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Weekend Wedding Extravaganza

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I have loads of wedding news to tell you about, good readers. Let’s start with the couples that are on our wavelength, from listings in The New York Times:

Uchenna Hicks & Steven McFarland

These two are in the communications business. Hicks is a media and community relations manager for the New York Times and he is a systems analyst handling internal communications for a financial services firm in New York. Hmmm. Ordinarily, the cynic in my would raise eyebrows at two people uniting troubled industries—financial services and newspapers—into one marriage. But they are both good communicators, presumably, so they might already have one huge relationship building block in place. Good luck on your new lives together!

Gyna Villard & Micah Uhrlass.

I had a difficult time grabbing a photo of them for the listing last week, but I’ve succeeded this time. It seems like they had a preacher from the Christian Brethren Assemblies officiate at their church wedding. I was nowhere near Gyna and Micah’s wedding, but if they are a pious as they are happy looking, one can safely guess that their wedding included a reading of this popular nuptials passage from Proverbs 31:10 “Who can find a virtuous wife? For her price is far above rubies?” Have a rich and highly favored life, kids!

Also, I want to start a new practice of posting wedding announcements on the home page, and re-posting them on the “Here Come the Brides” page, which you can access from the links in the left column.

*****

And speaking of nuptials, we have neighbors of Indian descent who are on the fourth day of a colorful, exuberant wedding extravaganza. When you are in an interracial marriage, the chances are good that your husband is socially progressive and would enjoy living in an ethnically and socially diverse neighborhood. That is the case with us. Our neighbors managed to pull off an elaborate setup on their sliver of a backyard. They squeezed seven tents, scores of chairs and a DJ table into their L-shaped backyard, which is no bigger than a roomy dog run. They festooned the fences and other structures with red and white decorations. The festivities began on Thursday evening. They staged two processions with drummers and other percussionists, which added to my headache that had started in the office that day. As the evening ground toward 11 o’clock, I tried to write a boring story about mutual funds, but the drumming aggravated the pain in my head, so I went outside to ask them to keep it down. They were wrapping up anyway, and apologized for the ruckus. As I walked back home, I glanced up at the light on in our home office, the only one burning in our house, and one of the few lit on our block. I wondered: Hubby and I might be educated professionals and be on higher ground than those neighbors are financially, but who is enjoying a better quality of life right now?

Since Thursday evening, their band has been jamming to the sounds of traditional Indian music (Hubby thought one song sounded Muslim), soca and reggae. It amazed me that the guests—there had to have been at least 80 of them—felt comfortable milling around in that cramped space on a hot summer weekend. But they didn’t care. They partied the whole time. Baby got into the wedding spirit too. On Thursday evening, she twirled and squealed as the Thursday evening procession passed her nursery window. At lunchtime today during one lively song, Baby developed a cute little dance where she held her arms up to her side, chubby fists at shoulder level, and swiveled from side to side. Hubby suggested that we bring Baby over there and crash the party, and that once we held her out to them, they would be smitten by the cute little thing and forgive our imprudence.

As we downed glasses of cold homemade smoothies to polish off lunch, we saw the bride and groom—at last. Little Sister had resorted to spying on them with binoculars to get a glimpse of the happy couple. The bride was resplendent in her white halter-top gown and he looked earnest and handsome in his traditional tux. As I blog, our Indian-Caribbean neighbors seemed to be setting up for the final wedding dinner. My headache from the other day is long gone, but if they give me another one with their raucous joie de vivre, I won’t complain. When cultures come together and a wedding is involved, it’s time to pop the champagne and put the DJ to work!

Venus: A Natural Phenomenon

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Whenever a gangly teenage girl develops into an arresting and grounded young woman literally before the entire world, you have to give that woman credit for doing so with grace and integrity. That’s why it made perfect sense to learn that the YWCA of Greater L.A. recently named Venus Williams a phenomenal woman. She is featured here because her fiance Henry “Hank” Kuehne, a pro golfer on the PGA tour, is white. Here they are in a photo at her college graduation party, or so the credits say. 

Ms. Williams holds the world’s #3 ranking in singles and the #1 for doubles. You can read all about her impressive achievements here, and it’s safe to say they put her abreast with the late Althea Gibson, the first AA to join the LPGA tour; the first AA to win a Grand Slam (Wimbledon, 1957) and the late Arthur Ashe, the most successful AA man to play the game. She is super close with her sister and doubles partner, Serena. If you’ve ever watched them trudge onto the court at a Wimbledon or French Open final to play each other for a championship, you can appreciate how much resilience it takes to live their lives.

I’m glad the YWCA has given her this award, because it burns me up the way the media treats this wonderful young woman. No matter how many trash-talking nobodies from Europe try to rip her down or sloppy obnoxious sports fans—who, by the way, would need a respirator to survive one of her routine workouts—savages her publicly, she finds a way to walk through it with her shoulders squared. God bless her, because I would attack back with my most repugnant ‘yo momma’ insults I could dredge up. And these piggish sports writers or “commentators.” Who are they to knock her appearance? If it weren’t for the FIVE pounds of pancake makeup they wear before showing their faces, they would scare children in the streets and cause camera lenses and computer screens everywhere to rupture into millions of teeny shards of glass and whatever poly-chemical coating they have on them. (See what I mean? I blame the Jersey in me.)

One of the reasons she comes under such scrutiny is her fiance. He is white, divorce, has a 5-year-old son and people are just all in a tizzy over that. Who cares? I like the fact that there is scant information about their wedding plans, because it shows restraint and modesty on their part, even though it makes my Latte Cafe hobby a little trickier.  In one Web-based thread, a particularly ignorant soul criticized Venus’ decision as some misdirected form of spite against black men. Others took it in stride and said her handful of a father, Richard, probably did a background check on the guy anyway, so she’s probably in good hands. That made me smile, because it’s probably true!

Well, Venus has nothing but my utmost respect and admiration for giving Americans one of two main reasons to watch tennis, along with her sister Serena. Andy Roddick is another draw, but he has yet to break through Nadal or Federer for a Slam championship. You would think this country would thank the Williams sisters properly for giving us such graceful displays of athleticism, years and years of global dominance in the sport, showing us how to respect other people’s cultures—by speaking French when accepting a French Open trophy, for instance—and for growing up as celebrities with no greater scandals than wearing questionable outfits while they pummel some loudmouth from someplace with an inferior game. Well, that last part is not entirely true. Venus was eliminated from the last Wimbledon tourney, after wearing some odd corset creation. It didn’t suit my personal taste, but I can only congratulate the young woman for having the figure to pull it off and the creativity to see it through. Usually, though, they take about an hour to whup their opponents.

And they are role models for young black women in many respects, including the fact that they don’t acknowledge ignorant comments about their love lives. Yes, they are role models for this. Allowing a decent guy to love you and enhance your life is a good thing, if you are mature enough to handle it. His race, ethnicity and nationality are completely irrelevant. Any brother who is not personally interested in them as marriage partners ought to pipe down and go back to doing whatever it is that mean losers like them do other than criticize black women for finding guys who make them happy. Or they might consider erasing mean comments on blog boards, shutting down their computers and doing something meaningful with their lives, like these young women have done.

A Burning Issue

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As my train pulled away from the platform this morning, I kept thinking about pepper. Not cayenne, scotch bonnet or any other variety to season foods, the sort to go on a grocery list. I wanted the kind delivered from a hand-held canister to stop menacing, belligerent men from harassing me and setting my morning commute on the wrong foot.

If I had brought some pepper spray with me this morning, I might have put a swift end to an argument that a hostile older man had picked with me. Maybe he would have understood that he had, indeed, crossed the line of decency. I would have let at least one badly brought up guy know that just because we are both black, it doesn’t give him the license to accost me, and then when I rebuff him, act like a pig.

After I had stamped my ticket in the validator, I stood on the platform, adjusting my tote bag and handbag, awaiting the train. The older guy who would offended me minutes later came up to me, leaned far in and started gesturing, asking me to operate the ticket machine for him and buy his ticket.  He didn’t say good morning, he didn’t take off the baseball hat pulled low over his brow, and he didn’t remove his dark glasses. Typical of a lot of black men with less education and polish, regardless of their age, he was pushy and acted like he was entitled to my time and goodwill. He asked a second time, and I shrugged, saying the machine was easy to use.

He got offended and walked off. I walked away, too, only half expecting him to drop it. He had more success with a young girl, who bought his ticket for him. Just like I figured he would, he emphatically thanked the young girl, his gratitude little more than a showy rebuke of my refusal to pay him any mind. But yahoos like him are easily set off, and don’t know how to stop the verbal incontinence after it starts, even after they get what they want and even after they sound foolish. He set on me again, berating me for not helping him and calling me names. Gentle readers, I don’t put up with that garbage from anyone. So after a short rant, I told him to stop raising his voice at me.

A gaggle of teenage boys who were crowded on a bench, themselves with very little home training, obviously, guffawed at all of this. Who knows what they were thinking, but in an instant I pitied my younger sister and daughter, who will probably face the same public harassment from a generation of inadequately raised ‘men’ like them, some of whom will stand by without a clue as to what to do except laugh.

The exchange went back and forth briefly until he started acting like a baboon, with the chest beating: “I’m 51 years old!”

“Then act like it. Grow up, stop talking and leave me alone.”

“B*tch!” At that point, everyone on the platform, even the little pups on the bench, fell quiet.

“My name is not B*tch,” I said loudly, and looked him square in his ridiculous sunshades.

Taking a dig at my regular glasses, he said, “well, blind then.” Oh, we’re in the 5th grade now, are we? That’s a different story altogether.

“Stupid-assed, 51-year-old loser. That’s you!”

That seemed to take the wind out of him a bit. Shut him up long enough for everyone to notice that the train had come. As everyone boarded the train, I didn’t flinch. I went straight to the spot where I usually like to sit, without trying to scurry out of his way or anything. Why should I? He didn’t go out of his way to approach me in any halfway decent way. For a guy born in 1959, he should have had the upbringing to know that when you approach a woman standing by herself anywhere, you make yourself pleasant before you ask her to do something for you. That might have induced me to help him. The young girl who did help him was probably in her late teens and is still naive enough to believe that everyone who asks a favor should be indulged, even coarse, pushy men who run up on you in public. I used to buy into the thinking that says always give every wanderer some change or a helping hand, because they might be an angel in disguise.

But time and common sense have taught me that simple-looking black men sometimes will lash out the hardest at black women in public and in demonic ways. I think I’ve said it before on this blog, that I doubt if any of the yahoos who have behaved toward me the way that they have would have done the same to a white woman. There is a deeply ingrained sense, and I don’t know where it comes from, that says they need to be treated differently. Perhaps black men think the weight and power of society is more on their side than ours. Maybe a white woman is resourceful and connected enough, either by way of a boyfriend, husband or father, to marshal forces to ‘whup’ his @ass and make his life miserable if he gets out of line with her.

But black women, apparently, can be abused with impunity. This sort of thing happened to a cousin of mine, but the ending was different, and I think there is a lesson to be learned. She was on her way to work in Manhattan. An unbalanced guy accosted her and let loose with a stream of profanities. A passerby, a white man, came to her aid. He stood sentry between my cousin and this fool, telling him to leave her alone, and the attacker quickly simmered down and went about his foolish way. After it was safe, my cousin thanked the Samaritan and kept making her way to her office. How interesting, that the abuser lost his marbles just long enough to pester someone he thought was defenseless, but when he was confronted with the force of a man, he backed down.

It’s too bad that morons like the guy on the train platform this morning and the one who rushed up on my cousin don’t read blogs. Otherwise, I’d let them know that black women in this country have been undergoing an awakening for quite some time. For years, our mothers, aunts, decent stepfathers, uncles and brothers have been telling us, training us, not to accept being treated like trash. We’ve been told to push back, speak up and stick up for ourselves. Tragically, it is because everyday heroic black men—men period—are scarce. But I’m noticing that when guys are on hand to speak up and not let a black woman be treated poorly, they are white. I’m not going to pander to a brother’s sensibilities and get into all of the soci-economic reasons for this, the subtleties on account of geography or any other circumstance, and the stories about hot-tempered white actors like Mel Gibson and Russell Crowe.

We need to confront the serious problem that there are two lost generations of black men in this country. They are represented by the leathery old fool on the platform, and the pups on the bench. My public humiliation, and the other macro ways in which black men let black women down, should not be a ritual for one, and entertainment for the other.

Black women are noticing that on an everyday level, there are not enough brothers treating them with basic decency and respect. As much as I love and regard the solid, upstanding, accomplished black men that I know, there are not enough of them to go around. There are others outside our race who value us as people, and think we deserve better than what our ‘own kind’ has to offer all too often. It’s only a matter of time before black women let go of the dream of the Ideal Black Man and think of themselves as valuable women who deserve equally good men.

Show Biz Chops & Gimme Them Shoes!

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Hubby and I are a Mo’Nique loving couple, so it was a special treat to stumble across episode from her show on the Web. A few months ago she hosted Tracey Ferguson, EIC of Jones magazine and the rapper Plies, among other guests. She has a hi-larious segment with Plies, from Florida, and the second segment featured Ferguson. Check out Ferguson’s fierce shoes. I can’t wait for the Fall issue of Jones to hit newsstands! In the meantime,  here is the video.

Time for the Tiffany Registry!

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I don’t know if Zoe Saldana, the cute blue chick from Avatar, and the young Nytoya Uhura from the latest Star Trek, is a fan of Tiffany’s signature robin’s egg blue, but well wishers might soon be sending her boxes from that store. She recently got engaged to Keith Britton, her boyfriend of 10 years, who is CEO of My Fashion Database. Apparently, Ms. Saldana, who, by the way, is a fellow ‘Jersey girl’ like yours truly, is very low key about her personal life. But in this appropriately concise piece about her news, she did speak frankly—as women from the Garden State are known to do—about how they’ve functioned as a couple for so long.

Whew! By Hollywood standards, they’ve already lasted longer than most marriages. If they can keep a courtship going that long through their 20s, and under the glare of super superficial Hollywood, let’s hope it’s a sign that their marriage will have the same exceptional staying power.

Many, many best wishes to them.

Minority Within a Minority

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Bloggers like me have been discussing interracial marriage for years now. What happens inside the relationships, and we attempt to explain why. One trend that we’ve all observed has now been expressed in hard numbers by the Pew Research Center, a respected think tank. Several weeks ago the group published a study that found the rate of interracial marriage had spiked in the United States in 2008. In that year, 14.6% of new marriages were between members of different races or ethnic groups—double the rate in 1980, and more than six times the rate in 1960. You can see the executive summary here, as well as download a copy of the PDF.

Pew also zeroed in one something we’ve been saying for years, that for whatever reason, black women are far less likely to date outside their race than black men, and that Asians don’t have the same hang-ups and peeves that we seem to have about interracial dating.

• Gender patterns in intermarriage vary widely. Some 22% of all black male newlyweds in 2008 married outside their race, compared with just 9% of black female newlyweds. Among Asians, the gender pattern runs the other way. Some 40% of Asian female newlyweds married outside their race in 2008, compared with just 20% of Asian male newlyweds. Among whites and Hispanics, by contrast, there are no gender differences in intermarriage rates.

I read this part to Hubby, and joked that we were real freaks. There are very low rates of intermarriage among black women and white men. How in the world did we pull it off? He just chuckled and quickly dove back into serious paying work. So I went back to reading, quietly, some of its other interesting findings:

• Among all newlyweds in 2008, 9% of whites, 16% of blacks, 26% of Hispanics and 31% of Asians married someone whose race or ethnicity was different from their own.
•  There is a strong regional pattern to intermarriage. Among all new marriages in 2008, 22% in the West were interracial or interethnic, compared with 13% in both the South and Northeast and 11% in the Midwest.
•  Most Americans say they approve of racial or ethnic intermarriage — not just in the abstract, but also in their own families. More than six-in-ten say it “would be fine” with them if a family member told them they were going to marry someone from any of three major race/ethnic groups other than their own.
•  More than a third of adults (35%) say they have a family member who is married to someone of a different race. Blacks say this at higher rates than do whites; younger adults at higher rates than older adults; and Westerners at higher rates than people living in other regions of the country.

I hope the study suggests this country is becoming more comfortable talking about and dealing with race, and that we can all maintain our racial and cultural richness, while treating each other with respect. Feel free to talk about what you think the study means; I’d like to hear what you think. Please, just be respectful. This is a family program!

Am I His Type?

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Before I met Hubby, I thought I knew what sort of black woman a white guy would date. She would have light skin, straight hair or wavy hair, and an educational, professional or social background in common with him. This post by blogger Julian Abagond caught my eye a while ago, and I’ve just gotten around to putting down my thoughts on this. For the most part, I agree with Abagond’s observations about the type of black woman that would attract a white guy’s attention. But I want to push his theories beyond ideas based on surface beauty.
A woman’s bearings go a long way in determining the kind of guy she will attract, and it is especially true of black women. Since whites are far less likely than any other group to date outside their race, I think it’s fair to say, allowing for exceptions, that white guys are going to go for someone who fits a certain mold. She has her head on straight, might have as much education as he does, plays a big role in her family and community, and is the no-nonsense type who doesn’t play a lot of games. That’s not to say she isn’t fun. In fact, they probably do share a lot of the same interests, making it really easy for them to have good times and be at ease around each other. On his side, I think persistence helps, because a lot of black women just don’t know when a guy outside her race is hitting on her, and even if they do, they don’t respond readily. Maybe Gen Y and children of the millennium are more open to dating outside their race and behave differently, but sisters in their 30s and up seem to give the white guys a tougher time. This seems to be true of all the interracially married black women I know, and I see hints of the same among those I see from afar.

I like the picture he chose to illustrate his point, too. There a sister sits, absorbed in a book, while the guy, presumably her boyfriend, has his arm around her and is glancing in the opposite direction. Or maybe he’s a paramour peeved that she won’t pay him any mind and is about to quit trying to ask her out.

As for me, I never considered dating anyone outside my race. Actually, a relationship was the last thing on my mind when I was in my early 20s, because I was trying to manage a new job at a daily newspaper, and a taxing church life. I also come from a large, clannish and pious family that was heavily involved in church life. The pressures from one compounded expectations from the other. I was too busy trying to make everyone at home, church and work happy, much less think about what I wanted, so I never would have sought out white guys even if I had the time and energy to see anyone. But I seemed to attract them. One guy in particular had a really hard time getting my attention, because none of his flirtations registered with me at all. For months, none of his compliments, hints, etc., penetrated that thick fog of duty and obligation over my head. In retrospect, I feel a little bad. He was (and probably still is) tall, handsome, charming, a talented musician, he had principles I liked and was funny. He was also someone I thought could have his pick of women any place, any time, so I didn’t get why he was trying to talk to me.
Maybe he liked the fact that I was quieter, slimmer, was reasonably friendly and didn’t give him a brush-off worthy of a brutally honest sister from Brooklyn, Detroit or Chicago’s south side. Who knows? I don’t know for sure if we would have gone the distance. No one ever knows those things.  But had we dated, we would have had a great time and if we had broken up, would have separated on good terms. That’s how much basic respect we had for each other as people.

Interracial Breakups

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I am never surprised when celebrity couples announce breakups. Marriage is hard enough on ordinary people like me, and I can imagine that the pressures are magnified 10 times when you’re dealing with two people in an ego-driven, beauty-obsessed industry like entertainment. Being an actor is a demanding way to earn a living, between all the networking, schmoozing, rumor-mongering, long days at shoots and filming in locations far away from home. That is a set of circumstances I would hate to have to deal with.

All that took the sting out of hearing about the breakups of two MAJOR celebrity couples featured on this blog: Halle Berry & Gabriel Aubrey and Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon & Mike Nilon. I’m not sure why the Berry/Aubrey relationship fell apart, but in the Beauvais-Nilon case, the husband was accused of carrying on a four-year affair!

Without being patronizing, I sympathize with Halle and Garcelle in all this (sorry, unless these women have been caught severely hurting their children, the sisters have my steadfast backing). Assuming that they are reasonable and stable people, it just reinforces the message that all black women everywhere will have to spend a significant part of their adult lives single, and not by choice. If stunning, accomplished beauties like them can’t find the simple happiness of a loving, devoted husband or mate, it makes me feel like true, grown up love between men and women is unattainable. But then I think: Hey, take it easy. Their problem was that they hooked up with guys, and as any woman who has been in a marriage or long relationship with a guy will tell you, those creatures are hard to love at times. Men have a shocking capacity to be immature, callous, insecure, moody and cruel. There have been times when I’ve complained to my friends or what have you about Hubby’s behavior, and some of the women who have been married a lot longer than me offer the same advice: You have to suck it up and tolerate it. Judging by the behavior I’ve witnessed, relationships are often sustained by a woman’s sheer ability to tap into her willpower and tolerate a lot of male nonsense and weakness.

Of course, the one guy out there who reads this will be insulted. So let me try to be balanced here. Sometimes, women are the flaky ones who drag down a relationship. Spend inordinate amounts of money. Gossip too much. Leave him to do too much heavy lifting in everyday duties. In either case, it’s a very depleting way to live, and as heartbreaking as it might be to separate, breaking up is sometimes the healthier thing to do.

This is why I do not actively encourage black women to date or marry outside their race, and certainly not as an alternative to black men. Marriage and long-term relationships are serious business, and people should not get into them for the wrong reasons.  If a black woman is open to a relationship and can find a more than reasonable level of happiness with a guy outside her race, I think that’s wonderful. But black women should never, ever date across color lines thinking that white, Asian or Hispanic guys are less of a headache. It may be “rough out there” for a single woman, as the husband of one of my friends once said, but it is definitely better to be single than put up some guy’s incorrigible nonsense.  And I heartily disagree with the sentiment behind Luther Vandross’ smooth ballad “I’d Rather.”

If Mike Nilon cheated on his wife while she was pregnant with their twins, he’s scum. I don’t know what Gabriel Aubry’s story is, but I’m glad that in that case, I’m not hearing a lot of mud slinging. In fact, he released a statement that sounded promising for a dignified, amicable split:

“While I will not comment on all of the wild inaccuracies being speculated about in the media, I am sad to say that Halle and I have decided together to separate at this time.   “She is, and will forever be one of the most special and beautiful people that I have ever known, and I am certain that we will continue to have only love and respect for one another.”   “We have been blessed with the most amazing daughter in the world, and her happiness and well-being are the most important thing for both of us. Please respect our privacy during this very difficult time.”

I’m not sure what’s going to happen in these two cases, but both couples have kids. As famous parents, I hope that Halle and Garcelle handle this painful episode without leaving a scandalous trail of public insults for their children to find later on.

New Spring Dos

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Baby and I both got new hair styles last weekend. I got a simple touch up of a perm that had significant thick new growth, and I took Baby to a children’s hair salon to cut her hair.

Yes, I finally gave in. I simply didn’t want to see anymore patchiness along the sides of Baby’s hair or in the front. So, in the interest of giving her locks a fresh start to even out, I took her in to hare everything cut off.

The salon where I took Baby occupies a converted first floor of a brownstone on Halsey Street in downtown Newark, cheerfully decorated in vibrant primary colors, where two owners braid, cut, ponytail and do just about anything else mothers want for their daughters (and sons). There are two styling stations and a couple of dryers. Too cute. About a third of the floor space is dedicated to retail, where they sell colorful tutus, sportswear, accessories and other adorable finds for little kids.

After settling Baby into one of the two styling chairs and snapping on her apron, I expected the hair dresser to use clippers. I didn’t know if I wanted her hair shaved all off all the way down to her scalp, but I thought clippers would have been able to handle Baby’s four inches. But the hairdresser slid her fingers through Baby’s downy, fine hair and said: “I’m not putting clippers into this baby’s hair. It’s going to totally change the texture.” Her co-owner agreed, and predicted that were clippers to be used in Baby’s hair, her new growth would be a challenge to manage. She kidded that I would rush back in after a few weeks holding Baby and say: “Do something with this hair!”

So we decided to just go with shears. Baby handled the process a lot more calmly than I imagined she would. One of the salon owners daughters offered Baby a Spider Man board book. Baby turned through the pages, but started to become unnerved. Then the little girl fetched a pink teddy bear, which she had created at Build-A-Bear workshop. Smiling, Baby accepted and hugged the little ambassador. Before long, however, Baby started whimpering and trying to climb up on me. I managed to get her to hang in there until at last, her new haircut was done.

I think she looks adorable, and her short curly afro (with the slight ducktail in back) complements her perfectly round head, plump cheeks and long eyelashes. I understand where other women are coming from when they decline to cut their daughter’s hair, or gave me plenty of alternatives to this route. But Hubby and I thought Baby’s hair started to look lopsided, and felt that her scalp needed a breather, a time out.

After this, Hubby and I will probably part ways when it comes to managing Baby’s hair. I don’t know if I’ll ever cut her hair again this drastically. I don’t want strangers mistaking her for a boy, classmates at nursery school or beyond taunting her or Baby herself to feel like a cherished possession was taken away from her. Little girls tend to love their hair, and this is something that I have to constantly remind Hubby about. He thinks hair styling is frivolous. I showed him the Beads, Braids & Beyond Web site, expecting him to marvel at all those creative hairdos, and he recoiled. He said making a little kid sit still for all that styling was torture. I told him to get a grip on reality and understand that even if sitting still is a pain, a LOT of little girls enjoy getting their hair all done up, and like the results. He just huffed and puffed and shook his head, calling it stupid. And I just told him to can it, and that little girls are not middle-aged curmudgeons who don’t care about their hair. They want to look nice, and as long as they’re not obsessed, there is nothing wrong with it. And I told him to stop being so hysterical and calling black hair styles “torture.” Really!

Well, he’s in for a rough time, because Baby is an adorable little girl. She is also young enough that we can reasonably expect her hair to thicken up to a texture much closer to my densely cropped mane than his. It’s not hard to imagine that she will attract lots of offers to get her hair braided, curled, pony tailed and whatnot to play up her pretty face. Besides, after I buy her those colorful tutus, it just follows that she’ll need to rock a cute ‘do to go with it!

Cribs Beautiful

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If I had loads of time (and money) at my disposal, I would throw myself into decorating our house. The place is “massive,” to quote a relative who visited; “huge” according to a friend of mine, who herself has “House Beautiful” going on; and a “mansion,” if you believe the youngsters.

We’ve lived here for about six years now, and the place is not as elegant or pulled together as I’d like it to be. We’re still using bookshelves from our singleton apartments in the library, we have no drapes anywhere on the first floor, and the home office is beginning to look drab. We haven’t even touched the TV room and library, which are places where we’ve entertained guests, even overnight. I longingly page through issues of Veranda and House Beautiful magazines, hoping to find a family-friendly look that I can replicate on a modest budget.

So that’s why “Urban Livin’,” another show on Centric TV, caught my attention. I’ve watched two episodes online so far, paying particular attention to the one where Bailey redecorated a spacious library/living room, buying sofas, wing chairs and accent pieces for less than $2,500. I’m taking notes!

For the Latte Cafe, I like the episode about a Haitian woman and white man who wanted to infuse more of the wife’s personality into their home decor. That place needed it, with all of the husband’s family heirlooms that were … a little … drab. But ooh, honey! Ms. Bailey pulled off a miraculous transformation, and made that place multicultural, vibrant and elegant. Check it out here.

Before I go, I want to know why there are no home decorating magazines for black women. I like Ms. Bailey’s show, and regularly check B. Smith’s Web site to see what sorts of home decorating ventures she’s come up with. Is the competition in that segment of the magazine market too fierce? When it comes to buying furniture, are black women not a distinct enough group to support their own glossy periodical or sustain a furniture line? The ad revenue environment for print is brutal right now, so launching and sustaining a profitable magazine like that might be really tough. But I have to say that while I love Veranda and the rest, I use my time to seek out designers who incorporate interesting colors and fabrics into their creations. I don’t see any reason I can’t have animal or exotic plant motifs on an elegant area rug to anchor a room.