Consistency in Transgender and Nappy Hair Acceptance
I am on the Oprah Show e-list, which means, every morning I receive an email about her upcoming shows. The other morning, I opened my email to find the attached show announcement:
“10/12/07 FRIDAY’S SHOW: Transgender Families
Meet transgender individuals who had the courage to say “this is who I am.” Find out what happens in a family when dad becomes a woman. A discussion with the new American family Oprah wanted to meet.”
The reason why this hit me so strongly is due to recent events with my company. As many of you know, Coils & Curls just put on a most AMAZING Natural Hair Celebration! (More on that in another post.) The purpose of this event was to embrace what God gave us… nappy, kinky hair. (See where I am going with this.)
We, in the natural hair movement believe that God made NO mistake when he created us with kinky-textured hair. But after watching the Oprah show, I am left with a question: can we, in one breath say, “Yes, I agree with you, in all of the universe and in the nature on this planet, God made a mistake and you were suppose to be a different sex.” Then in the next breath say, “But God DID NOT make a mistake when it comes to something as external as your nappy hair. You don’t need to perm it and make it something its not. Embrace your natural texture!”
Now, I know that one change costs over $150,000, where as the other change can cost only $35 bucks at your local grocery store. But the core of both issues is succinct. What is the truth? Can God make a mistake on his creation?
Here’s another example: I know of a child who was born black and when she was 5, she said she wished she had been born white. Now, at 15 she says she is a white woman trapped in a black woman’s body. I immediately blamed her parents for not empowering her to be who she is; but where is the Oprah show for her? (Tyra did a show on it.) Maybe I should be looking at it differently. If nature can make a mistake in gender, why couldn’t nature make a mistake in race? If we embrace the belief for one, don’t we have to embrace it for all? My desire is to be consistent.
Now, I know this post is full of bias and you probably already know my opinion on the matter. But I want to hear your thoughts.
Talk to me.
October 22nd, 2007 at 1:07 pm
Wow, this is a good topic.
It’s simple really. Even if we embrace what God has given up, it’s still a matter of preference.
It’s not about God making a mistake, it’s about people choosing or having a preference. And choice IS something God has given us.
God didn’t make a mistake when he gave me hairy legs and armpits. But doggonit, because I prefer hairless legs and armpits, I’m going to get the hair lasered off.
As far as the white woman trapped in a black woman’s body, well (sadly) that’s a preference for being white. That can be changed, just look at Michael Jackson.
The difference between man and other species is that we have larger brains (something that’s God-given). Our larger brains enable us to come up with ways to change or modify our environments to our likings. So, if there’s a man wanting to cut off his penis because he wants to be a woman, well I consider the possibility to do so God-given.
October 22nd, 2007 at 1:29 pm
Interesting take! I just don’t know if I can see this type of change and choice as “God-given”. Well either way, its not an easy conclusion… I will keep thinking on this…
Shavonne, I smiled at your response because I thought about Michael Jackson as well with regard to race-changing! I guess everyone who takes pills to make their skin lighter is working with preference for lighter skin. But why do we encourage people to make those changes? IS it a reflection of a deficit in true acceptance of ourselves? Should we try to help people/kids to accept and appreciate who they are and what they look like? Or do we tell kids, “Because you are human, you can change EVERYTHING you don’t like for what ever reason.”
As I sit here, I’m starting to think of my body and the possibilities for change as an “à la carte”. I don’t know how healthy that will be for me in the long run. That type of thinking had me in the weave chairs getting my hair done while saving for a boob job. I just don’t know.
October 22nd, 2007 at 3:53 pm
Let me clarify. The CHOICE and the CAPABILITY to invent ways (brain power) to change are God-given.
I don’t think anybody encourages people to make those changes. I certainly would never encourage someone to take pills to lighten their skin or a man to cut of his penis. I do think that the desire to do so was so strong that someone came up with a way to make it a reality. Mind you, the path to making these changes are expensive (monetarily, mentally, physically) so eventhough there’s the capability to do so doesn’t mean everyone will be able to or want to act on it.
October 27th, 2007 at 6:47 pm
When I was a little girl, my father told me that when the world sees a beautiful thing, it immediately attempts to destroy it. Societal views are dangerous. Society takes something like the coral reefs, the ozone layer, the atmosphere, races of individuals, and try to exterminate, control and change them to its liking until they are all used up and dead. Then on to kill something or someone else. I’ll be damned if I let the world/societal views destroy my SELF. To me, it is like a psychological mind game.
November 4th, 2007 at 10:14 pm
I’ve seen so many friends & even a few vendors I work with tortured by having to make the choice to be one sex that they identified with after being born as another. The expense and emotional hurt are so great that its heartbreaking that the choice has to be made at all.
We are so diverse in our own way that causing separation by race or sex or any other label seems repressive and “back woods” now.
December 7th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
I am only now seeing your website, and then I came across this interesting topic and just have to comment. While this may sound stifling, I wholeheartedly connect with your view of God not making a mistake about who he created us to be. But I think we become so influenced by our environments and cultures until many of us don’t know who WE ourselves are. Many times we have been so programmed even until we don’t know whether what we like, think and feel are our real responses to what is happening around us or what we’ve been taught in this regard. I think that each of us was uniquely created by our Father in Heaven, each endowed with special gifts and beauty that He revels in, so that no two of us are alike. But learning what those gifts are is a life-journey. To really find that and embrace it requires having parents like Latoyia’s who help us to embrace who we are. But even more importantly, it requires us to have a relationship with the Father who made us to find out who we were created to be and what we were created for. To be honest, it is my relationship with Him that allows me to embrace my physical and emotional self just as I am, understanding that I am a work in progress, but the ‘foundation’ that He has created for me is the starting point. His Word tells me that He “fashioned” me himself, He knew me before I was in my mother’s womb… He knows the exact identity of each strand of hair on my head even, not just the exact number. This tells me that a lot of thought went into making me, and everything He chose to do in my creation was for a very specific reason. So I don’t need to have my body sculpted by surgery, my hair altered by chemicals, my body subjected to hormones and chemicals to become “the real me”. The true “letting out the real me” will be as natural as the evolution of the butterfly from the caterpillar.
When I hear about people doing this, I often wonder whether the fairy tale really happened for them after ‘the change’. I mean, look at Michael Jackson, or even the girl you mentioned who wished she’d been born white only to decide later that she was a black woman in white woman’s body. I think this just goes to illustrate the passage in the Bible which says that we see in part, but when we get to Heaven, we will see in full. Instead of us trying to change ourselves to make us more comfortable in the moment, we need to take a more patient approach of waiting to see and learning from where we are right now. Just as the caterpillar would die if removed from the cocoon too soon during its transformation, I think acting on our feelings and taking such drastic approaches to “change ourselves” can be just as life-threatening to us. And in the end, does the physical change really result in fixing the real root problem of not being happy with ourselves? It isn’t until we learn to love and embrace ourselves at our worst points and parts that we can begin to be beautiful or experience the true joy of living. I think it all boils down to we as humans, in our intelligence and will, overcomplicate things so much that are truly so simple.