Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 40 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
This is us
One of the fun things about owning your own doctor’s office is the endless supply of magazines. I get free “waiting room copies” of magazines you’ve never heard of, and many that you have. I saw one I didn’t recognize today, and I checked it out. And let me tell you, if you’ve never read an issue of “Essence,” you really should. Trying to figure out what the point of it was, I looked it up on Wikipedia, which summarizes it thusly:
Essence is an American monthly lifestyle magazine covering fashion, beauty, entertainment, and culture. First published in 1970, the magazine is written for African-American women.
Like many publications about art, fashion, music, and so on, Essence spends a lot of time trying to take things that are simply supposed to be beautiful and fun, and make them important and deadly serious. Which, to me, sort of takes the beauty out of beautiful things and the fun out of fun things. But that’s just me. The articles really were remarkable. Check out this passage from an article written by a black female hairdresser (Mecca James-Williams):
During my first year in Jamaica – liberated from the constant pressure of being under the White gaze – I gleefully rocked these protective styles when going to dinner with friends and to nature adventures at the beach or river. I started to get used to my hair in every stage and style, as I traded in unrealistic and unhealthy beauty standards for a deeper level of hair acceptance.
Golly. I would absolutely LOVE to share a drink or two with Mecca, and try to understand how one reaches a deeper level of hair acceptance. I just don’t get it. It just seems so foreign to me – her article sounded like satire to my ears. But she clearly takes all of this VERY seriously. I would have a lot to learn from her.
You may be surprised to learn that Essence Magazine has endorsed a candidate for President of the United States. Based on the rest of the magazine, I felt that politics is beyond the scope of their publication. Until I thumbed back through it again, and read some of the large type passages here and there:
Thrive & Power
Embracing Power and Purpose
If you do not define what power looks like for you, you’re going to be subject to trying to live up to someone else’s definition.
Frequent discussions of power seem odd for a fashion magazine. To me, at least. But that explains their interest in politics, I suppose.
It may not surprise you to know that Essence Magazine has endorsed Kamala Harris for President. They published two interviews with her in this issue, with beautiful pictures of her. Both interviews of the Vice President are conducted by the CEO and President of Essence Ventures – Caroline Wanga. The two are pictured at an Essence festival, which was staged to celebrate Kamala Harris’s campaign for President.
It’s quite an interview. Neither of them excels in brevity, or in focus, so it can be difficult to follow. Check out this representative exchange:
Wanga: You’ve been on an economic tour. You’ve been on a reproductive-freedom tour. Somewhere in this audience or on the Internet is my niece, Ayo—known as Yo-Yo to me. And she is somewhere between 8 and 32 years old. And one of the things that happened when you became Vice President is, Ayo told me that when she becomes president, her platform is going to be ice cream. As I look at the upcoming election, I’m looking at Ayo. And I’m trying to prepare myself to have a conversation with her—that her doctor may not think her health care is important, that she may not be able to make a minimum wage or aspire to achieve work or an occupation that matches her intelligence. I am worried that I have to have a conversation with Ayo about why her brother, Xavier, may not be safe—and it’s a conversation I didn’t have to have with my little brother. How do I make sure that Caroline doesn’t have to have that conversation with Ayo in 122 days?
Vice President Harris: There are many ways— but in 122 days, it’s your vote. I mean, here’s the thing about elections—and this is maybe the inside deal that my former colleagues at the Congressional Black Caucus [CBC] can tell you. The people who make decisions at that level often will pay attention to either who’s writing the checks or who votes. That’s a cold, hard reality. And so when we vote—that is in a democracy, as long as we can hold onto it—the power that we have as individuals is to weigh in on who is making decisions, based on what we value and care about. I’ll give you an example of why elections matter—there are many. But one issue is Black maternal mortality.
I have no idea what Wanga’s question was, or what Harris’s answer was. And the whole interview is like that.
As I was reading, I kept thinking, “This is the next President of the United States.”
If I were running for office, and a magazine wanted to interview me, and I noticed that that magazine had an article about reaching a deeper level of hair acceptance, and the CEO was dressed like a circus clown on acid, then I would politely decline that interview. That interview cannot help me. It will only make me look trivial and ridiculous.
But Harris, who does interviews for absolutely nobody, agreed to do TWO interviews with them. These are her people.
And I don’t mean people who are black women. I mean people who write articles about deeper levels of hair acceptance. Those people.
Are there enough of those people to elect Harris President? Do they represent over 51% of the population? I think they do. Our culture has deteriorated that much. Caroline Wanga discussing politics makes Hugh Hefner discussing philosophy sound intelligent. That’s how far we’ve fallen.
Harris accepted these interviews. Because she recognizes that which I still try to deny:
This is America in 2024. This is us.
Published in General
Hair acceptance. Sounds like a first-world problem to me.
You are clearly in league with my local liquor store owner, posting articles that will drive me to drink
Well said!
Amen!
hair toady goon tamale?
Not sure about the question you quoted, but I think I understood the answer: Well, except for the last two statements. (Black maternal mortality?)
Is anyone else here old enough to remember when Don Imus got his a$$ in a sling saying “. . . nappy-headed hos”? I don’t pretend to understand it but that was a trigger phrase for black women. “Nappy-headed”, not “hos”.
Sad but true. We are a fallen culture.
There is an annual Essence Fest in New Orleans over the July 4th weekend. I think the two are related.
It’s one weekend that Mrs. Tim and I make sure we stay out of downtown.
Intellectual foment in “Essense” is no more likely than it would be in “Vogue” or “GQ.” There are a whole lot of shallow people out there.
We are no longer a serious people. For these people, “Joy” is sufficient. Our only hope is that they are unserious enough to not vote.
False, her doctor will think her healthcare is important, but the time will be limited and rushed and it is her responsibility to prepare for each hurried visit. In reality, Ayo is more likely put at risk from a mother telling her not to trust doctors (or go see them) than from doctors not caring about a person with her complexion. But I am speaking as a parent and not a doctor.
I could accept some hair to fill in the blank spaces on my head where hair used to be.
Really? You never heard of “Essence” before?
Amen!
I’m certain that a vote will be submitted on their behalf, whether they go to the polls or not.
To be fair, who is better qualified to offer solutions for entirely fake problems and fake solutions for actual problems than an unburdened
bimbovisionary? It deserves one the Veep’s preferred Venn diagrams.I’m still wonder why the “White gaze” is a concern, or even if there is such a thing that isn’t completely imaginary.
You should see some of the magazines on display at a Barnes & Noble or any book store. There are some very bizarre ones that cater to very bizarre people. I hope those don’t make it to your waiting room. I noticed some time ago that a few of the fashion magazines I used to pick up had a very distinct agenda, political and other. That was a change I may have not seen when I was younger (or maybe I ignored it), but I won’t buy them now. I only picked up one a season, if that, but now forget it.
What you described fuels this race-baiting (and hating), alienating culture that we have become and it’s ugly – there’s nothing attractive or pleasant that is marketed here. Put out the cute kitty mags.
Freak magazines don’t make the top 100 in circulation. I think elderly normals are still the main customers.
I wondered about that too. It sounds like she doesn’t like white people looking at her. Or something.
I don’t understand.
Watched an eye opening docusomething called Good Hair with Chris Rock. There’s a massive industry operating here related to just this segment of the hair care market. It is a cultural bedrock that no man should trifle with.
Meanwhile, Kamala is running for Home Coming Queen. Her campaign promises goodies – to buy a house, to afford groceries, to get ahead without the sweat. To makes someone else pay for the things that you should have to work hard for, to attack those rich SOBs and make them pay for it, to make tomorrow a brighter day. You’re being held back by Dark Forces than only I can punish.
That’s hopes and dreams. Know what everybody has? Hopes and dreams. Children. Mentally disabled. And everybody wants them in the worst way. But that doesn’t qualify you to run an automatic car wash, much less POTUS.
So no need to get specific on fulfillment of those hopes and dreams, just a vague promise to take away the hard part of life, to absolve you of responsibility for your career and the effort you make to educate or work hard, to skip right over the kind of financial discipline required to do the big things in your life. And someone else (Mexico?) will pay. It’s a heavy lift to explain how this will work without eventually having a downside for her audience or her audience’s parents.
So Kamala sticks to bullet proof outlets that amount to cheerleader squads. Heck, you read it by accident.
Let me try to explain the view. In a Christian men’s group of which I have been part for many years (and in which I am the token political, social, and theological conservative), I am currently muddling through a series of studies by the group on a book written by a couple of black men who were part of the Obama presidential administration. This week’s chapter is the inevitable topic of racism is everywhere, and everything is caused by or explained by racism.
The mind that assumes racism is everywhere assumes all white people expect women to have long straight hair, preferably blond, but brunette or natural red may be acceptable. That mind concludes that any observation by a white person of a black person’s hair that is not long, straight, and blond is deducting points from the black person’s personhood, i.e., racist So, the magazine writer is assuming that any time a white person looks at a black woman who does not meet the “white” ideal of long, straight, blond hair is making racist observations about the black woman, which the writer shortens to “white gaze.”
What you think on grows.
Sort of reminds me of a round-table rant where black women were asking why white women “are always messin’ with their hair?”
So, black women presume that white women are racist. And are critical of black women’s hair as well.
So her solution is to move to Jamaica, to escape ‘the white gaze’.
I would suggest that another solution might be to stop presuming that everyone is racist. For Pete’s sake…
You know, Doc, I am perfectly happy to have people like that author move permanently to Jamaica or Liberia and take a like-minded friend with her. Maybe the rest of us would find it easier to get along.
Of course, if white people DIDN’T look at her, she’d complain about that too. Perhaps even moreso.
It’s hard to figure why you would remain part of that group.
Some rich Republican should listen to Instapundit and purchase a women’s fashion magazine to fight on ground that’s been ceded.