The Politics of Curly Hair

Black women's hair is political. How amusing that this would be a newsflash to many people, and something they'd never thought about before. It's kind of how I feel when people have grand epiphanies like, "Race is not just a white and black issue!" or "People in places other than Europe have histories too!"

My hair is political too. I know that if I had straight hair, I would be looked at and treated very, very, veryveryvery differently. I read a study once that said Americans tend to associate dark, curly hair with stupidity and a lack of discipline. Gee, I wonder why! Who tends to have dark, curly hair? My hair goes against the dark and straight norm of the model minority (holy shit, that article needs to be fixed up), and it throws off many a subliminally racist motherfucker.

Every good woman of Bollywood has straight hair. She might adapt Shirley temple curls for a song or two, but curly, dark hair is reserved for the vixens, nymphomaniacs, item numbers, and "schizophrenics." Interestingly, Bollywood associates dark, curly hair with western debauchery, while many Americans associate dark, curly hair more specifically with urban debauchery. It's interesting that first-generation South Asians that I meet here -- men and women -- tend to have more positive fascination with my hair, while second-generation men straight up turn the other way and lust for the ultra-typical Bollywood look, if not just an actual white girl. Is it because of the respective debaucheries that curly hair connotates to each of those groups?

I fucking HATE it when people say "Excuse me" in a demanding, irritated manner when nobody is even in their way! Just now, I was getting a napkin at the counter and this dumb-ass girl holding her pretentious drink shrieked, "Excuse me," while scowlingly treading past me.

Bitch, there's a goddamn yard between us, and you weigh five pounds! Even my monumental, claustrophobic ass would have comfortably slid by without thinking twice. Next time, please spare me the shrill cacophany that otherwise accompanies your transit.

Abercrappy

These? What are "these"? Gratuitous dollars in disposable income to squander on Abercrombie & Fitch?

More odious designs here. At least, I'm too pretty to wear them.



Ooh ooh, but maybe one day I'll wake up and realize my ancestors didn't hail from the Global South after all! What a relief that day will be.



Oh but they did get their asses kicked.

My Day In Haikus

Alarm clock not set
E-Commerce missed yet again
I am a loser

Can't skip a shower
Or fail to wear eyeliner
Rush to make Fed Tax

Park at a meter
A dollar spent just to blog
And then a ticket

Sitting at Roma
With hot chocolate and the flies
I reflect on this

Garam Masala Not So Hot

Just got back from seeing Garam Masala at Naz. It was essentially the same thing as No Entry, but far more irritating. Actually, I'm not sure whom I'd kick harder in the balls between Anil Kapoor and Akshay Kumar. But I certainly didn't mind looking at John, just as I didn't mind looking at Bipasha in No Entry.

I think I'm mostly irritated because philandering ugly men are so acceptable and comical to a conservative Desi audience, whereas movies about women having "affairs" are invariably classified as "adult" and get made a huge hullabaloo over. They are never comedies, but dramas/murder mysteries, where the woman gets into a serious dilemma and ends up having to make a massive sacrifice to prove herself worthy of reestablishing her wifely post. And these "affairs" involve the women's past lovers and/or stalkers basically coercing them into sexual relationships, while the women are visibly quivering and vulnerable and uncertain in the initial rendezvous, but ultimately succumb because they are so afraid and lonely. What kind of "affair" doesn't even involve any fun or volition?! Yet of course, they must be totally graphic to arouse the male viewer and reinforce the masochistic nature of female sexuality. (Examples: Murder, pictured above; Tum, in which she is passed out from alcohol and doesn't even know she is having "sex," which in my dictionary is called rape. The fact that they show this scene quite graphically and imply that it's an "affair" for which she must pay recourse is very, very, very troubling.)

The movies where men have affairs are totally different, aside from the gratuitous female objectification, which occurs across the board either in bed or on the beach; in these, the men having the affairs are the willing aggressors, naturally. And the salwar-kameez-clad wives take them back even though they have wisely been attune to the husband's deceptive activities all along. After all, you must unconditionally accept your husband even after he has more likely than not obtained all sorts of infectious diseases from his wanton whoring and possibly knocked up a few other chicks. Great going with the safe sex education there! Oh, but I forgot: sex can only result in disease or unwanted pregnancy if it's pre-marital. Silly me.

Why do audiences get so delighted and humored by the idea of men obtaining sex from multiple women by fooling them into thinking they have monogamous relationships? It's not just Bollywood; look at the recent Wedding Crashers and how their fun clearly wasn't just about having lots of sex, but about manipulating multiple women into having sex by making them think there was romantic potential. Are you not aware that there are plenty of women who would be interested in sex just for the sake of pleasure? After all, we're the ones with the clit?! I think it's mostly self-flattery to the typical hetero male, who wants to be desired wholly by an ostensibly brainless wallflower, rather than regarded indifferently as one among many cunnilingus service providers by an intelligent human being. Society likes to pigeonhole "promiscuous" women as insecure people who use sex for validation, as if, even if true, that would be worse than the Maxim-reading, Man Show-watching loser who wants the feeling of emotional and sexual conquest in order to secure any sense of self-worth. Hah!

A random observation: in this movie as well as No Entry, there were actually a few non-Desi women of color along with the usual blondes in the beach scenes. They actually objectified dark-skinned women. I guess that's progress in some of fucked up way.

The MPRE

That test was one of the most irritating, crappily worded things I've ever seen in my life. I don't know how so many people finished so early into it, when I was on like number 25 out of 60. They gave us a full two hours and five minutes to finish it, and I was in there up until fifteen minutes before the deadline, and then just decided to fuck it and fill in random bubbles for the last 15 questions.

I had been somewhat confident for the past couple of days since I heard you only need to get like 60% of the questions correct to pass, but now I see how truly groundless that confidence was. I had only taken one full practice test in preparation -- untimed -- and checked my results after every four questions. With each successive batch, my success rate remained at a constant, remarkably low rate.

But even those practice questions could never have prepared me for the abomination that was the actual MPRE. The questions were unreasonably lengthy, and all the names were fucking "Able" and "Baker," or "Alpha," "Beta," and "Gamma," or "Plaint" and "Deft," which made me the most murderous. The fact patterns were way too long and rambling, and the answer choices couldn't just simply be "Yes, because..." or "No, because..."; they also had to involve "Yes, but only if..." or "No, unless..." which in effect negated the whole yes/no distinction! Oh, and I caught a typo, too; there was one question that consistently employed "Able" and "Baker," but at the end of the question they randomly threw in a mention of "Beta" when they meant to say "Baker." Careless oafs!!

My only consolation while taking the exam was the seemingly low 60% passing figure, which I consistently kept planted in the forefront of my mind. After question #24, I thought, "OK, Leena, you've taken your 40% of freebies; now focus." Every few questions, I calculated what percentage of the test had been completed, and then computed the prorated figure of how many I could have gotten away with missing to that point. "OK, I am now 26.7% done, and it's even OK if I missed 10.6 questions!" If anything, the experience solidified my algebraic skills. :P

I am not looking forward to taking this again in March. ;(

Leftist Men

There is a gathering of male leftists (Greens) at a neighboring table. They seem to think they are incredibly revolutionary. They are talking about some political event they are planning, and discussing options for various (male and mostly white) speakers that might be able to grace it.

In the midst of a conversational break, they just joked admiringly about how one of the guys in the group -- looks to be about forty -- is dating an eighteen-year-old "girl."

*Scoff*

Update: Oh holy fuck, did they just read my mind/blog? One just said, gingerly, "I think it would be nice if we had a... female... Green... speak. 'Cause you know, they're always male." Maybe they just happened to look my way and were reminded of the existence of females, outside of a humping context. Now they're discussing how this one is "fairly new," that one they haven't seen speak, etc.

"We want someone who's dynamic. Somebody that grabs your attention," one guy just clarified.

Then they abandoned the brainstorming of female potentials.

Riiight.

I'm not saying I embody those principles to the best of my ability, but at least I'm aware of that and able to call out my privilege and keep my eyes open as to who is and isn't represented, for whatever that's worth.