New On the Parenting Post: Bones, Baggage, Black Girl Curves and Mama Bears

By DENENE MILLNER

Okay, yeah—I’m sensitive about weight and body issues, particularly when it comes to my girls. I lay blame squarely at the feet of my childhood best friend’s mom. I’ll call her Evilene. Because Evilene was evil. Particularly when she stopped everything she was doing to look at my adolescent body with all its curve and thick and awkward and proclaim, “Humph—you sure are getting fat.” The first time she said it, I wanted to die. The second time, I started thinking maybe she was right. Each subsequent time after that, I’d figure out more ways to hate my body and secret it under mounds of sweaters and baggy pants and other stuff that would hide my hips and butt and thick legs from her scrutiny. And I’d tuck myself into the basement of my childhood home and exercise like a lunatic.

The good thing is that I was exercising. The bad thing, of course, is that I was doing it for all the wrong reasons—had, at age 13, internalized this grown woman’s criticism and processed it in a way that made me hate me for years to come. That I didn’t develop an eating disorder is a small miracle.

Now, finally, I love me just the way I am. But I’m a woman and a mother. And like Erykah Badu so poetically put it in her song, Tyrone, I’m sensitive about my shit. And the second someone says something sideways to my girls about their weight or their hair or their skin color or whatever, I go all the way in. Hard. (Nope, I guarantee you not even Sarah Palin can do “Mama Bear” like I do “Mama Bear.”)

Which explains the what-the-crap conniption I had when Nick recounted a conversation he’d had with Mari’s coach, who, earlier this season, pronounced my 11-year-old needed to get “more fit.” In front of her. Took me right back to my days standing in Evilene’s kitchen, getting the “you need to lose some weight, don’t you think?” talks.

“So,” I said to Nick, fire in my eyes, hands on my hips, spittle on my lips, “after you flattened coach and he got back up off the ground, did he at least apologize to Mari?”...

It didn’t matter what Nick was saying. I swear, all I could channel was these two grown men towering over my daughter, telling my baby she was slow and fat and lazy. And yeah—the rest of that conversation isn’t fit for a public parenting site...

Want to know if I got all "Mama Bear" on the coach? Check out the rest of this post on the MyBrownBaby page at Parenting.com's The Parenting Post. For more great stories about child development and motherhood, check out Parenting.com. 

{Bringing Up Boogie} My Boy and the White Barbie—Cozying Up Under the Christmas Tree

By BASSEY IKPI

Boogie is in that “can you buy me that?” stage of life. I dread commercials with anything that races, flies, explodes or turns into a robot-monster-dinosaur truck. If it looks like it might kill you, Boogie wants it. When we’re out shopping and he goes through the, bug eyed, mouth wide open, “OH MY GOD!” process, I tell him that I don’t have any money or I only have enough money to buy exactly what we came for. He’ll pout and “oh man!” or say, “Well, do we really need toothpaste?”  but he’s fairly good at listening.

One day at Target, he asked for a Kindle (Yeah. I know.), and I said, “Boy, we’re in a recession.” He looked at me and responded, “Mommy, we’re in a Target.” I’m grateful that he doesn’t throw tantrums like the kids I step over in the toy aisle but still the “can you buy me that” gets a little annoying. 

So this morning when I woke up and found Boogie upstairs watching The Fresh Beats (you know from my post a few weeks ago how I feel about that) and thumbing through a Wal-Mart  Christmas mailer, I groaned to myself. Halloween was last weekend. It’s  not even Thanksgiving yet and can I get some pie before I have to wrap presents? Damn. I watched him for a little bit ,waiting for him to ask for a super Transformer Monster Truck Bicycle Power Ranger Batman car... thing. (He knows better than to ask for a gun.) But when Boogie noticed that I was in the room, he looked up with those  massive brown eyes, long curly lashes and big smile and  said, “Good morning! Can you buy me a Barbie?”

I’m sorry what?

I said, “Do you mean a Barbie like a bar-b-que?”

He said, “No. I want a Barbie. This one.”

And sure enough he pointed to the iconic toy. That’s what he wanted. I took a closer look to make sure it wasn’t some sort of Barbie-shaped gun or torpedo launcher. Nope. It was Barbie in all her Dream Townhouse glory. And I was confused.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind buying my son a doll. But he’d never shown any interest in dolls before and I really wish if he did, that it wouldn’t be Barbie, of all hideous things. Before I could say anything else, my brown-faced gorgeous baby boy said, “I want the white one.”

*record scratch*

What? What do you mean you want the “white one?” I immediately went from “You want a doll?” to, “Oh, and now you want a ‘white one?!’ Boy!” Somehow, I calmed myself down enough to say, “Baby, wouldn’t you rather have a black one?”

He said, “No. I want the white one.”

I said, “But the black Barbie is so pretty. Don’t you want a black Barbie that’s pretty?”

He said, “No. I want the white one. I saw the black one in the store and it was nekkid. I want the white one.”

I had no idea where this conversation came from or where it was going, but now I was firmly in Parental Confusion Land. You know, the place when your child says or does something so outrageous that your only response is a confused, “Oh... okay.” Like when I asked him why he had on two watches and he said, “Because I need to know what time it is all day.” Oh... okay.

Now let me clarify the “black one was nekkid” thing. In Boogie’s world, “nekkid” means shirtless for boys and/or wearing a bathing suit for girls. “Naked”means without clothes. I have no idea how he decided to make this distinction, but like with most things Boogie, you just gotta accept it and move on. He gets it and that’s all that matters. So I’m pretty sure that the black Barbie had on a bathing suit and he didn’t want anything to do with that. But still, if I’m going to buy my son a Barbie, I’m buying him a black one, dammit!

So I said, “E, I’m not buying  you a white Barbie.”

And he said, “Why not?!”

And I said, “Because YOU aren’t white! Why would you want white Barbie?”

And he said, “Because it’s cute.”

Me: “WHAT?! Are you trying to say that the black Barbie isn’t cute?!”

Before I knew it, my neck was rolling and I had the black girl finger up. (Let me interject here by saying I knew how ridiculous this conversation with my not-quite 4-year-old son was, but I felt like we needed to have it. I’m not raising no color complex!)

Boogie looked stunned for a second and said “No... the Black Barbie is pretty like you and Kanke and Grandma, but the white Barbie is cute and not nekkid.”

“So why do you want a white one and not a black one? I don’t understand.”

Boogie could tell that he had somehow upset me, but he wasn’t sure why, so he spoke very slowly: “Because I see pretty black people all the time. Plus the Barbie in Toy Story was white.”

Oh... okay.

It’s true. The Barbie in Toy Story was white. I’m still trying to figure out why I reacted so strongly to his declaration that he wanted a white Barbie and not a black one. Raising a brown boy into a black man in this country is difficult; all the subliminal messages about what’s good and what’s bad and who’s good and who’s bad sneaks in before you know it, and I got a little scared that my baby was starting to feel like his brown wasn’t beautiful. Boogie’s concept of race is all over the place. He thinks light-skinned people are white, and he identifies my friends by skin tone. “Chris That’s the Color White.” and “Mychal That’s the Color Brown not Michael That’s the Color White.” (Both of them are actually black men.)

Outside of distinguishing features, ethnicity doesn’t mean much to Boogie and I felt wrong for injecting race in a conversation that was simply about the toy he wanted because of the movie he loved. But at what point is the conversation valid and necessary? 

I want Boogie to love his skin and his heritage and his people, but I want him to respect and love the culture and heritage of others. When I was in college, I was all Arrested Development, Badu-ified, and I just knew that any child of mine would go to an African school and wear African clothes and speak African... like Africans! Apparently, being half Nigerian wasn't enough.

Now that I’m older and my worldview has expanded, I know I want my son to have a more layered approach to loving himself and respecting others’ differences. I know I have to teach him that before the world teaches him different. I just don’t know how to raise a child who is proud of who he is and accepting of others without upsetting that delicate, child-like innocence that makes so much sense in his big ass head. 

I do know this much: I'm still not buying him a white Barbie.

I'll buy him a gun first. 

Oh... okay.

* * * * *

About our MyBrownBaby Contributor: Bassey Ikpi is a Nigeria-born, Oklahoma-bred, PG County-fed, Brooklyn-led writer/poet/neurotic who is the single mother of an amazing man-child, Elaiwe Ikpi. She's half awesome, a quarter crazy and 1/3rd genius... the leftover bit is a caramel creme center. A strong advocate of mental health awareness, Bassey is currently working on a memoir about living with mental illness and producing Basseyworld Live, a stage show that infuses poetry and interactive panel discussions about everything from politics to pop culture. Find more Bassey on her site, Bassey's World.

If you would like to be a featured contributor on MyBrownBaby, email your essays/ideas/blog posts/rants/musings to Denene at denenemillner at gmail dot com. 

My Brown Barbies Are Beautiful

By DAREE ALLEN

We all know that taking a child with you to the store for what is supposed to be a “quick trip” never turns out that way. Such was the case after church the other day, when I told my daughter, K, that I was going to return something at Target, and that I wasn’t buying anything. Thing is, K still had birthday money burning a hole in her purse, so, at her insistence, I trotted to the back of the store (why are toys always in the back?) with my heels on to oblige her.

She went to her favorite aisle—the Barbie aisle. When she saw this “Barbie Fashionista,” she immediately had to have it.

“Well, what about these other dolls right here?” I said, pointing to a group of So In Style (S.I.S.) dolls which, like Barbie, are made by Mattel. “They are just like Barbies, but they are mommies with their little girls, just like you and me,” I said, pointing to the duo pack of dolls—one big, one a pint-sized version of what I thought was supposed to be her mom. (In actuality, they are girls who mentor young girls, but I didn’t get that when I first saw these doll combinations.)

But no, K was insistent on getting the Paris Hilton-looking doll. Then I pointed out that the SIS dolls looked like us because they were brown (she is literal with her colors, and calls most White people “peach”). She said, “I don’t like brown dolls.”

[Record-ripping screeeeech here]

I said, “You’re brown. How do you not like brown dolls?”

No answer.

Then I showed her how each of the SIS dolls did fun stuff with (who I thought to be) their daughters. One pair were cheerleaders. Another pair plays instruments. She selected the artsy pair, Trichelle and Janessa—and it was the package that had the most little pieces in it (painting brushes, a backpack, a sketchpad, and on and on). Oh joy. That means I get to dissemble it and find each of these little pieces in my carpet forevermore. (And why in the name of the sweet heavens above do they always put those white taggy things on the dolls hair? Arrrrgh!)

But all the little pieces are the least of my worries. What in the world was up with my daughter's insistence that she doesn't like brown dolls? This isn't how I'm raising her. It's not how I think. Indeed, I recently attended the Proctor & Gamble sponsored My Black is Beautiful, an event which offers a day of pampering (manis, pedis, facials, and makeovers) while promoting and giving away samples of health and beauty products like Crest, Pantene and Cover Girl to Black women. The My Black is Beautiful movement is above empowering and embracing our beauty in all shades. During the event, I decided to be a part of the model call, and one of the things we were asked to do was finish this statement: “My Black is ________ ," like they do on the interludes of their show on BET. My response was “unbreakable,” because as a single mother I have overcome so many things over the course of my daughter’s life in trying to remain independent and resilient, and setting a good example for her, even while shielding her from negativity. So how ironic was it for me to hear K’s clear distaste for “brown dolls” in preference to blonde-haired Barbies? She has Black baby dolls, including the Black Bratz dolls and the like. In fact, one of her top-requested items for her birthday last month was “a brown man doll” (although she also wanted a Ken, too). So I just didn't—and still don't—understand her proclamation about the brown dolls and her insistence on getting the white one.

Here am I, in the midst of finishing my motivational manuscript about empowering girls and enhancing their self-esteem, and my own daughter, at the tender age of seven, doesn't want to get with the program. Should I be worried? The SIS dolls came in different shades, and although they don’t sport natural hair like I just recently started doing, I've yet to overcome beauty stereotypes for my own child. My book will be dedicated to her, but I wonder, have I messed up already? Am I not doing enough to show her that her Brown is beautiful, too?

I don’t know how deep this is for her, but I’m going to work extra hard to get to the bottom of it—to show her why she should fall deeply, totally in love with exactly who she is. Who we are.

How do you show your children that their brown is beautiful?

* * * * * * *

About our MyBrownBaby contributor: Daree Allen is a technical writer and motivational speaker. She is currently writing a self-help book for teen girls. You can reach her at her website, D.elivering A. R.ich, E.mpowering E.xperience  and her personal development blog, Daree's Insights. 




If you would like to be a featured contributor on MyBrownBaby, email your essays/ideas/blog posts/rants/musings to Denene at denenemillner at gmail dot com.

A Beautiful Black Girl Finally Says, "I Love My Hair!"

 By DENENE MILLNER

Mari was three when she practically scalped herself with scissors—fluffs of her curly afro clumped like polka dots across our beige carpet. With her father and I surveying the scene of said scalping in sheer horror, girlfriend asked us all slick and sly, “Now can I get long hair like Missy?” Missy, mind you, was her BFF in her daycare class—specifically, a white girl with long blond hair.

You want a black mom to die a thousand deaths? Have her daughter tell her that she would prefer long blonde hair to her kinky afro.

Trust: We considered a Drop Squad-styled indoctrination—you know, kidnapping her, putting her in a dark interrogation room with a harsh, bright light, with a table full of down-ass natural sistas who would spend hours reading “Happy To Be Nappy,” and “I Love My Hair” through a bullhorn until she publicly swore off any delusions of silky, swinging, blonde hair. But seeing she was still a preschooler and all, we figured that would be a little much.

So we decided to take a different tact. From that second on, not a day passed by that we didn’t tell that little girl how beautiful her hair was—soft like cotton candy, strong enough to break a comb, black as night, shinier than a new penny, curly and swirly and all awesome all the time. Perfect for parting. And a million little twists. And a bunch of beads swinging and clacking in the wind. Each of these things I’d whisper into her chocolate little ears as my fingers weaved fantastic styles through her kinky hair. She’d giggle and shake her hair and crack up when the beads bounced against her little round face. And soon enough, I was satisfied she was happy being exactly what she was: A beautiful, bundle of chocolate goodness with kinky black girl hair.

Of course, these days, I know that when she announced she wanted Missy’s long, blonde locs, Mari wasn’t so much rejecting herself as she was latching on to something new. At age three, kids start noticing simple differences from those around them and point them out, and if it’s different enough, they may just want to try it out for themselves. It’s no rejection of self—it’s simply an embracing of something interesting and new.

Still, to this day, there isn’t a 24-hour-cycle that goes by that I don’t tell her she’s stunning—because she is and because she needs to know that someone else thinks she is, too. Someone who loves her unconditionally and has solely her best interests in mind and is fully vested in her having a healthy dose of self-esteem, particularly in a world that goes out of its way to tell little black girls that their hair and their skin and their bubble butts and their thick legs and their wide hips and their dark eyes and their thick lips and their plump noses don’t fit into mainstream society’s beauty ideals.

And my work is paying off, I tell you. Just a few months ago, at the beginning of the summer, Mari decided she wanted her hair styled into locs, a process in which hair is left uncombed until it mats and coils and grows into itself. I’d long wanted to loc her hair, but because it’s such a permanent hairstyle, I needed her to decide for herself that it’s what she wanted to do. Sure enough, she started looking around and seeing all the beautiful women surrounding her who wear locs in their hair—her grandmother, a few dear friend of mine, including my girl Joyce and my other buddy Akilah and her two adorable daughters, and a bunch of women at our family’s church. And after a few months of admiring them, Mari made clear that she wanted her hair to be beautiful like that, too.

And so I set about finding a loctician who would love her hair and tend to it and teach Mari and me how to care for it properly and make it beautiful, from roots to ends. And beautiful, it is.

I tell you these things because just yesterday, Mari was standing in the mirror playing in her newly-forming locs and trying to decide which sparkly barrette to accentuate them with when she ran her fingers through her hair and said, with the biggest, juiciest smile, the four words I’d wanted so desperately for her to say that day when she took scissors to her twists: “I love my hair!”

And today, my heart is leaping for joy.

Editor's Note: "A Beautiful Black Girl Finally Says, 'I Love My Hair!'" was written exclusively for Parenting.com's The Parenting Post. To get great mom-to-mom advice and tips on childrearing and motherhood, visit the MyBrownBaby Page at Parenting.com. 

Where’s Tyra Banks When You Need Her?

So just the other day, I read THIS STORY about how model scouts in Brazil continue to search for and export to the runways tall, thin girls with straight hair, white skin and light eyes who hail from a tiny little sliver of a predominantly German/Russian village in this South American country—the apparent standard of beauty despite that most of the rest of us think of Brazil as a country full of brown people who speak Portuguese.

Indeed, brown-skinned Brazilians are so disgusted by the white-is-right/black-get-back beauty standard that local prosecutors are stepping in to make sure that at least 10 percent of the models in São Paulo Fashion Week, the nation’s most important fashion event, are of African or indigenous descent. (In 2008, only 28 of 1,128 models in the event were black. Twenty-eight.)

That means the cops gotta police the doggone runways to make sure designers hire brown girls to show off their wares—in a brown country.

I mean, slap me with a silly stick, but whenever hot Brazilian chicks showed up in rap videos and random vacation shots in my brother’s travel portfolio, I assumed that every woman there looked a lot like the Brazilian model Thais Dos Santos Fernandez...

Indeed, until I read that New York Times article, I had no idea this woman, Giselle Bundchen, was considered the Brazilian ideal….

It just never ceases to amaze me that no matter where you go in the world, somebody is damn-near climbing behind the wheel of the biggest 18-wheel semi and deliberately mowing over brown-skinned, kinky-haired curvy girls trying to get to the nearest blue-eyed blonde.

An even sadder tale, though, is the lengths the scouts go to find the perfect white girl in a sea of brown ones—how babies as young as 12 are picked over and prodded and herded like cattle all in the name of “fashion.” Alisson Chornak, the scout profiled in the story, is so gully that he sets up shop in schoolyards and, with the blessing of the principal, photographs, measures, fluffs, poses and takes notes on little girls he thinks are white enough to make the modeling cut. After one particularly creepy recess foray in which he ogled a bunch of little girls, he actually declared—out loud—“There is nothing special here.”

Unbelievable.

And heartbreaking, considering that the world is full of little girls—brown, white and every color in between—who think they, too, can be models, thanks to the efforts of supermodels like Tyra Banks, whose hugely-popular “America’s Next Top Model” TV competition works double time to not only diversify the magazine pages, ad space and runways of the fashion world, but assure little girls everywhere that they are special. That no matter their color, their size, their background, their wealth, their whatever, they just might have a shot. Or, at the very least, the right to dream about it.

Not wishing ill on Chornak, but forreal forreal? I’m thinking nobody would be all that broke up if he got bit by some fat, toothy, poisonous, stank, ugly bug out there in those Brazilian bushes.

Just sayin’.

The Way We Move: Why I ♥ Being A Black Woman

A little over a month ago, the incredibly talented and gracious Lynya Floyd, an Essence magazine editor and friend, asked me to write a poetic piece about the beauty of black women, and I happily obliged. Of all the assignments I get during the course of a month, this one held a specific significance to me, not only because I'm a black woman, but because I'm the mother of two chocolate girlpies who need to be told—often and in as many different ways that I can muster—that they are special, beautiful and loved, no matter what anyone else says about it. The piece was, by far, one of the best assignments I've had in quite some time; there was no reporting, no rewriting and no waiting for experts to get back to me. Just pure, beautiful words, one behind the other—a collection of praise for all that is good about us.  

Here, a little peek at my piece, "The Way We Move," which opens the incredible "Why I  ♥ Being a Black Woman" feature in the July issue of Essence, with the lovely Jada Pinkett Smith gracing the cover: 

Can't nobody move like us. Or hold it down like us, even with babies on our hips and the world on our backs (always on our backs). We are fly and we stay fly.  

Insist too, that you do the same with that shotgun-to-the-back insistence. We got expectations, see? And when you’re not holding up your end of the bargain, we’ll cut you quick. With our eyes. With our words. Oh, please believe: No matter how sweet, we’re all capable of getting ice-cold with it— can sear you like fire, and then, on a dime, make you feel all bubblin’ brown sugar warm. Hell, we can deliver all of this in the same sentence, if so moved.

It’s a skill. We swath it in adoration, add a dollop of “for real for real” and a tip of “I know you know better,” then bake it in prayer, reserved for those we love hard and strong. We fall down on our knees for you. Even when you don’t realize it. Or deserve it. But especially when you need it. 

... We may be a little loud. A little mean.  A little strict. A little tart-tounged. A little big. A lot extra. But, church hand held high, this, this is what makes us incredible.

This. This is why I love being a writer—why I thank God everyday not only for this gift he's given me, but the ability and time and wherewithal to make it do what it do. I'm going to rip my piece out of my issue of Essence and frame it for my office.  And then I'm going to buy two more issues so I can tear out one copy each for my daughters' memory boxes, so that when they look back on this space and time, they'll remember just how incredible, intelligent, delicious, strong and fly their mother thinks they are. 

They need to know this. 

And remember it, too. 

We all do. 

Tell me, what do you love about being a black woman?

[ESSENCE gathered 9 of our favorite actresses to talk about why they love being a Black woman. Ledisi, a MyBrownBaby favorite, loved the concept so much she dedicated an exclusive song, "Real Woman," to the project. Check out the video below to hear both the song and what the stars had to say about their love for black women.]

Something Stinks At Seattle's Thurgood Marshall Elementary School.

Sweet baby Jesus.

It took me a minute to shake the tomfoolery that went down last month when a high school teacher—one in the lily white sticks of Lumpkin County, GA, no less—dressed up four of her students in KKK outfits and paraded them through the school lunch room on her way to teach a “history” lesson about racism. The teacher gave a “my bad,” and the school slapped her with some sensitivity training and so, you know, all the little Negro children who may have genuinely been offended/surprised/frightened by what looked like a gathering of the homegrown terrorist organization that systematically lynched, raped, tortured and murdered African Americans, needed to, like, hurry up and get the eff over it.

Right.

And now, THIS from The Seattle Times: A third-grade teacher kicked an 8-year-old black girl—the only brown baby in the advanced placement class—out of the classroom because the Organics Olive Oil Hair Moisturizing Lotion her mom uses on her natural hair made the teacher, who allegedly has allergy issues, want to vomit and faint. Yup, you read that right: The smell of the baby's afro made the teacher throw up a little in her mouth and almost pass out.

DEAD FISH EYES.

Hold up, though—it gets better: After the teacher, a 3rd grade instructor at the Thurgood Marshall Elementary School (isn't the irony of the name of the school just delicious?) pulled the baby from the class and had her sit out in the hallway, she sent the girl to another non-gifted classroom full of black students, and then refused to respond to the parents when they questioned what was up with all of that. 

Now, the parents are in a tizzy and won't let their kid go back to school (with good damn reason); the NAACP and lawyers are involved; and the school district, citing the lawsuit, has zipped its collective lips on the issue, except to say that they're positive the teacher's actions weren't racially motivated.

Uh huh.

Now, I'm all kumbaya on the teacher having allergies or sensitivities to smells or whatever. And a little web investigation revealed that the teacher handed out letters in the beginning of the year explaining the sensitivity and asking the parents not to send their kids into the classroom smelling any kinda ways, lest the teacher suffer an attack. But er, um, you mean to tell me the only way this adult—this teacher who is responsible not only for molding students' minds but also their emotional and mental well-being, no matter their size, skin color, sexual orientation, looks, hairstyles, and, yes, smells—could keep from throwing up and fainting was to a) single out the one black child in the class; b) tell her she stinks in front of said class; c) banish her from the gifted class to one that is educationally inferior to the one in which she was placed (Lord, this alone is worth a whole 'nother post), and; d) refuse to give the parents a head's up or return emails and phone calls to explain?

I mean, come on, son—really?

I'm the mother of an 8-year-old, 11-year-old, and 17-year-old, and they regularly assault my wolf nose with the funk of a 1,000 years—stank, deodorant-less armpits, farts, sweaty shin guards and soccer cleats, shard-filled underwear, Cheetos-induced exorcist vomit slicks, head-to-toe Tag body spray spills you can smell a quarter mile away. And those are just my three. I can only imagine how gross a class of 30 or more 8-year-olds must be, with their sweaty, playground bodies and their stinky peanut butter and banana lunches and their  sparkly, strawberry sour pucker lip glosses and their "I just forgot to brush my teeth this past week" morning breath.

Simply put: Kids smell. Moms and teachers alike have to put up with it. 

And feign as much ignorance about it as you want to, but moisturizer to natural black girl hair is like water is to the human body: We have to have it or our hair dies. And sometimes, that moisturizer's got a little something in it to make your hair smell nice.

And if a teacher can't handle normal, average, everyday kid smells (scratching my head trying to figure out how the teacher keeps from fainting and vomiting at the grocery store, on the bus, at the mall, in church...) and the fragrance of a little girl's afro puffs, well then maybe said teacher needs to find a new damn job instead of kicking smart little black girls with afros out of the smart kid class and refusing to explain what's up to her parents, leaving the parents to make a federal case out of it.

And make a federal case out of it, they must. Because the damage caused to that little girl, a black child already charged with having to fit in to a class full of kids who don't look like her, could be irreparable if the parents aren't standing up, speaking out, and talking to that baby about how special she and her natural hair—the hair God gave her—is, no matter the reaction her insensitive, dummy of a teacher has to it. No matter how many people stand at the ready to question why she wears it that way and why she doesn't just pull a hot comb or some relaxer through it.

Are these teachers—the "Let's play dress up in KKK robes" one and the "I faint at the slightest whiff of afro juice" racist? I don't think so. But they're both ignorant as hell, and inexcusably insensitive to the students and parents who do not look like them.  And they absolutely do not deserve a pass for the foolishness. Two snaps up and a twist to the reader who left this brilliant comment at the end of THIS PIECE written by the little girl's father:

It's unlikely this teacher was thinking about the significance and connotations of hair -- and that's because for her, as a member of the "default" racial group, hair doesn't have significance and connotation. She has the luxury of having "default" hair; she has the luxury of never feeling singled out or racially defined by her hair. Does this mean she's off the hook, because she didn't know or because it didn't occur to her? Can the racial connotations of a white teacher singling out a student of color by making an issue of her hair be dismissed? Absolutely not. White people plead ignorance all the time for things like this: "I wasn't being racist when I said/did that -- I just didn't know any better. I didn't know that was offensive." 

Well, I think that's pretty weak (I'm white; I kind of think it's my own damn responsibility to be as conscious of the role race plays in our society as everyone else, who is being fucked over by it, is). Race is an issue in this story the way it is more and more frequently in America -- not because of an overt act of aggression, but because of a passive act of inconsideration.

  

Say word.

The Skin They're In: Healing African American Babies' Skin Naturally

by TERESHA FRECKLETON-PETITE
of Marlie and Me

When it comes to our brown babies, we take pride in keeping their skin healthy and blemish-free. So it can be distressing when you wake up one morning and see a patch of red, itchy bumps where there used to be smooth skin. Don't panic. It is common for babies and children to develop rashes because their still-developing immune systems are more prone to the bacteria/fungi that cause skin problems. The important thing is to identify a solution that clears up the infection without risking side effects. I learned that this is easier said than done.

My newborn has cradle cap and atopic eczema. Like all good parents we took her to the doctor. Thankfully, both rashes are mild, but her pediatrician still recommended treatment to prevent them from spreading (did you know that cradle cap can migrate to the face and as far as the tops of your child's feet? yikes!). My daughter's pediatrician advised me to wash the affected areas with a medicated dandruff shampoo, apply an over-the-counter cortisone cream and a commercial analgesic lotion. Have you read the labels on these products? They are full of harmful chemicals and alcohols and sulfates, which can further irritate the skin. Uh, no thanks! I wasn't willing to expose my baby to these toxins or compromise her health.

I set out to find a natural alternative, but my initial search left me frustrated and a bit discouraged. There are tons of web sites shilling their "miracle" salves, lotions, powders, and shampoos. Never trust a source trying to sell you something, right? I found the holistic sites somewhat helpful. They provide a lot of information on prevention, but offered little practical advice about homeopathic treatments. I almost gave up until I realized that the most trusted resource was right at my finger tips. I emailed other natural mamas, and they sent these recipes* to help my baby girl's skin heal:


CRADLE CAP RECIPE
Mix together:
1 tablespoon extra virgin coconut oil
5 drops tea tree oil

Use a soft-bristle brush to massage mixture into scalp loosening the flakes/scales. Let sit 10-15 minutes. Wash out with an organic shampoo like Dr. Bronner's Mild Baby Soap to remove oil. Gently detangle any remaining flakes from the hair with a comb. Moisturize scalp with a dab of a light oil like sweet almond oil with vitamin E. Repeat until scalp is clear.


ECZEMA HEALING RECIPE
Mix together:
1 tablespoon olive oil
1-2 drops grapefruit seed extract

Rub mixture on affected areas twice a day until rash disappears completely (typically 10-14 days).


ANTI-ITCH RECIPE
Mix together:
2 tablespoons pure aloe vera gel
2 drops tea tree oil
1 cup distilled water

Use a cotton ball to apply to affected areas for instant relief. It's also a great cleanser for the diaper area.


DAILY SCALP SPRITZ RECIPE
(for older kids and adults)
1 teaspoon of Neem oil
1 teaspoon Tea Tree oil
1 teaspoon of Rosemary oil
1 teaspoon of Lavender oil

Add the oils together to one cup of distilled water in a spray bottle. Shake vigorously then spray onto your roots.


Note: Children can be sensitive to some essential oils. Before using any of these recipes do an allergy check by applying a small amount to the inner arm, what a few hours, and check for any reaction. Report any irritation to ask your child's pediatrician.




You've heard the saying that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Natural remedies are not cures. In order to prevent a recurrence of the rash you'll need to examine your child's diet and daily skin care regimen. What goes into their little bodies affects the condition of their skin more than what goes on it. My breastfed baby is allergic to dairy so I have to stop eating foods made from cow's milk to avoid another eczema flare-up. Other common food allergies include eggs, nuts, soy, wheat, and seafood. When your child develops a rash, take note of what (s)he child ate the day before. If you suspect a food allergy is the culprit, discuss it with the pediatrician. Other prevention tips I recommend are:

• Avoid detergents and beauty products that contain perfumes/fragrance, dyes, and drying chemicals. Don't be fooled by terms such as "hypoallergenic" or "doctor-approved." Read the label.

• Keep skin hydrated, especially in the winter. Use organic creams with thick emollients as the base (coconut butter, shea butter) and contain healing elements (calendula, vitamin E, aloe vera, lavender). I use Episencials Better Body Butter on Marlie several times a day.

• Consider vitamin supplements. Omega 3s promote healthy skin development from within and probiotics will boost your child's immune system so that it can keep the bad bacteria in check.

• Here's to healthy skin for all our beautiful brown babies!

:: Sources ::
OriginalSprout.com
SproutBaby.com
DryItchyScalpRemedies.com

About our contributor:
New mommy TERESHA FRECKLETON-PETITE lives in Dallas, Texas with her husband and 5-month-old daughter, whom she's raising the conscious way—natural childbirth, breastfeeding, cloth diapers, whole food nutrition, organic products. For Teresha, everything is trial and error—then she blogs all about it at Marlie and Me.

In The Mix: Great Natural Hair Care Recipes For Brown Babies On Up

By KAREN PETERS

Our hair is a beautiful, curious institute. We can have loose spirals, free-flowing coils, tight corkscrews, strong and determined tresses, or even a combination of each of these intertwined all on one head. Even more peculiar is our babies’ hair, because they’re born with one texture that’s easy to comb and style, and then somewhere between learning to walk and learning to talk, something happens.

It changes.

Big time.

As parents, we fear it, dread it, hate it, wish it away, try to stop it, and, of course, try to battle with it. But we need to remember that “The Change” in our babies’ hair is what was intended—a rite of passage that should be embraced and honored. Still, we do need to know how to make the transition smooth—not only for our babies, but for ourselves.

There is a way—a natural way—to usher our babies’ hair through “The Change.” To help MyBrownBaby answer the call of dozens of mothers who reached out to her on The Parenting Post for advice and tips on the best way to care for their babies’ hair, I’ve assembled a few recipes—with natural ingredients—for your baby’s hair regimen, plus alternative products that can be purchased in stores and online for those of you who aren’t up for the mixology.

Remember, there is no one product that will do it all; you will have to try some things, buy some things, and even mix up a few concoctions of your own.

Note: I did not include essential oils in these recipes because even though they are natural, some people—especially children—are sensitive to them. As your baby matures, you can experiment with the following essential oils as needed for…

• Oily Hair: Lavender, lemon, sage, cedar
• Dry Hair: Rosewood, Ylang-ylang, honey, Balm
• Dandruff: Yarrow, Sandalwood, Lavender, Cypress, Balm
• Stimulating hair growth: Coriander, Rosemary, Birch
• Helping split ends: Rosewood, Cedar, Ylang-ylang




GREAT NATURAL HAIRCARE INGREDIENTS TO KEEP ON HAND:

From your local health food store:
• Coconut oil (about $8)
• Jojoba oil (about $10)
• Sweet Almond Oil (about $6)
• 1 8-ounce bottle of Dr. Bonner’s Liquid Castile Soap (Lavender or Baby Formula, about $5)
• 1 ounce plant wax (about $2)
• 2 ounces water

To buy online:
• Castor wax – www.gardenofwisdom.com $6
• Sal butter – www.gardenofwisdom.com $8

Note: You will need clean, empty bottles and glass jars in at least 4-ounce sizes.



TWO GREAT BABY HAIR CARE RECIPES

GENTLE BABY SHAMPOO

Mix together in a bottle:
2 ounces of Dr. Bonner’s Liquid Castile Soap
2 ounces of water
2 ounces of jojoba oil
Voila! It’s a super rich, thick, conditioning baby shampoo that is gentle for your baby’s hair that isn’t drying.

GENTLE CONDITIONING BALM

Gently melt on your stove’s lowest setting:

• 1 ounce coconut oil
• 1 ounce sal butter
• 1 ounce sweet almond oil
• 1 ounce jojoba oil
• 1 ounce Castor wax

Pour into a jar and use as needed.


If you want to just buy and try products, visit the following websites and do not be afraid to “water down” or modify any of their formulas to suit your baby’s needs.

• www.carolsdaughter.com (Body Jelly)
• www.organicblessings.com (Foaming Shampoo)
• www.californiababy.com (Shampoo and Body Wash)
• www.100percentpure.com (Body Wash and Shampoo)

Products To Avoid:

• Tear free shampoos: They include an ingredient that numbs babies’ tear ducts and eyelids.
• Shampoos and body washes with 1, 4 dioxane: This is an extreme toxicant and carcinogen.
• Petroleum- or mineral oil-based ingredients: They’re made with the exact same chemicals that produce gasoline and kerosene.

About our MyBrownBaby contributor
Karen Peters is founder of The Peace & Beauty Project, a nonprofit organization that encourages girls to honor natural beauty while making health conscious decisions. To learn more about Karen's organization and her workshops for girls, click HERE.

Styling a Black Girl's Hair Is No Job For Daddies!

By MOCHA DAD

My daughter, Nee, has absolutely no confidence in my ability to do her hair. Whenever I attempt to style it, she becomes more obnoxious than Rush Limbaugh.

Recently, my wife, KayEm, had to run an errand and I thought I would surprise her by combing and styling Nee’s hair (even though, Nee prefers KayEm to do her hair, it’s not a pleasant experience for either party. If you’ve ever bathed a cat, you can understand how these styling sessions go). I gathered all of the tools and materials and set-up a styling station at the kitchen table.

“Nee,” I said. “Come and sit down so Daddy can do your hair.” A looked of horror covered her face.

“No!” she yelled. “You’re NOT doing my hair.”

“C’mon,” I said. “Daddy, can do it. I’ll make you look beautiful.”

“NO!” she yelled again. “I want Mommy to do my hair.”

“But Mommy won’t be back for three weeks,” I said.

“I’ll wait,” she said as she crossed her arms and dug her heels into the ceramic tile.

When Nee was younger and couldn’t voice objections, I did her hair periodically. Although I had absolutely no experience, I think I managed to make her look presentable. I always stuck with my two default hairstyles: Afro with a head band or one single pony tail. Whenever I tried to get fancy, it was a disaster. Nee wound up with crooked parts down the middle of her head and two lopsided ponytails. Who knows what would have happened if I had attempted three.

Because of my hairstyling shortcomings, KayEm relieved me of this duty.

“I’ll handle Nee’s hair from now on,” she told me. “You just take care of the boys.”

“What’s wrong with the way I do her hair?” I asked. She smiled and gently patted me on the back.

“You just take care of the boys,” she repeated. “Because I don’t want my daughter going out looking crazy.”

“She’s my daughter, too,” I protested. “I would never let me little princess look crazy in public.”

“You’re right. She is your daughter too so we’ll let her decide,” said KayEm as she beckoned Nee over to us. “Who do you want to do your hair? Mommy or Daddy?”

“Mommy!” she said.

I was hurt. My little princess had rejected me in favor of cute hairstyles.

Nee is in third grade now and I know that things such as hairstyles and fashion are much more important to her now. In her world, it’s uncool to wear daddy-inspired hairstyles. I know my baby is growing, but I miss the days when a single ponytail was good enough.

Stay Strong,

Mocha Dad


About our MyBrownBaby contributor:
Mocha Dad, a.k.a. Fred G., is the founder of MochaDad.com, a blog he started to chronicle his life as a husband and father of three, and to counter the negative stereotypes surrounding black fatherhood. His goal is to give a firsthand account of a black father who is intimately involved in his children’s lives and motivate other fathers to be more actively engaged and involved with their children. This piece originally ran on MochaDad.com, where you can find many more of Fred's delightful stories on fatherhood, as well as his new e-book, Mocha Wisdom, Volume 1.

The Joys (and Pains!) of Kinky, Curly Black Girl Hair

By DENENE MILLNER

The torture usually came on Saturday evenings, in the kitchen. I’d be sitting on a stack of thick yellow phone books and a pillow, squished between my mother’s knees; she’d be perched on the hard wooden kitchen chair, bent over and leaning in at some ungodly angle, trying hard to tame the kinky curls at the nape of my neck with gobs of thick grease and a scorching hot comb.

I can still hear the sizzle of the comb on my hair and smell the thick, greasy, burnt hair scent clinging in my nose. I can’t tell you which hurt worse: The fire-red hot straightening comb or the pop my mom would give me with the wide-tooth plastic comb for not being still or screaming out in pain or breathing while she tried to “straighten my naps.”

From there, it just got worse. Like when my Aunt Sarah would braid my hair into cornrows so tight I couldn’t see straight. And when my mom paid a professional hairstylist to have my hair “relaxed” with skin-burning lye. And then there was that unfortunate time when my dad, left in charge of my hair while my mom spent a few weeks in the hospital, gave me a jherri curl. He read the directions off the box and went to work right there in the middle of the linoleum floor, just me and him.

Right.

This is the story of all-too-many brown girls everywhere—a story that some of us African American moms are desperately trying to change with our generation of daughters.

Which is why there was such an uproar recently when Newsweek’s Allison Samuels openly criticized Angelina Jolie, a white mom, for letting her adopted, Ethiopian-born daughter, Zahara Jolie-Pitt, sport hair Samuels said was “wild and unstyled, uncombed and dry. Basically: a ‘hot mess.’”

Now, I’m not going to jump in the middle of the raucous debate sweeping like wildfire through the internet; there’s been enough piling on from both sides of the issue without me adding to it (Should Zahara’s hair be wild and carefree? Should Angie take a black hair care class or two so she can “tame” Zahara’s hair? Why are we criticizing a 4-year-old’s hairstyle anyway?)

But I will say that even as an African American mom, it’s not easy being in charge of two heads of kinky, curly hair—not including my own—with little information, great trepidation, and horrible memories of the Saturday night torture. There were no books out there to help me figure it out when my girls were babies; all of the information in the parenting books focused on hair and skin that didn’t look or feel like my girls’. I mean, I knew everything there was to know about how to care for a baby with thin, blonde hair, and it seemed like every product in the kids’ shampoo section was made specifically for them. But what was I supposed to put in my baby’s hair? What would keep it from drying out? How was I supposed to comb it? What was I supposed to do as the texture changed, sometimes just on one side of her head? Was it safe to braid it? Pull it into puffs? Put barrettes in it? And what was a nice, curt, way of telling my mom’s friends that my kid’s hair was in an Afro, sans braids/puffs/hairclips/lye because I liked it that way and it was actually better for her?

To read the rest of my take on this whole Angelina/Zahara/Black Girl Hair Care saga, click HERE to check out my latest blog on Parenting.com.