By Cassie Baudouin
I promise, I will get to the books.
Is it hot in here, or has misogyny become everyone’s favorite hobby? Ayesha Curry recently posted a photo from Sweet July’s BODY feature where she posed nude, but nothing was shown, “Shins and shoulders, y’all,” she said in her caption. While the comments were sprinkled with people singing her praises, it was also drowning with 1950’s rhetoric from both men and women.
Actual comments included, “Steph, get your wife,” “I smell a DIVORCE!!!,” “I am sure the attention you wanted will occur now,” which… huh? “I don’t think Curry would like this,” “Did Curry greenlight this?” One more time, “Did Curry greenlight this,” “You belong to the Streets,” and thousands more of the same sentiment that I can’t get into because they make me itch.
Find something else to do — you must be tired by now. Many also quoted her own words from 2015 when she said something along the lines of “keeping the goods for my man,” after she saw someone leaving a Starbucks in only nipple pasties. Seems like a different situation, but I digress. It also seems like six years ago.
This is not too long after the internet came down the throat of half of music duo ChloexHalle, Chloe Bailey, for being “too sexy” on Instagram with ridiculously heinous comments, even though she’s probably worn equally or more revealing clothes and said more explicit things in her recent performances and received nothing but praise for all of them.
Is it because of quarantine? Is it because we’re coming up on a year in a Panera Bread? Is there truly nothing else to do but be a misogynist on the internet? Go pay your taxes. Literally do anything else.
These are actual grown, adult women with autonomy. Not Hester Prynne. The sexualization of black women specifically is not a new conversation. It’s an issue that goes back centuries, having roots in slavery, but that’s a discussion for another day. Our sexual liberation is often given to us, not freely grown into.
That’s why young black girls are treated like they’re older than their non-black counterparts, and adult black women have to defend themselves against comments like this all the time. You aren’t allowed to be sexual until I say you can. That sentiment, though not said out right, could be coming from anyone you can think of, including other black women. Especially the ones from older generations that were not as free as women are now.
And so today, I have some books for you. I couldn’t not do that. Books about Women, being autonomous Women, doing Womanly things, and telling Women’s stories, because we are actual people that exist, with our own individual experiences and journeys:
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Janie Crawford is setting out to be her own person. A black woman in the 30’s, her quest for identity brings her through three marriages and back to her roots.
The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler
This classic play was first performed in 1996. A nontraditional book with sections dedicated to sexual consent, body image, sex work, reproduction, etc. Vastly intersectional for it’s time, Ensler’s work aimed to give a voice to women of many races, identities, and experiences.
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Another deeply intersectional classic that broke the silence around domestic and sexual abuse when published in 1982. Walker richly portrays the lives of Black women in Georgia during the early 20th century through their pain, struggle, companionship, growth, resilience, and bravery.
Circe by Madeline Miller
Daughter of Helios and Perseis, Circe is an “other” from the day she’s born. She’s told she’s ugly, less than, and useless all her life. When she’s banished to Aiaia for being a “witch”, for being too powerful, more powerful than her father and brother, she goes on a journey to become the goddess that she is.
Three Women by Lisa Taddeo
Taddeo introduces three different women with an incredibly nuanced, complicated, and messy view of their desires, infatuations, and heartbreaks. It’s nonfiction told in a very “fiction” way that reminds us that we’re not all that different.
Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
A collection of essays exploring difference according to sex, race, and economic status. Lorde also brings a black, queer, feminist perspective to the larger cultural conversation that has often lacked intersectionality.
She Would Be King by Wayétu Moore
A magical realistic retelling of Liberia’s formation. Gbessa is at the forefront of a tense relationship between African American settlers and indigenous tribes as a new nation forms around her and two others, and their gifts. Narrated by the spirit of the wind, saying of Gbessa, “If she was not a woman, she would be king.”
That’s all I got this week, folks. Happy reading! Wash your hands, wear your masks, lend a smile, and let women live.
Goodreads: Cass https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/107994654-cass
