OK, I'm ugly. Now what?
A couple days ago, a man on the internet told me I was not attractive.
It's been so long since I've had one of those that I was a little surprised. They still make you? I wanted to ask. Bless. Certain men firmly believe that telling a woman she is unattractive is a death blow. I get it, even as I am baffled by it. Inevitably, the man who was somehow in my mentions was there because I had expressed an interest in, and love for Beyonce's pregnancy news.
I often find myself thinking about the many ways that men hate women. Some of it is manifested in cruel physical acts: they beat women and they rape them and they kill them. My friend A once told us about the specific gaze she is sometimes subjected to: these men look at us like they can't decide if they want to fuck us or kill us, or both. I think about that line a lot. Because I've seen that exact look too, and the only word for it is "ravenous". These men want to devour us. Consume us. End us. In big ways and small ones too. You have to shake it off to go about your daily life. But once the mask has slipped, it's hard to forget about.
Then there's the other, non-physical ways men hate on women: in small, undermining ways. After Bey's announcement came a slew of absurdly bitter men, all of them suddenly concerned with the ways women engage with pop culture. These men—all preoccupied with "serious" news no doubt—wanted us to explain our alleged joy, and then when that wasn't enough, attempted to steal it. Beyonce's relationship with black women (and how they engage with her) made this a specifically black women-focused issue. And some dudes seemingly can't bear to see a black woman momentarily happy. Fleeting joy—with Beyonce as catalyst— even in the current political climate, is a bridge too far.
I shouldn't give it space. Life is too short/long for that. I know this. But fuck those guys. Enjoy Beyonce's pregnancy news. Twins! That's properly delightful.
Fuck anyone who says otherwise.
They’ll hang your coat for you in first class, that's what they'll do. I know this, because I saw it on the flight back to New York. I have not sat in first class since September 1997. I remember the date like some people remember their wedding anniversary.
In business class, the seats are still spacious but not too much, you know? It is what you would ask for if you were on the Oprah Winfrey Show and started to get an inkling from Oprah's tight and secret little smile of what might be under your seat. In this section, in Seat 10, a man slowly rubbed cream into his bare feet, like the lawyer in The Night Of (which I watched on the plane; it's very good). He kept his gaze averted and as we made our way to plain old cattle class, we reciprocated the politeness. There are basic human rules, even as we walk through wealth. In the 17 row, just a couple seats ahead of mine, I watched a middle-aged white woman tut as a co-passenger asked if she would remove her coat from the overhead bin, so he could place his small suitcase in there. She was not a gracious person.
The man was a tall, big black man – he really could've done with the modest luxury of business class, to be honest – and I imagined him having had to navigate this black body his entire life, seeking permission to place his luggage, or to sit down, or even to earn the respectful removal of another's gaze, like the man with the feet in Seat 10. I got angry with the woman, a sudden, white hot rage. He was being nothing but polite and good humoured. At one point, having put his luggage in the bin, he offered her the space atop it to place her coat. Well, it's expensive, and that's going to wrinkle it, she said. As though the coat were a mewling newborn, and he was asking her to skin it, just for shits and giggles. I've ruined a coat on an airplane before she added. OMG, I wanted to exclaim facetiously, is this like your 'Nam?
Behind her, I watched another woman – this one with an actual mewling newborn in her arms – check her phone, long after the cabin crew and safety video had asked us to turn it to airplane mode. At one point she opened Instagram, and proceeded to check her Stories. No headphones. Just blaring the video stories of her follows. I stared in open-mouthed awe. How are people like this allowed? On planes, no less?
At 3am, the baby woke, angry at everything unnatural he was experiencing, and insisted we join him in his enraged dawn chorus. Blame your mama, I thought.
She's a bad person. She did this to you.