Reflections

Black Girl

• By fannieb
• April 18, 2018
• No Comments

I recently recorded a podcast with Kim, incredible photographer and wonderful friend.  Our conversation touched on many things including things that move us forward and those that hold us back and the topic of body image came up. Having a poor image of our bodies has this insidious way of stopping us in our tracks.  “Everyone struggles with body image issues,” Kim stated. Was she right? Did I or have I, felt less than because I didn’t like the way I looked?  I let my thought go and continued the interview.  Later that question came to mind again. Surely there is something about my body that I don’t like or haven’t liked in the past.  But I struggled to remember it.  I’d been happy with my facial features and with the size of my body, especially in my earlier years.  What was it that has caused me to feel ill at ease, less confident, “less than” everyone else when it came to body?

Self-acceptance has a way of blurring that which we hadn’t liked about ourselves before.  But as I washed my face this morning the shame I felt about my body was written all over it.  Being black, having brown skin, had caused me much angst in the past. I’d seen it as a scarlet letter that made me different in all circles, both black and white.

In the early seventies I was a little black girl living in a predominately white upper middle class suburb of Philadelphia.  I hadn’t seen myself as different until the day Mrs. Jones, my kindergarten teacher, read the racially controversial book Little Black Sambo to her class of all white children and me.

“What did she read you?!” my mom demanded after I had already told her the name of the book.  She was enraged. I was scared.  What had I done to make her so angry?  The next day she took this problem up with Mrs. Jones and the principal.  From that day forward I knew I was not like the other children, that the color of my skin marked me as different, a difference that was not seen to be good.

Years later when I was eleven my parents decided to move our family out of our beautifully architected house, on that wooded lot, in that idyllic planned community back to Philadelphia.  Though I’d lived in Philadelphia until the age of three, this house was the only home I’d really ever known.

My anxiety and unwillingness to move was informed by my mother’s mood and energy around it.  My mom was a strong woman, but in the seventies she was still figuring out who she was and how to balance the societally imposed role of docile accommodating wife with her role as a strong protective, intuitive mother. She hadn’t wanted to move back to the city, but fears of not being a dutiful wife who listened to her strong husband won out.

“It was a mistake to move back to the city, Richard,” my mother told my father forcefully.

“Pat” my father responded, “No it wasn’t.  We are black and it’s important for our children to be raised around people who look like them.  They need to understand where they come from and our culture.”

My mother spat back, “So you’re saying Wexford Woods isn’t black enough.”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.” My father fired back.  That was the end of the conversation.

Our life together in Philadelphia lasted eight whole months before my mom found  the strength and conviction to separate from my father, who had anger and control issues, and remove us all (my brother, my grandmom, and me) from an unhealthy living situation. We moved back to New Jersey. We couldn’t afford the community we’d left only a few months earlier so we found another pleasant suburban neighborhood, though it wasn’t the same as Wexford Woods.

The white two-story 2000 square foot colonial house in Levittown gradually became our new home.  Despite the financial struggles of a single mom, I was well provided for. As my parents battled through a messy divorce, we all, somehow, managed emotionally though we weren’t particularly happy.  I suppose comparing everything to the life we had before in Wexford Woods was a natural recipe for unhappiness.

There were many more black children in my new neighborhood, but many fewer than in Philadelphia, that way station we’d briefly called home. My skin color was less obvious in Levittown than in Wexford Woods, visually I stood out less. This was good because all I wanted to do was blend in and not call attention to myself.  However, I felt uncomfortable and awkward in my new environment. In Wexford Woods I’d grown up with all white friends except for one.  During those eight months I attended school in Philadelphia, among so many other children with brown skin, I still stood out.  I didn’t fit in.  Not only had most of the children formed bonds that started in their kindergarten year, there was the awkwardness I felt at recess.  I remember being asked to turn one end of the double dutch jump ropes while another girl jumped in. I happily tried, but failed. I couldn’t turn the ropes in the right rhythm and then one of the girls snatched the ropes from my hands, sucked her teeth, and laughed at me.  I was humiliated. How should I have known how to do this? In my old school we only used one single rope to jump. Why did we have to move here anyway, my inner voice lamented, as I walked to the corner of the playground away from the other children.

My family settled into a new normal in Levittown and though life was tolerable my inner voice scorned me. Why couldn’t I have been born white?  Then things would be easier.  We’d still be living in Wexford Woods.  I’d still have a father at home. Why did I have to be born black?

Kim was right.  We all have something we don’t like about our appearance that lowers our esteem of ourselves. But mine wasn’t an unflattering nose, eyes that were set too far apart, or hips that were too wide.  Mine stemmed from the color of the skin that housed these other physical characteristics.