection. Steffans-Short, who has thought deeply about her own troubled life and relationships, simply shows her revelations to the world. And that makes viewers uneasy. Because as much as we want to know. It feels, like a violation for anyone, but especially a woman, to sell their trauma neatly packaged.

But she is determined to own her story—to get ahead of the gossip, to learn and evolve.

During our conversation by phone, she was candid, crying at times while articulating her pain and that of other women. After it, I was better able to situate her work. Naming names is neither narcissism or self-indulgence. Through out her time in public life, she has carefully pieced together a roadmap for generations of girls to come. It is a cautionary tale whose conclusion has yet to be written.

Karinne Steffans-Short is more than salacious headlines. She makes no effort to conceal the bad or embarrassing. She is a woman who owns her shit.
Kimberly Foster: A lot of us are dealing with intergenerational trauma like cycles of abuse and cycles of violence. When I was going through your first book Confessions of a Video Vixen, that was a very prominent theme. How do you work through that trauma in order to discontinue those cycles?

Karinne Steffans-Short: The first thing that I had to do was seek professional help to understand what was happening to me. Sometimes the trauma isn’t named. You don’t know what’s happening. You don’t know why you’re doing the things you’re doing. Why you’re attracting certain things or people to yourself. Why you are in the state you’re in.

So back in 2006, I started therapy. And in 2001, I met my life coach. Seeking professional help is important to me. Over the last 15 years, it’s been a part of my life. In doing so, what I’ve gotten is an understanding of statistics. Statistics are very important to me. What statistics do is they take the blame off of you. A lot of people feel stupid or embarrassed and they’re afraid to talk about it because they’re living on an island. Statistics showed me, for example, why I was a cutter. I didn’t know where that came from. She showed me that young women who have been sexually molested or abused in their early teenage years are more likely to be cutters.

It allowed to me to know that I wasn’t alone. it wasn’t my fault. I’m not the only person doing this. And being given tools by my life coach and my psychologist and one of those tools is recognizing signs and how it plays out in your life.

I’ve had men come into my home, a husband a friend or even a boyfriend, and look at my accomplishments on my wall. Much in the way musicians would put their gold plaques on the wall, I do that for my books. Having men come in and say, “why do you have your book covers on the wall? You need to take that down.” or “why do you have to take pictures of yourself?” I’m realizing that’s abuse and realizing abuse is a language. I’m having to pay attention to what people are saying and doing. A lot of people are abusive in their daily lives and don’t realize it. For me having had all that education and help over the years, I still fall into. It’s my job to call it out. Name it and then get it out of my life as soon as I accept what it is. I have to do that.

KF: You are an accomplished writer. You’re written several books. Men have come into your home and tried to minimize your accomplishments. In one of the lyrics on Beyonce’s new album she says, “I’m just too much for you” and it feels like you might be a woman that men encounter and you’re just too much for them. How do you handle jealousy about the name that you’ve made for yourself and your independence?

KSS: Jealousy has always been so prominent in my relationships especially since the release of my first book Confessions of a Video Vixen. Being able to work, especially because I married men who weren’t working, when my opportunities arise there’s this ever present jealousy because people listen to what I have to say. There’s this jealousy of people listen to you and not to me. When my voice is louder than my husband’s voice, it shrinks them. I’m not being congratulated for my success but demeaned for it. I’ve lived that in every single relationship. I’ve never been with, married, or lived with someone who was supportive of me. I’ve never met one. And it doesn’t matter how rich he is. It doesn’t matter how not rich he is. People always say, “well you need to just get a regular man.” Well if I get a man who works at Home Depot, he’s jealous because i’m getting invited to parties and he can’t come and that’s a problem. And the men who are stars, that doesn’t make them more confident. It makes them more unsure of themselves, and even more afraid of not getting all the attention.

I remember when Bill Maher and I were together. I love Bill. We’re still friends. We just talked yesterday. We were the first couple in New York Times Best Seller history to have books on the Best Seller list at the same time. That had never happened, and it was still competition. Even though he was wealthier than I am and more famous than I am and a bigger polarizing figure than I am. there was still competition with whose book is higher and who peaked this week and who is on the list longer. I don’t want competition. I think that as smart and learned and respected as men are, there’s still a little something that throws him off. Men say that want a woman who is successful. Who makes her own money. Men are attracted to the same things they end up resenting you for. They’re attracted to my life and to my success, and then they’ll get inside my world and they can’t handle any of those things.

It doesn’t matter whether I was doing well or not. I’ve felt this in all of my relationships. I’ve never felt completely supported, completely honored in my relationships especially when it comes my books.

l to r: Karrine Steffans and Bill Maher at the 57th Emmy Awards - Credit: Jesse Gant/WireImage

KF: You’ve had some very public ups and downs with the men in your life. You’ve been incredibly open. You share a lot and often on social media. There’s no protection for Black women, generally. There’s definitely no protection for Black women who own their voices. Have you ever regretted sharing that part of your life?

KSS: I don’t like the word regret. It implies that I don’t trust what God allows. I do. I trust what god allows me to do. There are moments after I post disagreements with Wayne or with my husband after I threw him out of the house I was like “oh my God.” It was embarrassing for everyone. It was a calm rage, but I was very enraged inside. I got in my flight or fight mode. It was time for everything to go the way it went.

Today I don’t regret it because now I understand what happened. I felt a little regretful for some time, like “why’d I do that?” I wasn’t thinking. It was just “get away from me” and wanting to tear down what we had built publicly because publicly it was a lie. I felt like let’s just destroy the lie right now. We’re not everybody’s new favorite couple. This is a mess.

As time goes on and I see why it happened that way and I see the benefit of why it happened that way, I’m grateful for it. I don’t regret it. I see what that plan was. I see why it was allowed. God allows what we’re doing. I had to distance myself in a big way, because He knew what was coming down the trough and I wouldn’t be attached to it. I don’t want anybody else thinking that I was involved in cocaine abuse. I had to distance myself so publicly, so truthfully.

Yes, initially there’s a lot of times when I’m like why? And there are things I would never do again. I would never write Confessions again. But that was a 25-year-old girl, and now that I’m a woman, there are things I would never do again but I can’t regret them

KF: Why wouldn’t you want to write Confessions again?

KSS: Confessions was a powerful manifesto. It is still required reading at universities and still a major part of history, as a black woman at a certain place and time it’s very important, very poignant and I understand that. It’s so personal, so descriptive, I couldn’t do ti again.

Even though it’s so long, I left a lot of things out because we just have to. I kept a lot of things to myself. It was so personal that I can’t even read it now. I can’t open that book. I don’t want to read where I was 12, 13, 14, 15 years ago. It’s too much for me to read it. It’s painful.


KF. As a reader I can say that I wasn’t expecting to be as emotionally affected as I was while reading the book. It was really raw. It seems that heterosexual relationships, particularly the relationships Black women have with Black men are very one-sided. One party, Black women, is expected to give a lot more than they get in return. Is it worth it?

KSS: No. No. I’ve always given more than I’ve gotten. And every time it chips at you. Every single time you lose pieces of yourself trying to hold someone else together. Trying to give and give in your life. I’m getting it now for being married to an abusive, alcoholic drug abuser. It’s like “How could you do this to him?” Wait a minute? I’m the one with the police report. I’m the one getting the restraining order. I’m the one trying to save my life here, and it’s like “Yeah. So what? You shouldn’t do this to him. He’s a Black man. You gotta support the Black man.” The Black man doesn’t support the Black woman. This man tore me down every single day in front of my child. and I’m not allowed to defend myself. Even his attorney, another black man, said to me, “Well that’s just what men do.” What? Still in 2016 I’ve been hearing things like “that’s just what men do?” No one thinks to say “poor her” or “she did the right thing” People say “oh you’re shaming him.” I’m not the one that made him fail a drug test. I was supposed to keep it to myself or not say anything.

Right after the book came out, I got a note that said, “A real woman would’ve kept her mouth shut.” That’s all it said. It’s what Black men say to Black women “Real women would keep their mouths shut. Take our shit, and support us in our mess. Hide.” There was a point in there that privacy becomes enabling. There’s a point where secrecy becomes deadly. I’ve been to that point. I’ve been there. More women need to speak up. They say, “How dare you burn the bridge? You should’ve stuck that out and not said anything about it.” I was expected to do that, and I can’t defend my character.

And anybody should know that by now either way. You should know. I have these discussion in all my relationships before hand. If you make me feel like I have no other recourse. I’ll let it out in public. I don’t believe in keeping secrets anymore. Not deadly ones. Not dangerous ones. Not at all. I won’t do it. I was like that before. It almost killed me. I have a big voice and it’s loud, and I encourage other women to do the same thing. I won’t allow anyone to silence me and to take and to take. Not for a Black man no matter what he goes through. Can’t do it. Won’t do it.

KF: The experiences that you’ve had with abuse, of partnering men who didn’t treat you right, aren’t uncommon. You mentioned there is a real lack of empathy when it comes to you. You’ve been open about the things you’ve been through, open about the trauma you’ve endured, it seems like this is so common that people would be empathetic to you. You don’t get support. Why do you think that is?

KSS: It’s not just me. We see it in a lot of cases when women are abused, someone says “Well what did you say?” Even when a woman is raped, “Well what were you wearing? What time was it?” Women are supposed to take responsibility for the evils of men. It’s not just me who doesn’t get empathy. Millions of women don’t get empathy, and they wind up dead or killing which, is why there’s a show called Snapped because we’re breaking all over the world. Nobody cares. “What did you say?” Everybody looks at the reaction not the cause. What did he do? Nobody wants to think about that.

They’ve never been able to stop me. I wonder if people are tired. They haven’t been able to stop me or silence me yet. You’d have to kill me, and even then I go on because my work is still here. And there’s nothing anyone can say that will stop me from speaking out. All of my life I had no voice. I was raped as a child and didn’t tell anybody. I had no voice. My mother found out, and she brushed it under the rug. My mother was beating me. I went to tell people and she’d lie and tell people I was on crack, that I was a 13 year old crack head. I was born into this, being called a whore before I ever had sex. For years, I had no voice. Confessions was the first time I spoke about any of these things. I continued to talk and seeing people, women especially, being inspired to have their own voice that’s become the crux of everything for me. It’s why I do everything. I’ll never get empathy. Women don’t get empathy anywhere we turn. It’s all over the world. Look at it. Nobody loves us. They hate us because we can change the world. Because we can decide if we want to have their children or not, because we can go to work and make more money and do more. We can be so much more than we even know we can, but there’s no empathy for our pain. They taunt us and wish it on us. I’m unbreakable, and I can’t apologize for that. I’ll go through as much of this shit as I have to go through.

KF: One of the most foundational relationships you had in your life was with your mother. I am somebody who is not close to my mother and there’s a lot of guilt and shame that accompanies that because people expect that to be the center of your life. How does your relationship with your mom affect the way you parent?

KSS: I hug my son everyday. I’m extremely close to him because I didn’t have that with my mom. My mom hugged me one time. I actually know when she hugged me. I remember because it was so weird and someone told her to do it. My mother was leaving for a trip back to St. Thomas and her friend came to the airport. Me and my two sisters were staying home and my mom just walked out the door. Her friend said “Aren’t you going to hug them? Anything could happen. Hug your children.” And my mother robotically turned around and gave us these very strange pats on the back. That was the first time and the only time my mother hugged me.

So I hug my son everyday. He hates it because he’s 18 now so it’s annoying. But I barge into his room everyday and hug him and kiss him. I ask him how he is and all the questions no one ever asked. I asked him how he feels about things that are happening in the world. I ask him about how he feels about things that are happening in his life. He’s teaching himself Japanese. I think that’s amazing. I sit in the room and he tells me about Japanese Kanji, and he’s so brilliant. And he’s such an accomplished musician, so I sit in a room with him and let him play me what he’s written. I show him interest. My mother never showed interest in what I do. I’ve been a writer my whole life. I was writing stage plays and putting them on for my entire school at five and six years old. Only my grandmother would come. My mother was never there. I writing poetry and reciting it and all these things. I talk about it in my book.

My son has shows. he’s playing at the Troubadour and at the Whiskey A Go Go. I’m there. I’m front and center. I’ve got my camera. I’m cheering for him because he’s going to remember this the rest of this life, just like I remember for the rest of my life that my mother never loved me, she never hugged me, and she never came to any of my recitals, any of my plays, nothing. But of course when your daughter becomes a millionaire now she’s your daughter. Now everyone needs money and everyone’s so proud. You see the fakery and you say, “I was a serpentine remember?” I was a whore. I was a bad child. You told everybody that I was on drugs and everything I said was a lie so that they wouldn’t believe me when I told them that you hit me but now I’m the goose that laid the golden egg. “We’re so proud of her.” I made sure that I support my son and love my son now before he’s wealthy and famous and on rock tours because I don’t want him to hate me or resent me. I want him to always be able to say, “My mother always supported me. She paid for my music lessons and everything herself.” I’m with him every single day. He’d rather be with me than go out with his friends. I just want to make sure of that. Because I know that’s a gift that God gave me and he’s the only man that will never leave me. I have to treat him like that. He’s my gift. He’s all I got. If everything else goes away, houses, money, cars, gifts, friends, husbands, if all that shit goes away. my son will never leave me. No matter what I do, he’ll always be my son as long as I treat him well and love him and respect him as the gift he is. That’s what I do.
KF. There is a lot of conversation currently about sex-positive feminism. It’s women embracing their sexuality. It seems like you pioneered being very open and unapologetic about your sexuality for a certain generation of young women. Confessions was a turning point for a lot of people, but I don’t often see your name come up when we’re having conversations about the genesis of this. Do you feel like you are overlooked when the Amber Roses are celebrated. Do you get the credit you deserve?

KSS; I find my credit more scholastically. I find my credit is better served at universities. I love that Confessions is required reading around the world. You have your Amber Roses because they look like the part their playing, But Amber Rose’s How to be a Bad Bitch is not going to be taught at universities. You’ve never seen pictures of me at a club. You’ve never seen pictures of me twerking, even in my younger years. You never saw those things. Everyone had an idea of who they thought Karrine Steffans was based on my experience just because I had the sex I wanted. I’m a young, single girl. I’m having the sex I want with the people I want to have sex with. By 30 I was married. Everybody wants to skip that. I was divorced by 32. Married again by 33. Divorced by 35. Married again at 37. For the last 10 years, I’ve spent more time married than single. there’s nothing salacious and headline-grabbing about that. Not when it comes to this particular genre. Not when it comes to sex positive feminism. I think that some women are cartoon characters. They are caricatures for that movement. Amber Rose is a great caricature, not just physically, but because she uses her body more than she uses her voice. She doesn’t use them equally. Another one is Kim Kardashian. She uses her body more than she uses her voice. I want to hear them speak more. I want to hear more about how they feel. I want to know more about how they feel about things that are happening in the world. I want to know more. I don’t want to see your body more than I see you talking.

KF: This is interesting because this is a major site of contention within feminist discourse. The body being on display is not anything new. There’s not anything particularly transgressive about that.

KSS: Women have to be able to decide what they want for themselves and what their feminism looks like. I’ve been called a radical feminist. I’ve been called a sex positive feminist and I am all those things. I’m also a traditionalist. I believe in marriage. I believe in I do all the cooking. I do all the cleaning. I believe in traditional gender roles in my house. It doesn’t always work out that way. but I believe in that. My husband has never cooked a meal in my house. He’s never done the laundry. I wouldn’t even let him do it, and I don’t pay any bills in the house. He pays all the bills. I’m a very staunch feminist, but as a feminist, I get to choose what role I want to play, when I want to play it and choose again if I change my mind. Feminism is about choice.

So when we start talking about who gets credit for what, I’d rather be the girl who is not working on the videos and making a spectacle. I’d rather be the woman sitting at the podium of an HBCU giving a lecture and teaching students. I’d rather have my books being taught. I’d rather be collegiate. I’d rather get my honorary PhD. I’d rather do that. That’s just me. That’s my decision.

You won’t see me at a strip club like you’ll see Amber Rose do. That’s not my life, but we’re at different ages and different stages. I’m 37 years old. Even at 27 it wasn’t my life. Never saw it. People said it was, but I was never that girl. I had a young son, and I was a single mother and I was working very hard. Writing a book is very difficult, and it takes time. I didn’t have time to party and do all those things.

When women are making choices, they can choose to govern their bodies the way they want. If you want to twerk everyday on Instagram, have at it. But what I would like you to do is tell us what you think everyday of the week. Not just when you’re being shamed and now you want to fight and make your point because you’re being attacked. Make your points when you’re not being attacked at all. I want to hear you speak. I want to know what you think. I know what your body looks like. It’s amazing. Now I want you not to just hold SlutWalks once a year. I want you to, every single day if you can, say at least one thing. When you write a book, I want it to not be called How to be a Bad Bitch or a book of selfies. Kardashian, don’t give me a book of selfies. That’s not what I need from you. If I’m a young woman, I’m looking up to you. Can you not give me a book full of selfies? But if you do give me a book full of selfies, can you also give me a book of what you think about sexism and slut-shaming because you are the poster child for it? Don’t just think about it when you’re being shamed. You’re not at universities speaking. None of them are teaching. I need more. I need everything.

KF: Oh wow. So if we’re always reacting, that lessens our ability to move freely? Interesting point.

When I was a kid, I used to aspire to be in music videos. Being a video girl was aspirational. That does not exist anymore. Now it’s been replaced by Instagram models who live these glamorous lives that we see beautiful women with the shapely surgically altered bodies living on social media. How do you feel about the way the ideal has evolved in the advent of the social media age?

KSS: Everything transitions. When I was a little girl, being on Disney was a big thing. All the cool kids were actors on Disney. When I got older and became a teenager, it was “Oh my god these videos!” But that’s just because back then the videos were million dollar productions. it was like being in a movie, a 3-4 minute movie. and I aspired to that. I remember sitting there thinking that’s what I wanna do. That’s what’s gonna get me to California. That was my thing. That has transitioned. It always transitions through generations and time and now it’s Instagram.

Here is the problem. Instagram is not a place you go. It’s not a point on the map. You go to college. You go into a career. Instagram is not a destination. I worry about women, young women especially, who have been told that they’re only worth their looks or their bodies. If more women with beautiful bodies spoke more, then more women with beautiful bodies would speak more. It’s important for us to be a able to show these things equally. I’m not saying don’t show your body. I’m not saying don’t take a nude photo. Take it. It’s your body. Do what you want. Please do. I love that stuff. I love that social defiance, but we have to also talk. Now we’re teaching girls to take naked selfies, make twerk videos and say nothing and think that’s the destination.

I have a sizable voice. Kim Kardashian has a way bigger voice and Amber Rose has a way bigger voice because those are the caricatures. Those are the enhanced bodies. They wear makeup. I don’t even wear makeup. I don’t wear high heels. I don’t like getting dressed. I’m not that girl. It’s easy for me to get overlooked. I’m not a spectacle. I’m not a caricature of myself. I would like for those women to think about those other women who are coming up and now surgically enhancing their bodies. Now you want a big butt. That’s great. And then what? This is what I asked myself three years. I sat myself down and said “ok let’s ask yourself a question you never asked yourself before.” The question was “and then what?”

Yes you have a freedom of choice, but the consequence to those choices are also ours. I know about consequences very well. All of my choices have consequences. I had to deal with my own karma, my own crap. So as we’re making these choices, and then what? That’s the part that no one thinks about. When we build careers based on our looks and then we’re 30-something year old mothers. Then we’re 40 and 50, and then what. Did you build a foundation build on your intelligence or your intellectual capacity? Is your intellectual property How to be a Bad Bitch? Is your intellectual property telling women how to get money out of men? That’s your intellectual property. It happened to me too. When I was younger, I wouldn’t have been thinking about the day my son turned 18. Luckily I have a smart, intelligent feminist son who gets it. But I’m also having to have those convos with him so that he would get it.

We will fall but we’ll have to get back up. We have to dust ourselves off. We make mistakes. We’re here to do that. But we’re also here to learn from those mistakes, missteps, misjudgments and teach these young girls something. You are not your body. Your body will change as you grow old like you would not believe. What will you have then?

by Kimberly Foster @KimberlyNFoster

Lupita Nyong’o defies nearly every physical expectation of what a Hollywood starlet should be. She is dark-skinned with an athletic body and short, natural hair.

She first drew attention for her enormous talent, but Ms. Nyong’o’s star has been aided by her ability to wear couture with an easy confidence. Her striking and sometimes challenging looks, created with the help of stylist Micaela Erlanger, dominated red carpets during the 2014 award show season. Suddenly she became the bell of the ball. Even the fashion neutral awaited her arrival at high profile events to see what she would have on, because admiration of her presence extends far beyond the clothes.

Lupita Nyong'o in Ralph Lauren at the Golden Globes in 2014 - Photos: Getty Images

Glamour is a construct in great need of disruption. Often defined as sleek, and white, on each of her red carpet outings, Ms. Nyongo’s unambiguously Black body and kinky hair interrupts the parade of unchallenged norms. And the Black girls who have long thumbed through pages of fashion magazines get to bear witness to a Black woman rising star, gentle and self-possessed, who commands attention on the world’s biggest stages. A woman who quietly calls into question the things we’re taught about beauty.

Every time Lupita Nyong’o appears as the best dressed woman on a red carpet or graces a magazine cover, she is shifting paradigms. And it is her hair, an oft overlooked accessory, that is of particular importance.

Ms. Nyong’o, a Kenyan woman, has hair like mine, tightly coiled and undeniably African. And she wears it proudly to formal events with expensive jewels and bespoke ensembles. She rejects all assumptions about the “appropriateness” of natural hair for special occassions. Sometimes Lupita’s coifs are graceful, Sometimes they are elegant, Sometimes they are avant-garde. But they are always appropriate because she is wearing them so well that she cannot be denied.

With a mix of playfulness and thoughtfulness, she and hairstylist Vernon Francois experiment with shape, height, symmetry, and length. And onlookers enjoy the looks because in a world where a Black woman cannot take a breath without being interrogated about her aesthetic choices, the hair never feels heavy. It is self-expression and celebration. Her styles recall heritage without lecturing, as she did at this year’s Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute Benefit, commonly known as the Met Gala.

Lupita Nyong'o attends the Met Gala in 2016 - Photo: Getty Images

At the Met Gala, Ms. Nyong’o sported a ponytail that stretched toward the sun. When American Vogue editor-at-large Andre Leon Talley inquired on the red carpet, she said the style was inspired by “the structural hair-dos from around the continent.” She, of course, meant the continent of Africa and Talley, in a moment of recognition, added, “This is very Nina Simone.”

The day after the event, Vogue.com mistakenly attributed the towering coiffure’s inspiration to Audrey Hepburn. With couth and clarity she laid out that hers was a tribute to the ingenuity of Black women across the Diaspora. Francois told The Fader, “We were greatly inspired by African tribes, sculptured silhouettes and the strengths of textured hair.” Nyong’o, Talley, and Francois argue that glamour is inherent to African Diasporic culture, though it has long been unrecognized by the mainstream arbiters of taste.

Hair Inspiration. Check. @vernonfrancois @voguemagazine #metball2016

A video posted by Lupita Nyong'o (@lupitanyongo) on May 4, 2016 at 6:50am PDT

The Vogue gaffe cemented why I am still made uneasy when the white gaze meets Ms. Nyong’o’s beauty. She remains an oddity to be misread by those who have had limited interaction with Black culture and history. But it also underscores why she and her hair are so crucial. Natural Black hair on red carpets is still a rarity, and many believe it to be out of place. For example, talk show host Wendy Williams implied Viola Davis’s short auburn style made her look masculine at the Oscars in 2014.

Seeing Lupita Nyong’o matters. And we might not have her if she had not seen. At the Essence Black Women in Hollywood luncheon in 2007, she cited the importance of witnessing the celebration of Sudanese/British model Alek Wek on the formation of her self esteem. “There was no apology in you.” she told Wek when they met shortly after the speech. And there is none in Ms. Nyong’o.

Wearing highly textured hair that defies gravity with little help is an act of defiance. Lupita Nyong’o would be a much different kind of style icon if she wore relaxed hair or straight extensions regularly, equally as stunning but far less transgressive. With her dynamic natural hairstyles, she offers an alternative, one that is stunning and unmissable.



Kimberly Foster is the founder and editor-in-chief of For Harriet. Email or Follow @KimberlyNFoster

“Dear Mama, Lady, don't cha know we love ya? Sweet lady. Place no one above ya, sweet lady. You are appreciated.”

by Nyah Levone Molineaux 

No, your religious beliefs do not give you the freedom to discriminate.

Religious freedom in the United States particularly of the Christian variety mostly is engrained, respected, and often unquestioned. The government allows for the free expression of religion under the first amendment. Church finances are not taxed and audited. Movies like War Room, Miracles from Heaven, and Tyler Perry’s The Passion have been praised and very profitable. Black people take part in this freedom every week by being one of the highest church attending groups in the United States.


When religious freedom can negatively affect the lives of marginalized people, where does the unquestionable respect stop and the critical inquiry begin? There is a law in North Carolina that bans cities from enacting anti-LGBT discrimination laws and reduces the humanity of transgender people by not allowing them to use the restroom that aligns with their identity. There is a law in Mississippi that gives government, businesses, and individuals the right to deny LGBT people housing, employment, and other services if it is for religious reasons. Then there is a law that was signed by Tennessee's governor just last week that allows therapists to deny potentially life-saving counseling services to LGBT people under religious beliefs. As a queer person, I would have committed suicide if I was denied valuable coping skills and insight from therapists and counselors
We have to collectively stop and realize a few verses in a religious text, in this case the large source of it being the bible in the United States, can not always guide us in how we should treat a person who may be different. Furthermore, we have to let go or revise certain religious beliefs in order to have peace in a diverse society.

We need to face the reality that the bible, which is the inspiration behind these religious freedom laws, is not a completely moral book. For many, it is the “Word of God” and inspired men of God wrote it. Since men are fallible, their creations are fallible.

by Tiffanie Drayton @DraytonTiffanie

Two Black teenage girls recently died, struggling to defend themselves against violent attacks from fellow Black girls. 17-year-old Ta'Jae Warner was jumped and beaten to death while walking her 11-year-old brother to the store in the daylight-filled streets of Brooklyn and 16-year-old Amy Joyner sustained a head injury that claimed her life after a brawl in the girl’s bathroom at Howard High School of Technology in Delaware.

As a 26-year-old Black woman who has not only been a witness to but a victim of violence within the Black community, it pains me deeply to be forced to revisit the horrors of those teenage experiences, and also to reconcile them with the vicious reality Black girls like myself faced and continue to face. A reality ridden with aggression, anger, fear, and exacerbated by feelings of helplessness from existing in a society that constantly disregards the physical and emotional well-being of young Black girls. A teen experience so precarious that I was both a victim of violence and a perpetrator of it.

In my early childhood, I spent the vast majority of my time roaming the suburban streets of a diverse East Coast town, with predominantly Italian and Hispanic families, where my mother immigrated alone with her three children from Trinidad and Tobago. She worked hard to provide and for that reason, the streets-- and the children of them-- were my best friends. While my mother sometimes worked into the wee hours of the night, she knew we were protected; our neighborhood offered the security of friendly officers riding around on bikes with short pants during the summer, or other parents who would be sure to look out for us kids.

That all changed when my mother decided to move to an urban, mostly black neighborhood, after realizing she could no longer afford to live in suburbia as a single parent when I was 10.

While the environmental change was immediately palpable—the vast home-lined streets turned into a dilapidated apartment complex, where greetings were not friendly smiles but harsh, unwelcoming stares—it took quite some time for me to understand that I was no longer existing in the same psychological space. That I would have to adopt a survival mentality and survival could sometimes mean life or death.


And then the fights started.

I wish I could even remember what we ever fought for--for the most part, I don’t. Maybe about a boy? Or perhaps I "tried too hard to look cute" one day. What I do remember distinctly was the pressure to perform.

“Just hit her!” onlookers would scream.

“Ya’ll gonna fight already?” they taunted.

I never really wanted to fight. Raised in a home with pretty much no violence-- my mother never hit her children and seldom yelled or screamed in anger-- the idea of wanting to hit someone else was foreign to me. But I knew that I had to in order to protect myself. I felt like a magnet for violence-- it followed me everywhere. On the school bus. At the playground. By the neighborhood pool. At school. In front of my own home.

When 50 teens, ranging from 10-18 years of age, showed up in front of my family’s house for an impending fight in which I was supposedly a headliner, that was the first time I ever reached out for help. Supposedly, I was hanging out too frequently at the neighborhood pool with a boy who was "taken", and word spread through the complex that he liked me, to his girlfriend's dismay. I had yet to ever even have a boyfriend at that point in time of my life, so I was absolutely confused.

"You gunna let some little light-skinned girl think she can steal your man?" I heard one of the girls castigating the other girl who was to fight me.

"Imma fuck that bitch up," she responded, angrily.

My mother was at work and cellphones were not yet popular. So after the mob began to launch rocks through our windows, my siblings and I agreed we should call the police.

“9-1-1, what is your emergency,” a female voice questioned.

“There are some kids outside trying to fight us and they are throwing rocks through our windows,” I pleaded.

“Do you see any weapons?” the emergency dispatcher questioned.

“No, I don’t think so,” I answered.

The response? The sound of a click and eventually dial tone.

Frantic, we decided the next best option was to call the only uncle we had in the vicinity. He explained that he was too busy to come to our aid. This would become the norm. I never had any adult intervene on my behalf when I was threatened by violence. My school forced me to sit on the very same bus where children jeered at me or tried to instigate fights with me, after I started walking to a neighboring complex to catch the bus there and avoid those confrontations. Police never came when called. My mother never addressed the bruises on my face or body. Violence became a way of life and there was no one to protect me, but me. I felt lonely, isolated, fearful and confused-- those feelings eventually morphing into anger and rage.

“She’s a fucking hoe; I don’t know why anyone would want to be with her!” I taunted another girl, in front of a large group of children, as her boyfriend stood nearby. We fought that day, as other children watched on. I slammed her to the ground, punching her in the face as she pulled my hair.

And just like that, I could’ve been Ta’Jae Warner, Amy Joyner or any one of their assailants. Like so many young Black girls, my future could’ve been stolen from me because of violence, misplaced hurt and the loss of innocence and childhood. According to The National Center for Victims of Crime, Black youth face disproportionate rates of victimization and exposure to violence:

“Evidence suggests that Black youth ages 12 to 19 are victims of violent crime at significantly higher rates than their white peers. Black youth are three times more likely to be victims of reported child abuse or neglect, three times more likely to be victims of robbery, and five times more likely to be victims of homicide. In fact, homicide is the leading cause of death among African American youth ages 15 to 24.”

The initiative further explains that exposure to such violence makes Black children more likely to act out or suffer from a host of debilitating ramifications:

“Youth exposure to victimization is directly linked to negative outcomes for young people, including increased depression, substance abuse, risky sexual behavior, homelessness, and poor school performance. Youth victimization increases the odds of becoming a perpetrator of violent crimes, including felony assault and intimate partner violence, doubles the likelihood of problematic drug use, and increases the odds of committing property crimes.”

And, like myself, many Black children are left without support from institutions or family when threatened with or exposed to violence:

“Youth who are victimized during the complicated transitional period of adolescence may experience serious disruption of their developmental processes. These effects are worsened when youth perceive institutions as unwilling or unable to help or protect them, and adults’ failure to intercede confirms youth victims’ sense that they must cope with an unsafe environment by themselves and leads to delayed reporting and recovery for youth.”

For far too many Black children, recovery is not an option. Some of the physical and emotional scars left from being a victim of or witness to violence may fade with time. Others do not. And these are not merely physical wounds, but wounds of the heart, soul and spirit that are left untreated, eventually festering and ulcerating, corrupting the body and mind. It is this deep hurt, pain, fear and anger that took the lives of girls like Ta’Jae and Amy and the freedom of their assailants.

While we mourn the loss of these two beautiful young women whose lives were tragically stolen from them, we must also mourn the loss of our children’s innocence. Look into the eyes of our youth and see and feel the violence that has been seen and felt. When will we be able to protect them from it? Until we can, the Black community will continue to lose it’s children to violence. And we-- the adults, parents, leaders of institutions-- are at fault for that.

Photo: Ta'jae Warner - left; Amy Joyner - right