How Are You Doing? Nicki Minaj a True Rap Renegade

I truly love the Non-White Afrostocrasy’s (NWA's) quirky sense of priority. A quick rundown of recent events: 

- Billy Crystal uses the memory of Sammy Davis Junior as an excuse to do blackface at this year’s racially tense Oscars. NWA: At least Octavia won, poor, poor Viola.

- Petrol companies continue to wreck environmental and political havoc in Africa’s most populous country. NWA: Yawn. Can you believe gas is gonna hit $5 a gallon?

- Nicki Minaj’s Grammy performance. NWA: BOYCOTT NICKI MINAJ! BOYCOTT NICKI MINAJ! 

In `Moment of Clarity’, Hova famously raps, “If skills sold, truth be told, I'd probably be/Lyrically Talib Kweli/Truthfully I wanna rhyme like Common Sense/But I did 5 mill' - I ain't been rhyming like Common since”. The best rapper alive admits to dumbing down his music (or at least masking his intelligence) because commercial audiences are aggressively stupid.

If you’re outraged by or dismissive of Nicki Minaj chances are he’s talking about you...Yeah, I'm going there.

Nicki unquestionably plays to the lowest common denominator. But, those who care to listen -and think - know that there's much more going on. Maybe…just maybe she’s holding up a mirror to today's women, shining a light on femininity constructs and exploiting society's unflinching amorality.

DO YOU REALLY LISTEN TO MUSIC OR JUST SKIM THROUGH IT?
One of rap’s creeds is: expect to be misunderstood. And, even for artists not on a Lupe Fiasco like ‘esotericism’, the craftier the composition the more likely it is that you’ll be explaining yourself to people not particularly interested in understanding. Why? Because certain audiences are committed to seeing things through  lenses of stereotype and self-serving prejudice. Like really, who thinks that 'uneducated' black people are capable of complex narration and masterful socio-historical critiques?

There isn't much reason for rap artists to entangle themselves in the `does life imitate art?’ debate. Mos made it plain on `Fear Not of Man’, saying, “We are hip-hop…next time you want to find out how hip-hop is doing, ask ‘how am I doing?” And, if you want to get all afro-cultural: from the days of village djelis and before, `black' performance artists operated in a tradition of ‘call and response’ and improvisation. The (post) post-mods have just caught up, telling us that 'the audience is part the‘text’’. 

Hip-hop’s been on this, though. What’s an OTT freestyle if not recognizing audience reaction as a co-author? And, the 18th letter already told us what 'mc' means.

Going back to Hov’s plays on ‘common sense’ we see that, musically and lyrically, even hip-hop’s literal meanings can’t be appreciated without reading context (i.e., 'audience reaction') or tracking a subtext conveyed through progression, multiplicity and allusion. Fact is, subtlety and critique don’t move the crowd much these days. So making money makes an emcee. Or does it?

BUT YOU DON’T HEAR ME THOUGH
Biggie’s Ready to Die gives you your sex and violence ration, sometimes hilariously and other times chillingly. But, its a critique of the (Black) American Dream: the complex of expectations - and deprivations - set black kids up for mental health problems and early graves. It's probably B.I.G.’s spin on his one-time roommates’ T.H.U.G.L.I.F.E (The Hate You Gave Little Infants Fucked Everybody) theory. For goodness sake. Just look at the album cover: a baby picture is captioned `Ready to Die’.

The album begins by dramatizing antecedent action. A sound-montage establishes music as a marker of time. Or even a setting of sorts. Through dialog and transition, the sound-play depicts critical transitions in B.I.G's life: joy at his birth gives way family dysfunction, his precocious criminality leads to a violent juvenile delinquency, his imprisonment and release beget uber-crimey aspirations. The first song, `Things Done Changed’, describes B.I.G’s return to his Brooklyn neighborhood. The inciting force - the question - is an existential crisis particular to life in a 90’s American bantustan. Memory provides a contrast which contextualizes his resumption of criminal life: a vision of an idyllic past, where kids “pitched pennies” and “shot skelly” is crashed by a mercenary reality. The Crack Trade has turned child's play into a high-stakes, zero-sum sport. Sample choices compellingly echo these pressures and shifts, marking B.I.G as a man out of time.


'Things done changed up this side/Remember they used to thump, but now they blast right?' is lifted from Dr. Dre’s “Little Ghetto Boy” which depicts the rise of gun culture in South Central L.A. It too links current conditions to past political events. Its intro takes us to something reminiscent of a Black Panther rally: impassioned talk of racial solidarity and co-operative economics. The song’s first verse is narrated by a young man who proves himself in a prison riot; the second, tells the story of an ex-con, OG gunned down by a younger gangster he had up for a mark, the third act brings closure and context: Snoop Dogg explains that gang life and making money in the drug trade makes a man a `real man’. Underscoring the progression is Snoop signifying as a Crip: a L.A.-based gang that had its origins in a Black Panthers community organization. These allusions bring even more weight to `Little Ghetto Boy’ and consequently to B.I.G.’s quiet paranoia in `Things Done Changed’. 

And, it gets weightier still.

WHAT YOU GONNA DO WHEN YOU GROW UP AND HAVE TO FACE RESPONSIBILITY? 
‘Little Ghetto Boy’ is a remake of a Donny Hathaway’s song of the same name. Hathaway’s version though was an inspiration anthem, rooted in a “Up with Hope-Down with Dope” Civil-Rights ethos. It empathizes with a boy growing up in the ‘hood, but then challenges him to overcome his reality. Not only that. Through resolve, and I guess and 'content of character', ghetto boys are to change the 'hood for the better. It’s grand ol’ American bootstrapism gone soul. Snoop’s response to Hathaway’s questions helps scare any inkling of conscience right out B.I.G.

The sampling in “Things Done Changed”, rich with political allusion and import, puts a palpable 'adapt-or-die' pressure on the soon to be tragic hero. And, in the fractal sampling pattern there’s a ‘fuck you’ to the ancestors. I mean, just what are we to make of adults publicly committed to justice but selling 'the revolution'? Or watching from the sidelines - selling hope and DIY redemption - while a familiar program of `racialising’ disenfranchisement unfolded?

Biggie survives these socio-political constructs. More than survives, actually. `Juicy’ celebrates his living the dream. But the album’s mood changes immediately. His conscience returns and self-disgust plunges him into depression. He then kills himself. His 'unmaking' underscores then flips the album’s theme: even if you do `make it’ (Black) American dreaming is killer.


In the 90s few people responded to that meaning. Our filters, aversions and investments - our dreams - just didn’t allow for that kind of engagement. But Ready to Die was an instant success. A hybrid. It's street credibility and `mainstream’ success changed the course of East Coast rap music. The 'glorification' of sex and violence however sparked outrage. Outrage that coincidentally (?) promoted the album but didn’t help anyone understand what a deep social commentary it was. The intermingling of judginess and willful ignorance continues in how we, who should by now know better, receive Nicki Minaj.


DO YOU LIKE MY BODY? 
Much of the NWA either doesn’t 'get' Nicki or choose to see her as an airhead 'selling out' for fame and fortune. It’s understandable. Fake boobs. Fake butt. A rather liberal use of make-up. The wigs. Airs and affected accents. But, there's a catch. With a sort of 'it's-mine-'cause-I-bought-it' posturing, Minaj is unapologetically artificial. How's that 'fake'? Taking in her lyrics makes it impossible to have her up as just some affected dummy. Don’t believe the hype. Don’t dare believe that Minaj isn’t a real emcee or that as a story-teller she's incapable of the kinds of allusions that brought chilling dimension to Ready to Die. Trey Songz’ `Bottoms Up’ for example is a carefree club song, but, Minaj is very crafty with her allotted 16.   
   
She begins her verse by asking, commandingly, that Trey buy her some very specific hoity-toity drinks. Then, Minaj ups the ante, assuming the voice of `hyper-sexed' ingénue: King of the Hill’s Luane Platter to wring out of Mr. Songz a bottle of Dom Perignon Rose. It's dear: costing about $1000 in the club. Nicki flips, bragging about having men so weak that she doesn’t have to say `hello' to get the ultimate wifey props: keys to the Benz. She gets suddenly defensive; protecting her privilege and yet 'proving' independence by threatening to go upside a rivals' head then 'making it rain' on her. Minaj regains her composure, apologizing and returning to a now less convincing Luane impersonation to smooth things over. See, it's a 'Young Money’ thing. And really they do some good stuff for people. Really...Slim and Baby haven't been bad influences at all. 

Nicki then mimics Trey's lothario crooning to get herself more looks from women and in the process likens herself bi-sexual Playboy bunny Anna Nicole Smith. (It’s easy to miss how she’d already shouted out one tragic starlet: it was Em’s 8 mile co-star Britney Murphy who voiced the Luanne character). With “Say hi to Mary, Mary and Joseph”, Minaj suggests Smith's made it to heaven and then drinks, on Trey's dime, to the memory of her fallen sister.


Minaj’s signifyin’ sequence offers plenty. The calculated voice switching says: `I’m not really a bimbo but I’m having fun playing one to get what I want.’ How affected is that? Women everywhere claim to 'dumb it down' so as to not have men feel threatened and  'play' `male hegemony’.

Guess they're kind of like rappers.

And, there’s a slightly morbid twist to Nicki's allusions. By shouting out and mimicking the siliconed-up centerfold, as well as voice-actress Britney Murphy - both of whom died of prescription drug complications – Minaj’s saying something like, ‘Yes I know this might end quiet badly, but until then, wheeeee!’ She's ready to die. Pink Friday shows her to be profoundly ambivalent about what she’s 'had to do make it’. It also shows that she's given some thought to the girls looking up to her.

UNMAKING OLD NICKI
After the credit card swipe heard round the world, the women of Spellman college declared enough was enough. They partnered with Essence Magazine to launch the Take Back the Music (TBTM): a campaign intending to curb the misogyny in rap music. Mainly through manufactured outrage, racial appeals and shaming tactics.

No one bothered ask just who the fuck listens to Nelly? Or who’s idea it was to include that particular gag. Or why didn't Essence, owned by Time-Warner Publishing, devote its considerable insider clout to the cause? Nope. There was public misogyny and hurt feelings: the victim-privilege opportunity machine flew into high gear.

Conferences were held. A few rousing talks were given. But, the campaign accomplished little: it didn’t stop videos from getting more explicit. It didn’t stop some times pretty accomplished women from fighting for the chance to skin-out in rap videos. And – quite notably – it didn’t make the industry's female execs, managers, stylists and PR- types 'want to take back the music'. 

It didn’t even break a single new female artist.

About the time TBTM was in its death throes Onika Maraj was still a relative unknown. The Port of Spain transplant had had a tumultuous childhood in Queens; living with a crack addicted father and witnessing domestic abuse. She’d attended LaGuardia Performing Arts School, depicted in the series ‘FAME’, and focused on Drama, but left school before graduating. By 2007, she was appearing on mixtapes and in DVD’s. That Nicky didn’t quite have the polish we see today: much less of a split-personality black Barbie and more 'hood chick as likely to crack your brow with the mic as spit fire into it'. She did though create a buzz. And, the rest is a Cindarella story: “discovered” by President Wayne Carter 'Nicki Lewinsky' was whisked away to luxury and unprecedented ‘success’. Minaj was the first female rap artist since 2002 to top the charts; the only artist ever to at once have 7 songs in the top 100 and, as of this writing, Pink Friday's  sold 1.7 million units.

BUT YOU DON’T HEAR ME THOUGH 
Her debut LP though makes no attempt at sustained narrative. For the most part, the beats are boring, cotton-candy affairs. It’s a pop record. But, there are insightful flashes that offer glimpses of unutilized depth. Wit infuses and adds substance to her persona(s). And, Minaj has cribbed wisely from her influences: she borrows Lauryn’s insight, Foxy and Kim’s bad-bitchedness, Remy’s menace and Missy’s weirdness. The voice changes, punch-lines and extra-ordinary rhythmic sense, are skills that no rapper - male or female - besides Busta can lay claim to. And though Nicki’s since depicted herself as a rapping blow-up doll, Pink Friday had little fucking, innuendo or even the sultry yearning of Miseducation. Yet, I found the album intriguing for some of the same reasons I was initially cool to Lauryn’s solo effort. 
There’s a disarming soul-baring, and more singing than I expected. Tracks like “Right Thru Me” and “Save Me” make it pretty clear that Minaj is a layered personality managing self-destructive streaks. “Dear Old Nicki” is an ode to that ‘Come Up DVD’ girl who the media skewered and Now Nicki sacrificed to the Gucci gods, a decision she now regrets, certainly more than Jay-Z did: ‘Did I chase the glitz and glamour money fame and power?/ ‘cause if so that will forever go down my lamest hour’. In `I’m the Best’(bitch doing it), reminiscent of Jay's 'you wasn't using it right' comeback to Nas' claim that Jay bit his style, Nicki basically raps the song as Lil' Kim. And, while sinking her nails into the Queen Bee's throat, the new and improved black barbie acknowledges 'women’s struggle' and her role in it: “As long as they understand/That I'm fighting for the girls never thought they can win/’Cause before they could begin you told them it was the end/But I am here to reverse the curse that they live in.” Empowering, no? 'Fly’ with Rihanna is estro-triumphalism that Minaj ends on a motivational note, “cried my eyes out for days upon days/ such a heavy burden placed up on me/ but when you go hard your nay's become yay's/ Yankee Stadium with Jays and Kanyes”.  Sly. Because when next to those two on wax she showed everyone what a real monster sounds like.  

IS GOD SLEEPING? 
Let’s speak of monsters of another kind. In 2001 the Catholic church faced a slew of civil suits: it emerged that in the U.S., Mexico, Belgium and Germany, priests had been - for decades - diddling boys. That wasn't all.  Often church officials were aware of the abuse but covered it up: re-assigning pedophile priests to new jurisdictions. Most just found fresh victims. Many Catholics questioned their faith – or lost it outright. The Vatican was moved to action: John Paul declared those rapes to be spiritual sins, and ordered new screenings for priests and church workers. They'd get tough on child abuse. He opposed, however, extending the statute of limitations likely because that'd limit the church's exposure to criminal charges.

In summer 2011, Pope Benedict’s `sex-abuse adviser' (I'm not making that up), Riccardo Seppia, was allegedly caught soliciting boys for coke-fuelled sex parties.  It turns out that the good father asked specifically for boys with `family problems'. This year, cases continue to make the news: in January a class-action suit filed in 2007 against the California Diocese was settled for an unprecedented $600 million. In the agreement, the Diocese didn’t have to admit any wrong-doing. 

I didn't watch the Grammy's. And haven’t listened to Nicki in a while. Been busy. But, when I heard that she attended the ceremony with the Pope on her arm and in character as `inexplicably’ angry gay boy Roman Zolanski, my first thought wasn’t: `that Nicki Minaj what a ‘Stupid Hoe’.' I was thinking she’s saying something about the cyclical and institutional nature of sexual abuse. And, given Minaj's history of gay rights advocacy and what was all over the news just weeks before, how could one not?  

Predictably, everyone was outraged and confused by Minaj's exorcism of Roman. Granted, her Grammy performance wasn’t coherent - or accessible - but there was an obvious attack of church child abuse. Yet, the NWA muses over a Minaj boycott. As if. Emboldened the Catholic Church went on the snark offensive: claiming that Minaj might truly be possessed. Others just went on and on about how clueless and ho-ish Nicki was and that we ought not bother with her. It was a pretty effective, and suspicious, `shutdown'.

KAT STACKIVISM AND WHEN THE OTHERS OTHER. 
There’s a Kat Stacks interview from a few years back that’s simply vile. On Hot 107.9, though obviously drunk, Kat goes into autobiography, breaking down to break down in detail the child sex-slave trade that thrives in virtually every major U.S. city. What was particularly disgusting though was how Kat's story received. The hosts pretend to care then use Kat’s sex-work background (which stemmed from her being forced into child prostitution) to undermine her persona and, conveniently, dismiss all she’d said about how ingrained the sex-slaving of children is in the U.S. The `Durtyboyz' displayed the kind of callousness that cowards master: they ignored what was made plain, and refused to see Kat in a way other than what was for them socio-emotionally convenient.

Some women claiming to be feminists have had harsh things to say about Nicki Minaj. They see a ‘sexualized’ black woman - and despite sexual expression being marketed by women as a preferred form of ‘empowerment’ or the subversive streak in Minaj's work - part-time feminists straddle the highest horse and gallop off to their Hansberry Readers. Or, worse yet, they dig up Saartjie Baartman’s horror story of racial spectacle, sex-work, dismemberment and macabre enshrinement in L'Ouvre to frame things.


That reaction though isn't too far removed from the one Kat Stacks received in that 107.9 interview (or the one Baartman got for that matter). Its the (neo)colonial status-building tactic of `othering'; seizing upon – or inventing - a particular image then responding only to define the 'other'. How masterfully these responses unfold, and how justice tropes are invoked, makes me wonder who the real phony ‘sell-outs’ are.

And maybe that's been Nicki's point.

While it’d be a stretch to 'prove' that Minaj presents an intelligible polemic on post-modern femininity I promise you someone, somewhere, maybe even at Spelman, is frantically clacking away on ‘On Onika Maraj becoming Nicki Minaj: Mirage play, the work of  De/Constructing the Black Female Body and the Impossibility of Knowing’. Or some crap. It wouldn't be entirely off base. Minaj is pastiche; a clever absorption and critique of her forerunners. And she gives us plenty reason to believe her Minaj character is a caricature of society's own contradictions animated by our failures as listeners and our worship of `success'. A product of her environment.

A test: Without the plastic surgery, the “fakeness”, the gimmicks - and controversy - how many of us would have known of little Onika from Queens? 

And, what would her NWA critics give to see Nicki’s next album produced by Missy and executive produced by Queen La? And feature Jean Grae, Eve or some phenomenal femcee we've never heard of? What would they give to see it distributed by a company owned and controlled by Nicki? Probably nothing. The NWA'd not ruin a chance to appear morally superior by pretending to care.

So. Say, how are you doing?

Do They Find Their Way Home?

You've heard all about it by now.

A statuesque, almost unfathomable beauty. A voice that spanned three octaves, and hit notes with a power and delicacy that’d rub souls bright. Cultivated in the church, it lent its grace to the likes of Jermaine Jackson and Chaka Khan. “I’m Every Woman” was a song Whitney Houston’d later make her own.

Her success was swift and immense. She’d done some notable early recordings, but hit it big in 1983 when she signed a $250 000 deal with Clive Davis at Arista Records. Two years under his tutelage prepped her for a 1985 eponymous debut. It would sell 12 million copies, produce 4 number one singles and stay 78 weeks on the charts. Rolling Stone named it `Best Album of 1986’. Her second LP followed two years later and debuted at No. 1.  She'd win six Grammys, over her career, tour the world and sell about 170 million units. In 1999, the RIAA named her 'Female R & B Artist of the Century'. She’d star in movies: ‘The Bodyguard’ opposite Kevin Costner before returning `home’ with ‘Waiting to Exhale’ and ‘The Preacher’s Wife’.

...REMINISCE OVER YOU

Death is always difficult. But some passings just don’t sit well at all.  

Michael was supposed to regain his form and show everyone that despite, the weirdness and the rumors, he still had that magic. Weren't we to see Heavy D morph into the old Jamaican man he always really was? And watch him chant and skank into his 60s? Don Cornelius’ was to go out cool. In his sleep, maybe. Not sick, vengeful and alone. Put those insults next to the monumental loss that was Etta James’ passing; and any merciful person’d hope the reaper’s scythe’d be by now too blunt to cut down anyone else.

Then Whitney.    

Mainstream news outlets lit up.  Facebook and Twitter blew up. Tribute poems materialized. 'Saving all my Love', 'I Wanna Dance with Somebody' and 'Where do Broken Hearts Go' choked news feeds.

What struck me were the pictures of Whitney and Michael Jackson together. It fit. They both were geniuses who had too much too fast and were gone too soon. Both died unexpectedly on the cusp of a comeback. Both battled `personal demons’, and did so in a business that suckles demons.  

The tributes rolled in. People said the thoughtful things, but soon the cruel remarks surfaced; and became focal points. It's just people's nature, i guess. And part of the business.

MASTERING THE HIGH

It goes beyond the surreality of fellow artists glad-handing each other at the Clive Davis party while Whitney’s remains were in that Beverly Hilton hotel room. Or maybe that’s spot on. 


Entertainment’s the business of dream exploitation. It does that to the fans of course, but also to those who work in it. It is a place where one better be quickly disillusioned: expect the same people charged with developing you – loving you - to use you up and leave you for dead.

It's a pretty tense existence. And, the physical toll of a performing life is under-appreciated. Long hours and binge diets strain body’s recuperative systems. Performing before thousands require these typically nervous individuals to surf surges of adrenalin, wiping out when the crowds fall silent. Their work can mean conjuring emotion, self- `triggering’ (pulling a psycho-emotional nose hair) or otherwise keeping oneself in a charged yet vulnerable space. It's a disposition that advantages unsentimental views of feelings: performers regard emotional experience as farmer might a fresh litter of piglets. 


That explains the drugs. Partly. Substances do fun things to dopamine and serotonin. Weed and coke can make feelings feel real again and offer the illusion of emotional control. Prescription drugs can numb you. Or make you sleep on schedule. They let you function.

A chemically mediated reality is `normal' in the entertainment world. But, you might’ve noticed that it is one of those `normal things' that fucks with black people disproportionately. 


Roll call: James Brown, Dionne Warwick. Mary J., DMX, DMC, Jimi Hendrix, Brenda Fassie, David Ruffin, Gregory Isaacs, Bobby Brown, Dennis Brown, Monica, ODB, Nina Simone, Gil-Scot, Billy Holiday, Chaka Khan, Marvin Gaye, Esther Phillips. Many major black musicians had careers marred, or ended, by their own brain chemistry experiments. Underscoring this oddity is research. Compared to other ethnic groups black people are significantly less likely to do `hard drugs’. 


So what’s up?

PLEASE TURN YOUR SICK SOUL INSIDE OUT SO THE WORLD CAN WATCH YOU DIE

There’s a lot more at stake identity-wise. And, the psycho-emotional landscape is more treacherous. Black artists subject themselves to a `schizophrenic’ vacillation fueled by aversion to ‘blackness’; the need to use black cultural skills to win mainstream (i.e., white) acceptance and a fear of mainstream rejection. And it isn’t just crazy talk. Racism, and racial pressures, have measureable physiological and psychological effects ones exacerbated by the 'normal' stresses entertainers face daily. Further, those these effects are each compounded by the political history of the entertainment industry. 

Black virtuosity in the performing arts is very much an outgrowth of the industry’s Minstrel show roots. Black people once mocked for the amusement of whites, used those very channels as in-roads into American culture, becoming 'merchants of cool'. It follows that entertainment is one of the few spaces where black excellence is demanded. Moreover, it is a place where `blackness’ is made. And, as Tavis Smiley’s, Viola Davis’ and Octavia Spencer’s triply disturbing exchange illustrated, Black artists still squirm under the race representation burden, one made more slippery by the pressure to ‘break through’ to a quietly hostile, fickle `mainstream' audience; having to rely upon white svengalis, writers and deal brokers to do so. 

Michael and Whitney were both ‘post-civil rights’ artists credited with ‘breaking down the barriers’ (to white audiences) with (color) blinding black genius. Indeed, those dynamics, those pressures, shaped their lives in rather stark ways.

We watched a black kid from Gary Indiana undergo a ‘race-lift’. He'd eventually  'father' white-skinned children: the product of a white surrogate mother and sperm donor. Yet, the King of Pop had a ‘black card’ maintained in part by ‘ethnocentric’ streaks. Bold, nutty, self-serving/sabotaging ones. 

In a business where having a surname ending in ‘–stein’, ‘-berg’ or ‘–feld’ is practically seed money, it was more than ballsy for MJ to scream ‘kill me, kike me’ on record. But, he’d later hire the Nation of Islam as security. At the height of the Afro-centricity debates, the ‘Remember the Time’ video depicted the Kamau as blacker than Central Booking. Jacko made one-time collaborator Paul McCartney feel like a industry-pimped soul artists when Mike snatched up the Beatles catalogue, denying Sir Paul ownership of music he'd created. He raised his flag over the `King of Rock ‘n Roll’s' castle by marrying Lisa Marie Presley. Not long after that, the littlest of the black Mike trinity scared even Al Sharpton when he went off script to call music industry mogul Tommy Matolla a deivilish racist. And of Black economics? MJ hired black cooks, producers, drivers and er…doctors.

He was loved - protectively and crazily - by black people, but his fascination with whiteness (and little kids) had him on a perennial 'black probation', which, oddly made him even `blacker'. 


At that same time, Whitney’s church-burnished pipes, fondness of Nelson Mandela and a marriage to the poster boy for ‘love and trouble’ one Mr. Bobby Brown didn’t deflect accusations of ‘racial inauthenticity’. I suppose there were some other important differences. Unlike the King of Pop, the Queen was infamously stiff-backed. Couldn’t cut a rug if she had scissors. 

WHITE-NEY HOUSTON AND THE POLITICS OF `ACCEPTANCE'

Early in the adult careers, Mike played up the weirdo-mystique of genius, Whitney was all ‘good girl affection’ or ‘defensive hauteur’ as one movie reviewer put it.  And while the crotch-grabbing black Peter Pan made music that spanned the spectrum, Whitney’s aesthetic was managed in a way that that’d accommodate the subtle racism of adaptation inequality embedded in post-Civil Rights ‘acceptance’ narratives. Once rich, her music became bland and soul-less. And like Janet and Mariah, she made sure to keep a safe distance from Hip-Hop. Black fans, ‘respectable’ women too, questioned her selective use of her soul/gospel roots. So did the niggerati. In his seminal 1989 essay ‘The New Black Aesthetic’ Troy Ellis wrote,  'Lionel Ritchie's 'Dancing on the Ceiling' and Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance with Somebody" are so lifeless precisely because they have applied Porcelana fade cream to their once extremely soulful throats. The two now-pop singers have transformed themselves into cultural-mulatto, assimilationist nightmares; neutered mutations instead of thriving hybrids. Trying to please both worlds instead of themselves they end up truly pleasing neither.’

And that wasn't it. There were nagging rumors that Whitney might’ve had same-sex dalliances; behavior then ascribed mostly to bougie-bohemian white women and the non-white women who idolized them, and certainly not to respectable, church-going presentables. 

Indeed, 1989 was a pivotal year. At the Soul Train Awards, Whitney Houston, Karyn White, Regina Belle and Vanessa Williams’ were nominated for Best R n B Urban Contemporary Single by a Female. Whitney’s nomination was booed. Adding injury to insult, ‘Where do Broken Hearts Go’ lost to Belle’s ‘No One in the World’: a song that, as Regina was sure to point out, was dedicated to her husband. 


That night's events stayed with Houston. In an 1990 appearance on the Arsenio Hall show she’d feigned ignorance offering ‘universalist’ dodge, by asking "what did people meant by ‘singing white’?". In a subsequent interview, she'd answer her own question: `Sometimes it gets down to that, you know?  You're not black enough for them. I don't know. You're not R&B enough. You're very pop. The white audience has taken you away from them.’ 

The '89 Soul Train awards stayed with her in other ways too. Whitney’d met then reigning King of RnB, Mr. Bobby Brown that night. Five years later, at those very awards, they’d perform ‘Something in Common’ as man and wife.  Some fawned and gushed. Cynics asked aloud whether that 'something' was ‘crack’; a remark that pointed to, among other things, Whitney’s fake 'good girl' image and self-destructive foray into ‘authentic’ blackness.

COULD ONLY A LESBIAN MARRY BOBBY BROWN?

The odd pairing made the whisperings of Whitney’s supposed closet lesbianism grow louder. She’d address them directly in a 1996 Dateline NBC interview ‘‘KC:  Because she plays basketball, people think she's a lesbian./ WH:  She's a very tall, very broad woman.  She's been my friend for years.  I don't know.  We've just stuck it out.  And now we're just... I don't know...they just think we're just... I’m not gay.  I'm not lesbian.  I'm a mother, I'm a wife, I'm a daughter.  Lesbian and gay I'm not. Two titles I can't claim. I'm sorry.  I just can't, you know. But I do have a friend.” She’d brook no besmirching of her identity choices and family life. She’d call the media ‘bloodsucking demons’ and the entertainment world ‘madness’.

The pop music landscape had changed dramatically and `home' seemed a better fit now. Celine Dion and Tommy Mattola’s then wife Mariah Carey were dominating the pop charts with voices that rivaled Whitney’s. And, a younger, urban black audience was installing the ‘real’ Mary J. Blige (who took pains to show that she could dance) as their embodiment of black girl pain. Clive Davis was busying himself grooming the next church-bred, classy cross-over:Toronto-born Debra Cox. Houston went `back home', starring in the jilted black girl classic 1995’s Waiting to Exhale and then the Preacher’s Wife the following year. After the gospel soundtrack cracked the charts and won her all sorts of respect, Whitney released the comeback hit “Your Love is My Love” with former Lauryn Hill beau Wyclef Jean. The album of the same name would be a critically acclaimed blend of hip-hop, reggae, and dance, relegating her power ballad and pop sheen days to distant memory. 


She was more herself. And things seemed back on track: Houston would win Artist of the Decade, Female at the Soul Train Music Awards. In 2001, she’d sign a $100 million dollar deal with Arista. Something though was amiss. Despite the cultural comfort and success, she grew more erratic. Some might say, more 'black'.

In 2000, she and Bobby were caught with way too much cannabis. She bailed on Clive Davis’ induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And, in another instance, was sent home for showing up high to work.  In a 2002 interview with Diane Sawyer Houston, when pressed about her rumored drug use, Houston offered perhaps the most ridiculous and self-indicting deflection available:  feigning complete ignorance of drug culture by demanding that her accusers produce receipts from her dealers. She’d then shatter that innocence with a classist dodge, saying: "First of all, let's get one thing straight. Crack is cheap. I make too much money to ever smoke crack. Let's get that straight. Okay? We don't do crack. We don't do that. Crack is wack." The exchange showed overconfidence in an ability to pull the wool over the public’s eyes, and, was the first sequence in a pattern of deflecting then confessing. Years later, she’d admit on Oprah to smoking cocaine laced cannabis prior to meeting Bobby. 


It'd be only reasonable to wonder if she’d been so `cagey' about pandering to white audiences, and her drug use, what of her sexual attraction to women?

In his 2008 tell-all Bobby Brown: The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing But… Bobby'd revisit those old rumors, presenting their marriage as one of convenience for Whitney (he, of course, had only the purest of motives): “I believe her agenda was to clean up her image, while mine was to be loved and have children. The media was accusing her of having a bisexual relationship with her assistant, Robyn Crawford. Since she was the American Sweetheart and all, that didn't go too well with her image . . . In Whitney's situation, the only solution was to get married and have kids. That would kill all speculation, whether it was true or not.” This week, British gay rights advocate Peter Tatchell  took the baton, and stirred things up with his`Whitney’s REAL tragedy was giving up her greatest love of all – her female partner Robyn Crawford.’ The title pretty much says it all. As this hit the 'net the just-let-Whitney-rest-in-peace appeals and respectability shut downs came fast and furious. But, what these would-be defenders of Whitney's reputation dared not ask was: why would having a sexual relationship with a woman sully her memory at all?  It doesn't. Right?...Right? 


Funny that Bobby’s malicious and bragging reading of his marriage to one of `the biggest stars in the world’ offered something that the decent ‘shut-it-down’ers' didn’t. Straight or bi, Whitney was still very much affected by ‘homophobic’ attitudes: her own and those belonging to  the respectable folks who comprised her fan-base. No wonder they’d rather not talk about it or wonder in what other ways was Whitney 'Every Woman'?

BLAME GAME REVISITED

The quiet pressures of the aspiration-identity complex, where 'respectable folks' dwell, is crucial to appreciating why so many black artists of a particular generation develop serious drug problems. And, whether we attribute Whitney's overdose to her toxic marriage; the pressure to be ‘black enough’; the difficulty of crossing over or self-doubt, we ought to be having some of the same discussions that we have when a bullied gay kid kills him or herself. 


And, let’s go further. Race, gender and sexual preferences are always talked about, but the master gene in the 'slow suicide' sequence: 'love' as a reward of ‘success’ is skillfully talked around. No accident. Engaging it means questioning some of the core beliefs of our 'get ahead' culture. The life arcs of some of our most revered people, people we watched grow up or grew up with, show that genius, beauty and 'success' aren’t `redemptive'. They, in fact, can hasten a demise. They can numb and break your spirit and coke, cannabis, valium, morphine, alcohol, xanax, propofol or whatever else recreate the feeling of normalcy and promote the idea that one can only be safe around those who live the void  because, though they're dangerous, they, like the substances you have in common, can’t judge you. 


I'm thinking that's part of what Whitney meant when she said that 'Bobby was her drug.' 

These questions of Whitney's drug use, marriage, possible queerness, are convoluted ways evading the gaping subjunctive. What choices would she have made had she felt secure in the belief that she could be `successful' and `loved' without having to make herself `palatable' to either a black or 'universal' (i.e., white) audience? 


I suppose that will never be answered. Or the answer isn't at all relevant to the 'mad' world Whitney claimed to save Robyn from, a world that she chose for herself. We, though, can choose better, simply by choosing not to make homes where the hatred is.

Red-Tails, Radical Inter-Raciality and the Remaking of America

So. Meesa George Lucas - sci-fi visionary and 'swirl it up' poster boy - had to scrape up either $58 or $93 million of his own money to finance "Red Tails" a fictional account of the Tuskegee airmen. In promoting the movie, George shocked everyone by channeling his inner Spike Lee, and called out Hollywood, claiming a pervasive anti-black racism affects what kind of films get made, namely his "all-black" WWII film Red Tails.

Say what now Hollywood? Naw...fuh true?

Some would think it out of character for Lucas to make such "bold, political" statements. But, let's back track a bit: Star Wars was about slavery, imperialism and redemption. And, this here - in 150 words or less - is my racio-archetypal reading of one of its main story lines:

Luke Skywalker, a christ figure, is the abandoned spawn of an anti-christ figure: Darth Vader; who, it just so happens, resembles a giant black penis. Vader who himself was born - by immaculate conception at that - a slave; made robots (i.e., slaves) that would dutifully serve his estranged good, white son, Luke. Papa Walker fought his way out of bondage, to find himself in bondage to the Sith Lord Emperor. Or something. That fate befell him largely because rage and power-lust took him over to the 'dark side'....yes, dark side...Anakin - literally and figuratively - became the big black dick Vader who - though still very much a slave - sought to fuck civilizations galaxy-wide by subjecting them to the same rage, exploitation and misery that he endured daily.

Oh. there's more. But I'll stop there. Let's just say King Kong ain't got nothing on Darth V.

Any way, science fiction is a genre that has always, through allegory, addressed pressing social issues. Yet, we wouldn't think of Lucas as a maker of 'political' movies. Never mind making some bold - and quizzical - statements about a range of things; including America and 'race'. In fact it has been his bread and butter.


WHAT ABOUT MEEEE?!

It seems like his "activism" and this all-black cast thing isn't "black enough" for some. While other black women are saying that support of Red Tails is an act of racial uplift - and an investment; others demand a boycott. "Black" ("black" in this instance meaning nobody should be so stupid as to really be "black" unless it is to say how limiting yet unimportant blackness is these days) blogs are somehow perturbed about there not being prominent black female leads in the movie. And, despite the glowing endorsements "the swirl" generally receives in these quarters, those women are upset by the idea that the only love interest in the movie promo is white.

I'd say there appears to be some Star Wars-esque shit going on.

"I realize that by accident I've now put the black film community at risk (with Red Tails, whose $58 million budget far exceeds typical all-black productions). I'm saying, if this doesn't work, there's a good chance you'll stay where you are for quite a while. It'll be harder for you guys to break out of that (lower-budget) mold. But if I can break through with this movie, then hopefully there will be someone else out there saying let's make a prequel and sequel, and soon you have more Tyler Perrys out there."

If the racially crestfallen criers were listening close enough they might have heard it between Lucas' breaths: people - particularly black people - get bored and anxious when black people aren't careful to include - and make space for - 'other races'. Generally, America - white and black - is generally disinterested in black people living, normal well-adjusted lives: or that is black people supporting each other without being particularly concerned with what white people are or aren't doing.

Why?

Because if 'privilege' is about options then it is partly defined - and maintained - by one's ability to exclude others. Black folks not giving white people that opportunity or satisfaction is more unnerving to all involved than accusations of 'racism' (obviously), and more subversive to white supremacy than the "anti-racism" police.

INTER-RACIAL IS THE NEW BLACK

Black pride won't allow this into the conversation: but the friction between black and white has more to do with unrequited love than almost anything else. Since Fanon, it is has been out that a defining and animating characteristic of "blackness" - more so than African ancestry - is wanting "white" love and acceptance.

And really, for how long can you ignore someone who you love so deeply and unconditionally? 'Interracial' - or rather black people making family with white people - is very comforting in a layered way. Lucas', I'm sure, knows this. And so 'erasure' of the black woman in Red Tails has less to do with Lucas' fear of a black planet than it does with capitalizing on that plain marketing truth. And, it is not just a financial consideration; it is a representation also emblematic of national healing never mind American-ness itself.

As it pertains to war efforts, for black men in particular - in patriarchal conversation with the white men who controlled the nation - becoming "fully a citizen"; a real man and/or part of the American family meant being able to marry the man's 'daughter'. And so, as black men were fighting and dying for 'citizenship' and 'respectability' what that looked like - particularly in light of the inter-racial and castration narratives of lynching - was secure, socially legitimate access to white women.

Now, a "hmmm" moment in Red Tails, just as Black Americans can fight and die for America - and still not be real Americans; an enemy "white" woman - an Italian - can love and recognize a black man's "real" manhood. Lucas' 'writing the black woman out' of Red Tails is a void that permits for that emotional and political "truth". The state of semi-citizenship these men lived and fought in - and the ability for 'race' and even nationality to lose to 'love'.

THE NEW AMERICA

In the Obama age, white people and black people choosing to 'love' each other is rendered as a sort of apolitical activism that signals a national healing/regeneration. It is a major meme of our times. Why would we want a confused play to that erased from a landmark movie? It, at least, is a real American history.

Saving Black Asses: The End of Socio-Political Coquetry and Neo-Chivalric Exploits.

What can be said about Tyler Perry after Aaron McGruder’s vitriolic lampooning? The Boondocks’ “Pause” episode depicts Perry as a preacher-pimp tending to majority female congregation that he generally holds in contempt.  But don’t let anyone - McGruder included - ever tell you different: Perry’s a genius.  I don’t mean “genius” in the Thelonius Monk, Barbara McClintock or John Nash way. More like in the P-Diddy sense. Perry has an uncanny ability to give people what they want. Even before they ask for it.

Mirror, Mirror

2011 was a rough year for media conscious black women. It seems predators, of all shades and of walks of life, joined hands in systematically profiting from their assaults on black women’s minds and bodies. “Life Always”, a right to life group, sought to portray black women as the number one killers of black people. And, apparently, black skin and two x chromosomes = will NEVER be married (gasp) or a failed marriage unless she actually does the “unthinkable” and weds a white man, which isn't a real solution because – according to Psychology Today and rock solid data from an e-dating site – there just ain’t enough interested white men to go around. Hard times. Now, with the good-girl-gone-stinking-rich and Michelle Obama subject to racially charged insults, even the pinnacle of success offers black women no protection from white racist contempt. But fear not!  Peterson and Leonard ride to the rescue with “Attacking the Black Woman”: a piece which is to black male “feminism” what Madea is to manners.

Who’s Yo' Daddy?!

Any feminist worth her leg-hair will tell you that male hegemony’s something of a protection racket. Men attack – or otherwise menace - women. Women seek security through their relationships with other men, and so rely on the oppressing group to be safe from...well... the oppressing group.

What might be humanity’s oldest conquest strategy stays in place not only by the instigating violence, but by a secondary one: turning “victim” responses to ends that serve the oppressor/protectors. And so, in a macro-political sense at least, men `protecting’ women from sexism is something like a fox bravely stepping forth to guard the chicken coop from coyotes.

Petersen and Leonard’s “solidarity” is signaled by their use of part-time feminist catchwords, like ‘voice’ and ‘silence’; by referencing requisite tropes: the gaze, the body etc. and quickly name dropping “Jezebel” and “Mammie”. It makes me wonder if they “got the memo” about Diane Caroll’s “Julia”, Tatyana Ali’s “Ashley Banks”, Felicia Pearson’s “Snoop”, Kellie William's “Laura Winslow” or the one about public personas like Lisa Leslie, Jean Grae, Condi Rice, Oprah Winfrey and Tyra Banks? In “Attacking the Black Woman”, the fairer sex can only be tragic objects requiring rescue.  I’d think it all very fox-like, if not for Petersen and Leonard’s ham-fistedness. I mean, the article’s url is: http://loop21.com/life/protecting-black-womans-body-when-no-else-will.

One ought not make too much of this though. It must be a mislabeling. Anyone who’d pay a bodyguard to watch an assailant kick his/her ass then rattle off a dull post-beatdown analysis should hire these two. “Attacking the Black Woman” did nothing to protect no one but falls into a womanist clap-trap where Leonard and Petersen “play knight”, eschew critical engagement, alternate readings or meaningfully working into their analyses the uncomfortable implications of black women’s choices and agency.  Yet, women are none too gently reminded of the omnipresence of social violence - and who the real protectors are. “Attacking the Black Woman” benefited from and reproduced the interfaces and relations that serve the “twisted ideology” that Petersen and Leonard  supposedly defend “the black woman” against.  

In this, I’d like to think that Petersen and Leonard were simply ignorant. But they admit that ass-fixation diverted from concerns about food justice, "In calling her a hypocrite, claiming that her body precludes her from having a voice, the Rep's rhetoric policies Michelle Obama's activities and her desire to challenge the ways in which access to quality and healthy food is a fundamental issue". Okay. But, do they return to that fundamental issue – or give it any attention?  Nope. It’s all protecting asses.

Fact is, it’s easier to mine a preoccupation with social (i.e., white, male) acceptance and play ju-ju master in our fetishization of status (i.e., whiteness, maleness), than to illustrate the necessity of co-operative, issue-focused, results-based approaches to the complex social factors that impact our lives. Predictably, “Attacking the Black Woman” ends with the go nowhere-forever “kumbyaism” of : "When congressional representative and magazine editors have yet to get the "Humanity: Black Women Have it Too" memo, the war for gender and racial equality seems much too far from being over". If anyone took Debra Dickerson’s End of Blackness seriously, we should by now know that “gaining equality by attacking ___ isms” is a fool’s errand; a mis-orientation that does little but re-create – or at least leave ample space for – white ascendancy. And, well, poodle-faking reynards too.

Rear-View 

Identity is interplay. Race and gender still play out – or are performed - in arbitrary yet measured ways. For, example, with this Rihanna thing. In Barbados, particularly with an Indo-Guyanese mother, Rihanna’s regarded as ‘dougla’ or `brown’. In America - and the world - she’s ‘black’ – partly because she’s Caribbean. However, her music and image “transcend race”.  That fluidity, complexity and “rootedness” is an exoticism that appeals to ‘blacks’, ‘whites’, self-identifying multi-racial people, etc. Yet, in response to Hoeke’s “racism” Rihanna “embodies the Sapphire” - as Melissa Harris-Perry might put it - and becomes unquestionably - and fiercely - `black’. So. No wonder that the existential horror of Hansberry’s representational schema, that Petersen and Leonard put so much stock in, didn’t at all stop black women in the millions from supporting Tyler Perry, The Help or NBA wives for that matter.

When the voice of Bootylicious-ness herself dons blackface and poses in L’Offciel Paris Magazine to “celebrate her African roots”, what exactly is she saying?

Or what’s the message when Naomi Campbell poses a top a chocolate bunny then later tries to use racial outrage to rally the soldiers against Cadbury when in one of their ads she is “honorifically” referred to as “dark chocolate”?

And, did Petersen and Leonard read the communiqués that were the lives of women as diverse as Josephine Baker, Zora Neale “signed your pickaninny” Hurston and some enslaved plantation mistresses? They too have used “sexualized, racialized” images to personal advantage and fulfillment. In fact, even for feminists, these racialized gender tropes, these reifications of former social-political strategies, are very much part of what “authentic blackness” is about. On Mark Anthony Neal's "Left of Black", Hip-Hop feminist Joan Morgan, for example, talked about dreaming of being like the ‘Lady in Orange’.

While coquettes – like some of their “darker “antecedents - are bold and sophisticated in their antagonisms and investments, they are ultimately reliant on the powers they trifle with - or allegedly disdain. Similarly, the failure of anti-oppression politics is due to an essentially defeatist, opportunistic, egoism that is in an unacknowledged co-dependent relationship with “power” – or at least the gaze – which distorts discourse. In an era where two of the world’s biggest “black” music stars perform the “gosh we sure glad we made it” anthem, “Nigg*s in Paris”, for predominantly white audiences who recite all the words - even the n-ones – isn’t racist but proof that we all can get along, a Danish woman’s awkward two-step into Ebonics - which Rob Fields rightly describes as more clumsily “honorific” than Klanish – shouldn’t be noteworthy, really. But, “black politic’s” coquettish vanity doesn’t permit for such silence.

When a Colored Girl’s Best Intentions…Aren’t Really Intentions

In response to “Attacking the Black Woman”, Joan Morgan wrote: “Esther Armah and I often lament the lack of male initiative when it comes to riding with us on clearly feminist issues. Love that you'll have my back if I ask, but frankly I'd rather not ask. I'd rather you realize that my ish is your ish, not that Feminist ish. So I'm really happy to post this jawn. Thanks James Braxton Peterson and David J. Leonard for writing this..and not making us ask. LOVE.”

Morgan doesn’t here define feminist takes on major social issues or outline what “clear feminist issues” are. One would think that that respecting a woman’s voice and agency is “clearly feminist issue” and “asking” illustrative of that.

Let’s be frank. More times, “Men taking initiative” does weird things to a woman’s right to choose. It got us the placating neo-chivalry of “Attacking the Black Woman” and the runaway success of a certain cross-dressing man who Morgan and Sofia Quintero one day dressed down for taking the wrong kind of initiative: “If I had one request for Tyler Perry it’s that if he finds the narratives of black women so compelling then I would much prefer that he uses his access and male privilege to enable black women to tell those stories” Quintero says. Morgan interjects to exclaim “that’s Black Male feminism!”.  At about 34 minutes in, she grows more impassioned, “Historically as women of colour, our voice is all we have our voice and our ability to articulate our stories has been all that we’ve had. Go back to Phyllis Wheatley a slave woman her ability to read and to right poetry at times is all we have. When you take that from us, when you don’t pull us through doors that your male privilege allows you to walk through, you are shutting us down in ways that are not only bad for one generation of filmmakers, but… Ntzoke Shange’s work inspired me to write. So I don’t know that a young person – back to your first question – goes to this particular adaptation of for colored girls and says `wow. I want to be a woman who writes’ I want to be a woman who tells our stories. I think for that to be lost is terrible.”

In some stories, the loudest things are the silences. While Morgan and Quintero were careful to laud the film’s female actors they didn’t question the responsibility established women like Janet Jackson, Loretta Divine, Thandie Newton and/or Felicia Rashaad’s had –as women - to Shange’s work. Or ask why “just doing their jobs” was more important than - at least coquettishly - undermining Perry’s appropriative vision.  Also, mum was the word on how it was women’s choices that made  Perry “the most successful African American director in history” as host Mark Anthony Neal put it. Those selective silences precluded a discussion of startling senselessness that is attacking Perry’s “male privilege”: that privilege is – in more ways than one – a feminine construct. Further, Morgan gave voice to lament “losing” a cherished work to the robber-bridegroom Perry but didn’t speak a word on why he was able to acquire the rights to Shange’s work. “Ntozakhe”, after all, means “she who has her own things.”

Can't Black Male “Feminism” Critique “Feminism”?

Black male `feminism’ - if I dare define it for myself – isn’t just solidarity with women (i.e., “seeing that your ish is my ish”) but a recognition of women’s capability and autonomy. It is eschewing propriety attitudes toward women, checking the ways that his identity and status demands impinge on women’s freedoms. Being an ally doesn't mean toddishly defending honor as Petersen and Leonard do, but by questioning non-gender specific hegemonic processes. Even – and especially - those embedded in “womanist” dialogues. These sensibilities are further developed and honed by listening – critically of course - to women’s stories, realizing that it is better for all concerned if those stories were in fact “theirs” to control.  

Perry’s nod to and embrace of Black women might’ve at first seemed affectionate – empathetic even. But it quickly grew gripping as he fascinates them with a trauma-trolling pastiche of race-gender pride, scandal, “justified” cruelties, religiosity and ‘tough love’ conservativism, an early iteration of the winsome,  simpering “womanism” that infects neo-chivalric works like "Attacking the Black Woman". Similarly, as a group, anti-oppression academics do more than their bit to reorganize and reproduce the oppressions they “attack”. So-called "social justice movements" devote more of their resources to centralizing hegemony than do mainstream media. That - more than racially, sexually-charged name-calling – warrants our concern. In favoring an “endless war” to the exclusion of intra-group co-operation that subverts the “mainstream” and creates alternatives, our responses – whether feminized or masculinised – help “twisted ideologies” spin ever faster; leaving their victims rudderless, forever fixing their sails to catch their hegemonic wind. Be it hot air or a brain fart.

What genius.

Now. With all conflicts over “the black woman’s body” – using it to get attention or protecting from the wrong kinds of attention – who has bothered to concern themselves with how well women nourish each other?