Some do drugs, others go out for a run, but at the end we’re all just searching for that tiny space, perhaps a hole, that gives us shelter from the terrible reality of the world.

yes my overthinking killed my happiness but I was always right.

No one notices your sadness until it turns into anger. Then you’re a bad person.

fameone:

zcabbaj:

I fully expect this to be the one and only post I ever do about Amber Rose.

Occasionally, Amber Rose surfaces in pop-culture as a trending topic. I don’t look into her often, but when I do usually I understand where she’s coming from, if not agree with the point she’s trying to make.

Recently, Kanye West called her into a twitter-fight between himself and Wiz Khalifa–and she shut it down entirely. And as amusing as that is and no matter how much I identify with the things she said and does – there’s one thing about her that bothers me.

Amber Rose has repeatedly denied being a black woman. “Portuguese, Scottish, Italian and Irish“ or more often, “Cape Verdean.”

Yet she clearly appears to have features heavily associated with blackness: full lips, an olive complexion (relatively common in black people), a thick, very curvy body, and a large round butt. The icing on the cake: she has an African mom. She still says, “I’m not black.”

Many of the descriptors she uses for herself are nationalities that do not define her race. It’s as if stating countries which a possess white populations and/or have substantial European influence is a free pass on blackness – As if black people didn’t live in Portugal, Scotland, Ireland or Cape Verde. As if her mom didn’t wasn’t African.

But rest assured: her mother is African and she is brown-skinned.

Cape Verde, where Amber Rose’s mother is from, is an island off the coast of Western Africa. It’s an African Country. Africans have been there since the Portuguese trafficked African (black) slaves from the African continent in 1456.

And because of the heavy European influence and racial mixing in Cape Verde, they’re considered a mixed people – And According to Amber Rose, she views herself as Creole:

“With my family, they feel like they’re more superior or better than an African American because we’re Creole and we have culture and that’s something I battle with most of my life.” (source)

Amber Rose was born and raised in America. Her mother is a brown-skinned (black) African woman, she has a white father (Irish and Italian descent), and because she has light skin, she has people defending her as non-black.

“I do not consider myself a black women, absolutely not. [I consider myself] biracial.”

In the United States (and many other places), any black ancestry easily qualifies a person as black – especially if that person is not white passing and especially if that person has an African mother. Amber Rose is not white passing. Her mother is African. She openly participates in black culture. And still, she hesitates to even use the descriptor “black” in reference to herself. In every interview I’ve found and every quote, she is quick to claim her white ancestry but does not even utter “black” or “African.”

She denies it.

I think it’s wild because one of my best friends @shakotancisco is Cape Verdean. My mans is PROUD of his heritage. How can Amber Rose be of such beautiful heritage and hate herself so much to deny her own blackness? 

This is one of the reasons why I can’t ride with Amber Rose. I know a lot of my followers may take issue with this, but aside from her apparent love for her child, nearly everything else she does seems to be nothing more than her making herself feel comfortable about her own delusions and justifying her behavior in the process. To me, it seems like her anti slut-shaming and sexual liberation crusade is less about standing up for (primarily) women (but men too), is a matter of cleaning up her own public perception.

Amber Rose makes herself the “other,” or, “the exception.” It’s as if she’s saying, “I’m not really black, I’m just a perfect mixture of races,” and this further supports the fetishization of mixed women. You mentioned that her reality was that she may not see love first and that using men for her own personal gain was just what she had to do. I can see that and it makes sense. However, in her case, it seems like she revels in it, almost maliciously, until someone calls her on it and she reverts back to the anti slut-shaming argument.

Though problematic, I enjoy her clapbacks and I think she’s hilarious in her pettiness. I liked (past tense) that she was providing a voice to those who own their sexuality. I liked (also past tense) that she was making a point to create her own lane and challenge the notion that she was a ‘creation’ of Kanye West. And I really liked (yup, past tense again) that she handled herself through the nonsense and media slander with grace and dignity.

But then, she goes on to deny her blackness and it immediately makes me distrustful of her. Without her clapbacks, is she much different than Raven or Stacey Dash? Is she even worth taking seriously if she denies who she really is? Is her carefully crafted persona nothing more than armor that she wears to protect her own insecurities about her identity? I just don’t buy it. 

As a non-sex worker–I do not critique sex work which includes dancing, stripping, partial and full services.

She has sold/possibly still sells sexual fantasy/services/sexual appeal as a living – and she’s gotten a lot of money for it. If she revels in it, she has a right to. If someone is rewarded with money or items for sex acts/sexual performance/sex appeal, then that becomes a justified connection. In this entire side of the house, it’s incredibly important to note that if she does have a particularly toxic view of using men for money, it did not happen in a vacuum.

1. Women’s societal value is largely in whether or not they’re attractive. Women can literally be fired for gaining weight in America.
   
2. Both men and women who are less “conventionally attractive” tend to make less money (source)
   
3. Black women earn 63 cents to every dollar a white man makes, and they are the most educated.
   
4. “black” is literally a descriptor used to oppress people so it makes sense that some people would distance themselves from it–not to mention that this would have the additional trial of facing anti-blackness in everywhere they went.
   

You seem to be particularly upset by Amber Roses’s statement about using seductive skills on her significant others for cash, and that’s understandable. 

Is it upsetting? Yes.
Is it manipulative to seduce a man into financial gain? Also yes.
Is it morally unsettling? Sure.
Is that the nature of her work as a dancer? As it turns out, yes.
Have her former lovers complained about using them? None that I can find.

She’s problematic. No argument there. You’re free to dislike her – which I’m sure you will continue to do. But she’s not doing anything new. Her misguided attempts at feminism seems less damaging than Phylicia Rashad defending Bill Cosby. Her rejecting blackness is sadly common.

She’s deeply problematic but far from the worst.

Starting to realize the reason I find Soraya so relatable is, because I struggled with feeling like I was inherently evil due to my autism and ADHD. Her learning to accept her powers kind of parallels my struggles to accept my neurodiversity, although thankfully without a kingdom at stake. 

Sometimes I feel so insecure as shit and I think about myself and these words are coming into my mind : “fat”, “ugly”, “small piece of shit”, “worthless”, “unattractive” etc. They just appear in my mind and all I want at that very moment is to write them down on my arms or my legs. And I think about how bad I want to take my razor blades and just do it. Just to let the pain go away. Just to make these words disappear from my mind. Just to be able to fucking sleep without feeling this way.

But then I remember those words are already on my arms and/or legs. I remember I’ve already done that to myself.

And I realise I still want to do it again.

And I think that’s what hurts the most.

I thought I was doing better. Like not in a “Everything’s fine and I’m totally cured” way or anything. But for a while I felt, I don’t know, a little less bad about myself or about my life. And I remember I told myself it was good, I was making progress and I started believe maybe I could do it. But I felt down again. Harder, deeper, darker. I had another crisis, a mental breakdown. It was horrible. I almost forgot how the pain felt. When it hit me again, I broke down so damn hard I thought I was gonna die, suffocating. And it’s always like that. I think I’m doing better and then some shit happens and I keep making the same mistakes and I realize I’m still so fuckep up. It just feels like this will never end. It feels like nothing will ever change, and I will stay in this vicious circle my whole life. And God, I’m tired of this.