Who wants to spend their life being the girl by the pool? Recently I’ve ran across so many men who get offended by the fact that I’m going somewhere in my life. They refer to me as an “independent black women”, yet I don’t even work full time and make my own money. I still live with my parents and go to school full time, but that is still “too progressive” in their eyes. I do admit, I am a freelance writer and I run my own multimedia business, but in family that is normal.
What surprises me, is that it is okay for these men to be working on their masters and Phd’s, working full time, and have a complex schedule. Yet, if I mention that I’m busy writing and working on some internship prospects, they tell me I have way too much going on in my life. It’s such a double standard! A lot of men say they want these strong independent women that have their own, yet they get turned off by my broad intellectual interests and my list of accomplishments that aren’t typical for a 19 year old woman.
Let’s talk about the girl by the pool. Who is she? This entire concept that a woman waits around the pool all day for some baller to come home, it absolutely absurd. This image is quite unrealistic and leads to destructive patterns in male and female relationships. This ideology of women being sex objects is seen in all genres of music, but especially in the realm of hip-hop. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a mainstream music video, without some gorgeous sex pistol woman in some tiny swimsuit, lounging around some average looking rapper. Seriously, Rick Ross doesn’t get those girls and Lil Wayne isn’t the next GQ model.
Don’t get me wrong, these women are beautiful and even sexy by the standards of commercial beauty. However, the image these women portray isn’t the reality of the everyday woman. The average black woman is most likely a single mother or a young college student trying to make a name for herself in society using her intellect and corporate skills, not bedroom skills.
I don’t aim to blame the men of hip-hop for women’s portrayal, but I do attribute the blame to the men and women. Nobody is holding a gun to those women’s head and forcing them to strip down and catch the title of the next “video vixen”. I’m not one of those feminist that is going to sit here all day and argue about the degradation of women. I don’t hate on the young women in the music videos and King magazine, that are famous for their looks. I could honestly care less, do what you have to do to make a living.
The problem I have, is when this stereotype is pinned on me and men get offended that I won’t bow down to these cliché images. That’s when I have to step up and voice my opinion. These men tell me I’m sexy, I have a nice ass, nice breasts, sexy full lips, and I’m simply beautiful. They tell me all the things that a young woman would want to hear, but they get offended by the fact I have so much going for my life and I’m opting to be a intellectual connoisseur.
They tell me I intimidate them, which is one of the major reasons why I’ve been single for three years. Nothing serious, just dating, and usually after the second date, I never hear from them again. I’ve tried a different approach before, just to see how men would react to me. I’ve gone out on dates with guys and pretended to have nothing going on in my life, no clarity of my career direction, and I’ve been very sexually aggressive. How’d that turn out? These men became smitten with me and wanted to pursue me for a relationship and of course the occasional booty call. But, usually after a good two weeks of playing the charade, I begin to open up more and allow them to experience the real intellectual and artsy me.
That doesn’t go to well. At that point, they become immediately turned off by my fascination with the arts, science, and my appreciation of history and a broad range of international music. I stopped testing out my theory, because it’s a sad commentary on the appreciation of intellectual worth in our generation. But, the good news is due to my background and how my parent’s raised me…I’m not going to stop being me.
I’m always on my grind, trying to think of innovative ways to achieve my goals. I’m an avant-garde woman, with dreams that can’t be construed by idiotic rejection. I’m not that girl by the pool, I’m probably the one you’ll find in the library, or the one sitting with my laptop at Starbucks, or that girl with the skinny jeans and bohemian top, sitting in the middle of the theatre enjoying a play. I’m that eccentric girl, the one who lives off the arts and dares to be different. If your looking for the girl by the pool, it isn’t me. I haven’t gone swimming since 6th grade.
©Jasmine McGee
ThinkSoul25
