Give Me Body

     Earlier today, I was flipping through a magazine when I came to an advertisement with one of the most beautiful Black woman I’d seen in an ad in a while.  While looking at her beautiful features and skin I recalled a conversation I had had a few years ago on the phone with one of my girlfriends.  Our conversation consisted of idle catch up chatter until the subject about our daughters growing up was the topic.  We talked about how they were becoming young ladies and the body shaming that kids, more so girls than boys, have to contend with at such a young age.  At the time, my daughter was 12 years old and in the 7th grade, her daughter was 13 and in the 8th grade.  She (my girlfriend) told me how a little boy from school made her daughter feel uncomfortable about her butt not be big and round.  For goodness sake she was 12 at the time--she's not supposed to be curvy!  My daughter hadn’t (to my knowledge) had to encounter that type of behavior (yet) but I knew it was/is coming.

     I remember being that age and the boys in school and around the neighborhood used to be "fresh" with their language towards us and back then if I didn't like what was being said I'd fight the boy and not think another thought about it.  My body didn't start taking form until I was about 14 and nobody had anything to say about it.

     Our society has lost it's focus and we have dropped the ball by allowing it to happen.  All the songs on the different radio stations, videos on well-known tv stations as well as other media outlets (social media being the top perpetrator) have muddled the image of what people are supposed to look like.  Everyone does not have hips, butt and boobs galore.  Everyone does not have silky straight hair flowing down their backs.  Everyone is not light-skinned or fair skinned with a sun-kissed glow.  We all are beautiful in our own right, be it short hair, dark brown skin, flat chested, with a stick figured body.  How do we stop this new age of bullying in it's tracks?  How do we turn off the stigma of what beauty is?  How do we stop the continued thinking that beauty is skin deep?  Beauty is found by the way people present themselves.  Some of the most attractive people can be the ugliest people you could ever encounter. We've all heard that before, I'm sure. But take a moment and let that really sink in. Y'all be well!