Archive for August 10th, 2004

WARNING: Sexist and/or racist stuff to follow. Seriously. If you’re looking for political stuff, check the archives or look under Delicious & Nutritious. This is NOT nutritious…this is a Honey Bun. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I got ambushed. There I was, minding my own business when I got sidetracked by this article on white girls with butts. I’ve been trying and trying and trying to avoid writing about this, but at this point, it’s out of my hands. I’ve been provoked.

Now in order to properly discuss this, I have to break out the seating chart I devised a few years ago. Inspired by the lyric from the James Brown song, I’m a Greedy Man, where he goes, “You got to have somethin’ to sit on/ before I carry you home” I came up with the following schedule for butt sizes:

-Bar Stool
-Folding Chair
-Banquet Chair
-Easy Chair
-Love Seat
-Sofa
-Park Bench

Now let’ break this down. A bar stool has no cushioning and barely enough seating to get comfortable. A folding chair, while having no cushioning provides better coverage and support. A banquet chair is like a folding chair with cushioning. Everything from the easy chair to the sofa is similar, differing only in literal size. A Park Bench is simply too much. So draw your parallels. I don’t do pictures or graphic physical descriptions because even with a scale and objective-sounding names(or maybe just objectifying), it’s still a matter of taste. What’s a Love Seat to me might be an Easy Chair to one of my friends. (The beauty of this scale is the limitless number of iterations.)

First thing to point out is that in general discussions, women tend to have no understanding of what’s important. Because clothing makers use ‘hips’ as a measurement, they tend to think that that’s what guys are checking for. And to tell the truth, there may be some guys for whom the shape of the hips is the most important thing. I don’t know any of them, though. It’s all about the cheek. And again, there are definitely varying opinions on this, but for my use of the above terms, the differentiation is based on the amount of retro-protrusion. Wide is one thing. Fully-packed is something altogether different. Moreover, wasit-to-cheek ratio plays an important role in determining a place on the seating chart. Even if a chick had what would qualify as a sofa, if that midriff ain’t together, then her overall rating goes down. But that’s just me. I know one of my boys, he likes them big jawns, so again, his scale would be totally different than mine.

So when it comes to white girls with butts, the first thing to understand is that most white girls fall somewhere around a folding chair. Occasionally you may see a Bar Stool, who looks like she just has a very long back, but that’s infrequent. For the most part, there’s a little shape and a little protrusion, but not much. The average Black dude would call that having no butt. (The Bar Stool is nearly concave.) But like I said, white girls have been coming up. Only thing is, people are blowing it out of proportion. The grading is curved. (no pun intended) There has been an increase in the number of Banquet Chair Beckys, and every once in a while…verrrry rarely…you might see an Easy Chair Becky, but that’s about as far as it goes. Love Seats and Sofas? No.

What’s interesting to me is that the celebrity who brought the mainstream’s attention southward was Jennifer Lopez. I think she really started to get noticed when she played all those roles where she was a dark-complected white chick, so people started to think it was okay. Black women have always been packin’. (Not that there aren’t Folding Chair Rasheedas out there…)J-Lo got a nice Easy Chair, maybe edging into semi-Love Seat-ness, but that’s about it. For sure, she ain’t got no Sofa. Serena got a Sofa.

Another thing to mention here is that it’s important to differentiate between that which God made and that which clothing makes to appear. It’s time out for some of these fashions, because people just don’t know what they’re doing. A woman with anything less than an Easy Chair has no business wearing pants with writing across the back. Maybe I’m wrong for saying it, so if need be I’ll get some woman I know to come and cosign, but truth is truth. Last spring I mentioned the girl who was walking around in some sweatpants that said ‘Net’ across the back. They were really supposed to spell ‘Northeast.’ The converse is true as well. I’ve seen chicks with Park Benches out there stretching ‘BVD’ to ‘Boulevard.’ Certain things just ought not be, my friends.

Of course, the key to all this is that every woman must be convinced of her own attractiveness in her own mind. It doesn’t matter what standard of beauty the mass media projects if a woman is comfortable in her own skin. Being comfortable in your skin doesn’t necessarily mean showing as much of it as possible, however. If she reeealllly got a Sofa, she won’t need to wear hip-huggers to show it off. That mug would be recognizable through sweatpants.

But then to take it beyond the physical a little, it’s all about confidence anyway. I won’t argue that some women wear revealing clothes because they are confident in their looks, but I’d be willing to bet that more dress that way because deep down they are uncomfortable with themselves and want attention from dudes to give them some validation. My thinking here is that if a woman is really comfortable with herself, she’ll dress more-or-less appropriately for her body-type. And I recognize that the whole concept of “appropriate” in this is problematic. What I think displays good fashion sense may be altogether different than her perception. But if you think about it, it’s not that people are coming from left-field and trying to make a new style, it’s that they’re trying to dress like they’re built one way when they’re not. I make the parallel of guys going to the gym and trying to lift to look impressive instead of lifting for what their body is actually capable of. The person who knows his body and isn’t ashamed will get on the bench and lift that “wimp” looking weight because it’s not about the appearance of being strong it’s about actually getting strong. Same thing here. It’s not about putting on the appearance of sexiness, it’s about being it and letting it exude through whatever outfit she’s wearing. I know. I’ve seen women in suits who would turn my head before 93% of these chicks out here wearing next-to-nothing.

By the way, ‘callipygous’ is only my favorite word. It means ‘having pleasantly shaped buttocks.’ You didn’t even know there was a word for that. But you know it now. Spend it wisely.

The Hall of Fame Game, the inaugural contest in the 2005 NFL season, was last night. I didn’t watch it. I don’t have a televison. On purpose.

August, 2004 represents the 3rd year in a row that I have lived free of an in-house idiot box. Not like I haven’t seen any television in three years, but not at my house. There are some days when I miss it, like Sundays and Monday nights during the fall and winter or during the first two days of March Madness (or however long my team is playing), but for the most part, I’m cool without it. I wasn’t born this way, though.

I first started to become television independent one summer during junior high. I was watching TV while a brawny thunderstorm rumbled through, taking the power with it. When the lights came back on, the television didn’t. My mom was like, “I told you to cut off that TV, didn’t I?” So she decided not to buy one until the end of the summer. Fortunately, we had lots of books, magazines, and records. That was the summer that I first started learning how to draw. At that point, I knew I couldn’t go back to endless hours of television viewing.

Now, this is probably not for everybody. It certainly isn’t for anybody who doesn’t have access to information from some other source. Everybody needs to be able to be able to find out what’s going on in the world. Just about a month after I had gone TV free, 9/11 happened. If my ex hadn’t called me and told me, I would’ve gone all day, oblivious to the whole thing. I might have noticed that there weren’t any planes flying, but it probably would have taken a couple days. Even after I got the call, I tried to log on to the New York Times, but of course they were getting so much traffic that my little dial-up couldn’t get through, so I wound up having to walk to my grandmother’s to see what was happening.

Even aside from the informative purpose, I can respect that everybody doesn’t share my preferences in entertainment. That’s cool. That the average Black family watches 70 hours a week is not. What did Flav say? “Why’on’chu back up from the TV! Read a book or somethin’! Learn about your culture!” If there’s one thing that could get me cussin (and there are a lot more than one, let me tell you), this is it. There’s nothing wrong with watching some television, but keeping that joint on as a steady stream of smoke hazing up the room, that’s bad news. What really gets me is the line people give me when I step to them about it: “There’s educational stuff on TV.” I have a stock answer too. “Yeah, but that ain’t what you be watchin’.”

Anyway, I see this as an opportunity for bridge building between the right and the left, but more than likely it would only lead to more wall-building. Let some conservative make a big deal about cutting off the television, and all you would hear from liberals is complaining about people being holier-than-thou and trying to make moral judgements. Let some mainstream liberal groups (because there actually are some groups that advocate this, and I think they are left-leaning) come out with the exact same message and conservatives would counter with arguments about liberty and personal responsibility; eventually there would probably be an article describing the economic consequences of such foolishness. Meanwhile, my people are awash in mind-numbing, vapid representations of abnormal normality. I bet even the Jesses, as long as they don’t know what the other has said, would agree on a 35-hour a week cap on television viewing.

Just leave Madden out of this.