I interviewed Hope McIntyre, the Artistic Director of Sarasvati Productions and the driving force behind Femfest. Where other festivals with women at their focus have died out in Canada, the drive and determination of Sarasvati and all its volunteers, has Femfest striding in its ninth year.
Hope is herself a playwright, hence her passion and is at present developing a new theatre piece called "Jail Baby". Hope Kindly sentthe opening monologue:
Spotlight on Jasmine, about 8 months pregnant. As she speaks she changes into Remand Centre issue clothes.
JASMINE: They say you can’t remember that far back – back to being born. Maybe I don’t remember, but if I close my eyes, I can feel the concrete against my slippery little body. I feel metal. I have nightmares of sliding out into a world of bars and cold and noise and suffocation. It’s like something I can’t escape. Born to be in prison. Born a prisoner. Sounds like a bad country song. Even worse, I became known as the toilet bowl baby. Now there’s a good song title. If only someone had taught me to play guitar, I could be traveling the world telling my sorry tale. I’d record an album in Memphis and they’d make a movie about me. (now fully dressed in prison garb, she looks down at herself) I’m just fulfilling my destiny. This is what my mom was wearing when I was born. I’m my mom 18 years later.
I asked Hope what were her future plans for Jail Baby: "In terms of the plans, we are doing rewrites this year and working towards a full production and publication in May 2013. Our goal is to produce it for the general public but then also take it on
After the advent of Chris Rocks movie “Good Hair” this poem kept the debate going in the UK.
The politics of hair affect all women around the globe. We are under constant pressure to be beautiful and to manipulate our outer appearance taking our focus away from engaging and empowering our inner world. The first place we can attack is our hair because it’s accessible and so malleable. But the world is fickle and making those changes will only put demands on us to reach a next level of perfection that will always be unattainable. Distracted again.
The trials for Black women though, is weighted in our historical confidence in our colour, as well as to our physical attributes and "failings". Our beauty is tied up in a hierarchy of concepts that start with how we value our African features at the foundation.
But how do we get to hating and obsessing about our hair so much? Let me give you a scenario. After a meal with a friend, he was picking his teeth telling me the one thing he cannot stand about black women (he dates white ones), is a busted up weave. I conspiratorially giggled a bit and let it slide because I didn't want to get in to the whole weave debate after such a nice meal. A few minutes later, I started commented on my own natural hair and pointed out "See that bit there? Just there?" He replied, "What, where its all picky picky?" He said it as if I just spit in his mouth. And there it was, out in the open - his disdain for my natural hair, dred on top, short at the the sides, with neat little 'pepper corn' curls, relegated to a cuss, to "picky picky" by a brother with the same textured hair as me.
Now, I'm not going to go on a 'he just hates himself and his mother', I want to deal with how he was a blatant example of contributing to the decreased confidence in self image for naturall ynappy headed women of colour, because it would not matter what I had on my head HE would've found fault. Part of his brain is imprisoned into
My good Sister friend Marcina Arnold posted a vid on Forum Feminina about Menstruation.
Names for the release of menstrual blood and for those who are a bit squeamish or easily offended , you have been warned - period, the rag, the code red, on the blob, Aunt Flo, the crimson wave, bloody mary, the curse, the devil's juice (eugh). Some talk about feminine sanitary items as vagina diapers, a blood hammock, a crotch bat, a dracula's tea bag - oh it gets worse!
Marcina's post me thinking about a book I've read called The Red Tent. I lent it to someone and never got it back but when I read the post, I ordered it off Amazon again (£1.50 used. Gotta love it). Anyhoo, the book is set in the biblical time of Pharaohs and is narrated by Dinah, a young woman of a nomadic tribe, daughter of Jacob (a daughter is Israel). She is supposedly raped by Shechem, son of Hamor (son of Egypt). The controversy that raged through the pages of this book after this occurance is whether she should be blamed for now being a fallen woman and or whether Dinah and Shechem were actually in love. There would be too much scandal if they were in love because that kind of inter-racial, inter class (him a prince, she a slave) activity back then was more than NOT COOL. Has much changed? The story ensues.... have a read if your interested.
However, THIS post is about monthly bleeding.
In the book, the 'Red Tent' is a physical place where the women of Dinah's family who would 'flow' in time with a new moon, sitting on a rag on some straw till their periods had finished. All their cycles peaked simultaneously and they would bleed together. They were that finely tuned with each other. and time in the Red Tent was quality time spent bonding with each other and communing with the cycle of the moon. They massaged each other, share "the escapades of their youth", "sagas of child birth", shared their knowledge and craft skills, their sexual antics and tips on surviving as women in that time. I was moved and intrigued how important a first period was back then. The focus on what it meant to become a fertile young woman wasevolution.
"Rachel bled her first blood, and cried with relief. Adah, Leah Zilpah sang the piercing, throaty song that announces birth, deaths and women's ripening. As the sun set on the new moon when all the women commenced bleeding, they rubbed hennah in Rachel's fingernails and on the soles of her feet. Her eyelids were painted yellow and they slid every bangle, gem, jewel onto her finger, toes, ankles, wrists.They covered her head with the finest embroidery and led her to the red tent. The sang songs to the Goddesses... ....The women sang all the welcoming songs to her while Rachel ate dates honey and fine wheat-flour cake, made into the three-cornered shape of her sex. She drank as much sweet wine as she could hold. Adah rubbed her legs her back her abdomen with aromatic oils until she was nearly asleep... Rachel was stupid with the pleasure and wine."
Most of us might remember a clumsy sex education lesson, a vague or overly explicit description of what to expect (from those parents or guardians who tried too hard) - the embarrassmentat the insertion of a tampon or the thought of wearing that nappy you had to waddle down the street in. Body Form and Always and the wings thing was a blessing (except when you get the sticky bit burn). Now we have Moon Cups, Soft Cups and reusable sanitary napkins. The business of having a period has moved forward, but not the evolution into womanhood. That line has been well and truly blurred with the hyper-sexualization of young girls as young as 5 years old.
So what happened to that song and dance over coming into Womanhood? What happened to the pride over a girl child, your child becoming a vessel full of beauty and the potential of bringing ultimate Femininity to the world? And what happened to having a party that wasn't about getting drunk on your sixteenth? What happened to the blessed Rite Of Passage? Have our periods become so much of a bother to us that we've neglect to remember it's relevance to those yet to experience it? Have we forgotten the young girl in us who experienced it and the comfort we needed when that reddy smudge appeared for the first time in our panties? Could paying unprecedented attention to a girls first blood re-ignite a forgotten innocence? Could it place a revered importance on preserving that innocence in a world that sexualizes our girls at ludicrously young ages through music, fashion and advertising? The questions need to keep coming before we get too complacent and this hyper-sexualized state of being crystalises itself as 'normal'.
When Rachel, aged 12-ish, got her first blood she was relieved. She was a woman and most of the joy around her coming of age would
have been because now she was fertile and marriage would have followed
closely behind her ripening. Now-a-days the pressure of pre-teen marriage may not be such a pressure but that moment will only happen once and should be celebrated, the transition made less frightening and the welcoming of womanhood noted in the annuls of memory as a joyous occasion. An important sensual rite of passage.
What are your experiences of coming of age, your early experiences with your cycle? Post on the Forum Feminia .
Late one Tuesday night last September, I was waiting at a bus stop along with a few others, but two young black girls stood out. Not just to me but to a couple of tusty youths going about their business. On auto pilot they began their usually labberish talk to get the girls attention, get their number, get a feel up... or just get to them if they couldn't get any of the above.
The girls seemed a little unsure of themselves, awkward in their tight lycra tops revealing cleavage, and tight jeans exaggerating puppy fat curves... but they held their ground as the boys asked questions in a cool but assertive manner. Not getting the response they wanted, the boys ramped up the volume on the sexual innuendo with a lustful aggression to back it up. The two young women, stood firm finding support in each others presence. The boy's foolish talk up in the girls faces was getting them no where - the boys stepped.
One girl said to her friend. "Dem boys are so shtupid man. What makes them fink we're gonna gi dem anyfing when dey go on like dat?"
I liked their style. Cool, if a little shakey but holding on to something they knew that those boys didn't. They had a choice.
Many young girls don't feel they have the choice of refusing to accept these torrents of testosterone driven assaults because they feel dis-empowered. Some allow and even encourage inappropriate, explicit and aggressive ways of being talked to or touched. To match that energy, they'll behave in a manner as if they are giving permission for the dignity of their young Womanhood to be disregarded, not just disrespected but totally ignored. This is the symptom of a dis-ease. They themselves are not aware of their own value. Who has neglected to tell them that these encounters equates to them being de-humanised as a Female Human Being, as they accept being spoken to as if they are only a vagina, no, a 'hole' on legs? They have been trained to believe that their sexual power is all they have in the world to get them through life, and get them what they want. Some of them get themselves in trouble, get diseases, get pregnant. Some put themselves in serious danger.
But these two girls held their corner. What else, besides their ripening puberty and their new found beauty, made them stand out? Their nails. Bright, officious, cutting slashes of rainbow through the air when they talked with their hands as well as their bright lips and fast tongues.
On the upstairs deck of the bus, with my bags of shopping, I went over and told them that I liked the way they handled 'dem youts' and I had to get pictures of their nails for a 'project'. They remain anonymous. Love my mobile phone for these moments.
I was then reminded of a poem I wrote many moons ago... Listen, read, explore...
Melanie's nails tip the scales beyond the balanced rational of modern architecture.
Rhinestone encrusted, they arch entrusted to an adhesive, bonding live nail to acrylic
Unifying her in a mirage marriage of sophisticate Ameri-carib elite to brown girl in Beauty College from Tottenham high street.
Mel got her nails from “US GAL, from a real Korean chick with her high heeled, tiled floor cracking, sling backing tight jeaned or shorted skirt wearing, little tittied, hair flicking, eye flitting but perfectionist focus for nails building self.
Three Saturdays of her minimum wage slave was the price Mel paid. Her manager points out the impracticality of her newly acquired appendages. Mel points a beclawed index digit retreating, hissing her warning like a lioness, cub protecting, "Don’t you come between her and her ten reasons for living!"
Mel's nails entrap the gaze of the mind ticking the gansta rap on MTV box - big black six packs and guns, undulating brown flesh in thongs... Mel imagines it’s her choice of rhinestones on her thumb that catch the sun and leaves them struck dumb.
Mels nails tell a tale of her clawing her way through a thicket of charmless males, who liked her thigh, her buttocks tight and high Her breast pointing to the sky, her clean wet eyes. Mels nails meant she never washed a dish from that monumental day. Like a buzz from a passing fly were her mothers the complaints - Ignored or irritatingly swatted away with a curled lip Her ears had closed to that voice long ago anyway. The space between which was not full of air as maternal blusters and playground blasts had blown her to believe from pubescent rebukes alluding to her bodily parts that chose to round and swell before she had lost her clumsy schoolgirl gait; those bulges that attracted
an attention she only knew made her uncomfortable made want to origami herself in to shape of a boat or something even less interesting. Poked at for contemplative visage mistaken for shy inaccurately diagnosed as "Well She's just stupid, innit." And her inclination for re-potting plants was not a reflection on her personality as being an unanimated as a wallflower. She just liked to help things grow.
somewhere down the line she had put down the gardening gloves and picked up shears pruning that soft touch don't say much
into a loose lip l such and such it wasn’t enough to just dispassionately exist scratch the varnished surface and see after the eclipse
You find a small tongue cannot articulate big pain lying under cover, could not choose which night was dream filled, could not wish away the rain that fell on Mels small world. Her blamelessness bent over backwards a rainbow under those dark clouds smelling of thick mans smell and Tennents Extra unmasked by the favourite aftershaveof her stepfather seeping under her door and into her bed.
And between the mothers back teeth laughing, his big hand her mothers broad hip stoking and heavy whispering in ears only open for compliments and good girl pay offs, mother rationalises blindness for the impossibility of his preference of her daughter over herself….
Thus after nose, brow, dimple navel and eighteenth ear piercing through which her frustration escaped, Melanie painted her nails a shock of colour She chose herself. Definitively. Uncompromisingly - Nefertiti on her left pinkie with a tiny gold ring punched through representing her vague knowledge of self, a sun setting on an Island beach and solitary palm tree, firework, stars, explosions of a kaleidoscope
Mel got her nails and face painted to accentuate the light and shade of her dreams not to cover up the shabby seams of tear darned recoveries. No….
Misadventure was a survivor’s test. She knew this and her promenades into womanhood Were strewn with the waste of her hurts.
But she prettied them up with polish and flares of yellow brick roads, glitterati carnivals, and the lazy sound of droning bees pollinating in a park in Tottenham filling her body to bursting, shooting out of her fingers tips like car headlights. She had fine art Picassoed over her nails in the colours she chose for herself definitively and uncompromisingly. Cos Mel's nails were her dreams manifest.
