Adiba Nelson

Dark brown girls should never ever ever ever EVER wear frosty pink lipstick. EVER. I don’t give a rat’s ASS what Cosmo says - just NO.

He opened his mouth and time stood still. My pulse quickened. My heart raced. My eyes filled with tears. And I. WAS. PROUD.

It was the weirdest thing. I looked at this tiny human and felt nothing. Absolutely nothing. No overwhelming joy at finally meeting this person I’d been so excited for in months prior, no lurking sadness about no longer being pregnant and relishing in those shared “inside mommy’s belly” moments. Just... nothing. My brain said, “You have a baby now,” and that was that.

My job is to make you feel — whether it’s lust, pride, anger, guilt, joy, sadness — whatever it is you feel, I want you to feel it.

"...do you know what happens in lightly buzzed stupors? You get brave. Really brave. So, I signed up for it. In my lightly buzzed stupor I signed up for the burlesque mentorship program.

“Why would you do that? You have a daughter. Why would you put yourself in that position?”

It’s insane the number of ways people want to pigeonhole, categorize, and ultimately TEAR DOWN women. What’s even worse is that we, as women, buy into it. We run around in T-shirts that say “Real Women Do XYZ” or “Real Women ARE XYZ.” We post these memes and quotes and think they’re funny, but what are we really doing?

"I now had my seat of power, my throne, if you will. That’s why I customized my chair to look like a throne. And that’s why I liked it in my act: because I was truly in love with it and all that it represented for me. It was no longer a trap or a cage. It was freedom. It was power. It was sexy. And it was mine."

They basically gave the Oscars the middle finger.

Black women were branded as sexually promiscuous and immoral, which in turn was used as justification for sexual trauma/rape.