UI Meme of the Day, a daily series…
How to Be a True Diva in Real Life and Not a Simple-minded Reality Show One
For whatever reason, I never imagined that the day would come when I would be that older lady of my childhood and younger days telling younger women how to behave themselves.
But I have become Queen Esther. I have become Ruth, and her mother-in-law, Naomi of the Bible; I have become Mrs. Rosa T. Evans, and Mrs. Ernestine Davis, and Mrs. Mae Washington, and Mrs. E. Arlene Green, and Mrs. Willie J. Lewis Sr. and … well, you get the picture.
I did not see this day coming.
I never saw myself as the one saying “Spit out the gum,” “Pull your dress down,” “Close your legs,” “Young ladies don’t cross their legs at the knee, they cross them at the ankle,” or “Women allow men to sit facing the door in public places, they are there to keep you safe so they have to see everyone coming in and leaving the store,” and “Ladies don’t smoke in the streets, it makes you look like a common hooker,” but here I am.
Here Comes The Bride: The Lion of the Tribe of Judah
The generational gauntlet has been passed on.
The torch is lit and moved along to those of us who are grandparents now.
Many of us are not 1980s grandparents whose children are probably in their late teens to late 20s by now, many of us are 60s “Civil Rights corn-fed” grandmothers who were raised in a world where only a few people on our street owned black & white televisions and only one or two had telephones. We had no CDs, let alone MPs or Bluerays, we had cassette tapes, vinyl spin platters that warped or scratched, and AM radios — and after a while, an AM/FM radio.
All of us weren’t born or raised in the country, but we weren’t so citified that “anything went,” either. Even us 1960s “city girls” had to mind our manners, especially around adults and older people.
I didn’t think I would grow to be “that old lady” who would tell the younger sisters anything at all, because I learned to mind my business, as well as my manners.
I dread stepping on the toes or hems of a generation of young ladies when my own was, for the older people of my time, quite a bit more than “wild.” We had our coming-of-age shining moments in the sun, and horrified our grandparents, too; but trust, the stuff we did was tame AND lame compared to this generation.
Working Not Twerking
But this “twerking” thing, really?
That’s just more than over the top, that is outright dirt-ridden betrayal of Black women as the goddesses of the Sun.
Since when did Black women literally start “showing their asses” in the streets like common whores and public porn stars? Most of these twerkers look like they need enemas badly, but I did spend a short-lived career working as a nurse’s assistant, so I notice these things.
Yeah. I know.
Everybody can’t afford to be a “lady,” let alone a Queen.
However, it wasn’t long ago that someone passed along to me a, what do y’all call it these days, “ratchet” (we used to call it wretched, but …) really ratchet video of a young Black woman in “Anytown, USA” cursing out some white female in a Dollar Store.
There she was screaming “Respect a queen! Y’ll better learn how to respect a queen!”
All I’m thinking is “I know the feeling, I understand why she’s angry.” That little white hank of hair and rag-a-bones really did disrespect her, that much was true and pretty obvious.
However, young lady, you not only need to learn how to act like a Queen, you need to learn how to talk like one, also. You are acting up in public and dressed like a low-level court jester, not a Queen … and you let someone who is common and beneath you take you to places where you don’t want to go.”
It ain’t pretty, so don’t let others take you down to the unrefined undignified level that they exist on.
I can say it because I’ve been there, I’ve allowed it to happen to me. If you want respect, you command it – you do not demand it. Your walk and your talk goes before you. Besides, Black women already get automatic attention every time we walk into a room.
Our presence is God-ordained and heaven-scent, so when we walk in, there is an automatic “presence” that precedes us. It came as a gift from the outer Cosmos itself. It is in our blood, our heritage, our inheritance, and it is always there waiting for our “inner Cosmos” to catch up.
There is nothing we can do about it, nor should we want to change it. We don’t lower ourselves to anything that came up out of a cave just to prove something that doesn’t need to be proven.
I almost went there once and lived to regret it. For instance…
When I see Black women on television “awkety-bawk-squawking” like they are some whiny little drama reality show ‘diva’ types who spend their lives screaming for attention (the outer glam without the inner talent), it reminds me of a sniveling little floor squirmer in a restaurant or store.
It is as if these reality-showoffs want the attention of a truly famous person without putting in the hard work that it takes to become “true” divas.
Ladies like Aretha Franklin, Chaka Khan, Whitney Houston, Clara Ward, Mahalia Jackson, Ruby Dee, Cicily Tyson, Maya Angelou, Terry McMillan, Diane McKinney Whetstone, Diahann Carroll, Tina Turner, Patti LaBelle, Yolanda Adams, Tramaine Hawkins, Gladys Knight, Toni Morrison, Katherine Jackson, Coretta Scott King, Winnie Mandela, Betty Shabazz, Myrlie Evers, Lena Horne, Nina Simone, Jessye Norman, Kathleen Battle, Ella Fitzgerald … and the lists go on and on.
These women, these proud Black women, did not have to “show their asses” to be seen, they were humongously talented and became divas because it fit, not because they were trying to force a square peg into a round hole. In order to misconstrue, you must conform into something that you are not.
If it means chiseling off your corners to fit into a tight space, or stuffing the open holes with tissue just to make a bad fit appear to belong, then you will never be the “authentic you.”
Ask yourself if you are willing to sacrifice your soul and the earthly heart-song of generations of Black women, the mothers of our ancestral heritage, just to have a momentary glimpse at what it might have been like to be a genuine REAL Queen. This reality show squawking thing is unearned “diva-osity,” and it is hair-raising to say the least – especially on Black women.
We were not wired this way by our own human natures, and it is truly unbecoming.
The weave flipping movement makes it even worse. That dead folks’ and poor folks’ remains (human hair) or horses patooties (synthetic or yarn) that is sewn in and/or glued on like an obnoxious tattoo is more fake than the falsetto high-pitched ‘nails on a chalkboard’ squawking coming out of their throats.
You can speak properly without the high-pitched inflated wizardry of whine. That is for them, not for us.
We don’t follow, we LEAD: In real time -in our daily lives- and not just on television.
Real Queens seldom have time for trivial pursuits, so the sooner we get this, the better for all of us and our families, our daughters and our sons.
Then and only then will we begin to see educated and earthy shows about us with real humor and real drama. The day we stop catering, kow-towing and cowering down, lowering ourselves to other people’s base animalistic standards that lack control and fortitude, when we become genuine to our natures and our race, that is the day that a meaningless “fade-away payday” ends and our true history in this nation and on the Planet begins. Not a moment, or a second, sooner than that.
Trust, I’ve seen myself thrust into becoming something that I was not.
I had to step aside and outside of myself to channel the ancestors from our Persian and Mesopotamian antiquities to bring myself back to Center. If you are a descendant of the so-called “Africans” who came here through the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Diasporas, you are far more Persian (North and Far Eastern African) than you are West African.
Northern Africa before the Europeans carved and divided the spoils of our Ancestry and Inheritance.
You love those Far Eastern Persian-sounding naming systems for your children, your sons and daughters, because that is the true heart-song of your ancient ancestors, it is your inheritance.
Even if you do not recognize it at the moment, that is the reason why you continue to name your children “offbeat”-sounding or ‘bizarre’ names that are not common to the hearing of your people’s English slave history or of European ownership in the Americas.
It is your heritage, not theirs. They can’t get down with it because it does not belong to them, only to YOU.
Therefore, carry yourself like a Queen, not like a “queen.”
Walk like a Queen, dress like a Queen and not a drag queen trying to be seen. Put your nose in the air where it righteously belongs, not in the air like a snot or on the ground sniffing some dog’s ass. And keep it there for good.
Always always look down on people who don’t treat you as a Queen should be treated, and only IF and when you act like it.
If nothing else, remember that everything you post on the Internet (photos, writings, videos, et al) will follow and remain with you, your children, your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren into the antiquities even after you are removed from this Earth and into Ancestry yourself. I don’t say anything that I don’t mean to follow me into my grave…so let it be written, so let it be done. Time will prove it out, one way or the other, so take advantage of the limited time on this Earth to be a Queen. If you act like it, you don’t have to say a word. It rolls with you.
Yes, after that, once you do what you were born to do, what is given … then those who do not respect you are lower than a dog and that is what they are. Treat them the way they behave.
You don’t need to show them your ass or toot your buttcheeks all up in the air and all over the place in order to show the ones who disrespect you that you perceive them to be nothing more than a common jackass.
If you command respect and ACT like a Queen rather than screaming and cutting up in public like a soiled and spoiled insolent brat as ‘they’ who diss you do, and you still don’t get that respect …then off with their damnable heads.
You can forgive them, AND forget them — with a quickness.
That’s what Real [not ‘reality’] Queens do.
It’s just that simple.
Twerkers read this. God help females be better today what we see out there is evil its not real women no wonder you all be passed around like a generic cigarette with no respect take a real good look at what you doing. Facts no hate. Im a woman