Face Time

In the days before children, I used to design pages and direct photo shoots for the beauty department of a popular African American women's magazine. It was exciting, even though I didn't fully appreciate it at the time (at the end of the day, work really is just that - work). But every week we'd be gussying up somebody (sometimes famous, sometimes not) to appear in the pages of the mag. I've got enough stories about those days to write a bestseller. At the very least, a bad, self-published novel.

First there was the beauty closet (think The Devil Wear's Prada or Ugly Betty's fashion closet, brimming with makeup instead of clothes) that editors and art directors had permission to raid on a regular basis. Hot date? Beauty closet. Bad hair day? Beauty closet. Hating your boss today? Better get your behind to that beauty closet. There was nothing that place couldn't fix. Mind you, I wasn't much more than a lipgloss girl before the job started, but it quickly became addictive.

Sometimes, after shoots, we'd end up having dinner with Roshumba(very sweet) or Tyra Banks (not so much). I only say the latter in regards to the look of disgust on her face as I was telling the table about a special vacation I'd just returned from. It was a look that said "You went to the Carribbean of all places...for your Honeymoon?!". But it figures, Tyra's been all over the globe to all kinds of tropical locations. She probably went to Bora Bora or something for her own honeym- oh wait, never mind. But some celebs were nice, like Beyonce. I'll never forget the surreal moment that the dreamgirl, 19 at the time, politely offered that she liked my hair color but thought I should "go lighter". Not that I asked, but thanks, girl!

Manicured hands down, the best part about that job was not unsolicited advice of starlets, but the free beauty advice from their personal makeup artists. Jay Manuel (you may know him from ANTM, but he was a freelance makeup artist at the time) informed me that bronzer should "look as if it kissed you where the sun hits your face". I once hit up
Oscar James for some L.A.-based hairstylist's cell phone numbers (not that I could afford any of them). And Sam Foine, I mean, Fine, plucked my brows for my wedding (only after admonishing me for overplucking in the first place).

My how things change. I miss those days of fabulousity. This business of stay-at-home motherhood may very well be the most rewarding job on earth, but it's by far the least glamourous. Thank God for Modern Mom. Their latest beauty advice from pro-makeup artist, Ashaunta Sheriff, offers the latest scoop on how moms like me can create a fabulous, everyday, make up look in a flash. Their video step-by-step how-to is simply genius. Not that I think that word should be used in reference to clothes or make-up, but still. Thanks to this cool site, former working girls like me who have recently dedicated their entire lives to wiping noses and picking Cheerios up off the floor can stay fly.

Of course there's nothing wrong with wiping noses for a living, but it can't hurt to look cute while doing it.

A Whole New World

“That’s it Mommy, I want that one!” My three-year-old flung her arm towards a wall of shiny, sherbet-colored princess costumes.

“I thought you wanted to be a duck.”

“I changed my mind. I wanna be Cinderella for Halloween. See it, Mommy? Right there!”

I tried not to notice the crinkly, powder blue costume creeping slowly into my peripheral vision. “Um, how about a ladybug?”

“No, Mommy. Cinderella!”

Of course that’s who she wanted to be for Halloween. After all, the blue-eyed, bouffant-wearing princess was the it-girl of Four-year-old World. I knew that J-Jo was more interested in playing dress-up and looking "pretty" than actually looking white, but I still had my reservations about endorsing it. I was never that crazy about the Disney Cinderella with all of her whining and pining for Mr. Right; I’m not raising my daughters to wait for some guy on a white horse to gallop in and whisk them off to Wisteria Lane. I want my girls to aspire to become much more than daydreaming debutantes in ball gowns. The last thing I need is some cartoon character contradicting me.

And then there was that other part. As an African American mom, I resented the fact that for so many years, Disney had never bothered to create a black princess.

American Indians had Pocahontas and Asian Americans had Mulan (both sort of underrated, but at least they were there). And of course there’s Jasmine, who always seemed like she’d only been created to keep other minorities from getting mad. Clearly somebody at the mega-corporation knew that white people weren’t the only ones with Orlando timeshares, or they wouldn’t have created the few princesses of color they had. So where the heck was Princess Imani? Black families like Epcot, too. I wanted a princess I could, I mean, my girls could relate to. Several more seasoned moms had mentioned that the princess fetish is just a phase, but if I was destined to spend the next six years or so getting dragged into the princess aisle at Target (or even worse, the Disney Store) I needed more incentive to be there.

No one could convince me that plunking $19.99 on the counter for that costume would be anything more than a deposit on my daughter's future therapy sessions. I couldn’t stomach the thought of letting my beige-skinned daughter dress up as the archetypical porcelain-skinned princess for Halloween. At the same time, I wasn’t ready to tell J-Jo why she couldn’t make her own decision about what to be for Halloween. So I stood there for a few minutes, staring at the wall of flammable frocks. And then I caved. There’d be plenty of time to talk about the difference between real love and fairy tale romance later, right? And we could discuss race forever, considering we’ll be black all of our lives. But at that time she was three years old. She’d only be three once.

So much of parenting is about picking battles; this time I'd chosen to surrender. I gingerly placed the costume in my red cart and wheeled it towards the check out line. J-Jo just sat there beaming at me; her smile could have upstaged the sun. When Halloween rolled around, I removed the cheesy, plastic cameo (with Cinderella’s face on it just in case it wasn’t obvious) from the front and sent J-Jo off with daddy in search of strangers with candy. I tried to focus on the joy on her face when we bought that costume, instead of my resentment at the company that inspired it. Then I sat on there the couch nursing our two-month-old twins, fantasizing about a day when little girls like my own would know a princess character who wasn’t based on a Eurocentric beauty standard.

And then she arrived, Disney's very first animated BAP.

The ninth member of the $3 Billion Princess A-List is Maddy, heroine of “The Frog Princess”. The 2-D animated film is an original story set in 1920’s New Orleans. In 2009, Princess Maddy will join the likes of Jasmine, Mulan and, yes, Cinderella. She’ll be given the royal treatment, with her very own rides at Disney World and dress up clothes to match. Rumor has it that Alicia Keys, Dreamgirls’ costars Jennifer Hudson and Anika Noni Rose are all vying for the lead role. Keys reportedly called the producers and begged for the part herself (sources say she’s received a second audition). One might scoff at the persistence of these starlets, fighting over a part like it was a sale rack at Filene’s Basement. True, the role itself is little more than a glamorized voice-over, but to anyone who grew up too black to be Snow White, the prospect of a black Disney Princess speaks volumes.

Disney has dubbed “The Frog Princess” “An American Fairy Tale”, so hopefully girls of all ethnicities will be able to identify with its heroine…at least for a little while. As I write this, J-Jo’s Cinderella Halloween costume is crumpled in ball at the bottom of her closet; the princess phase has run its course. Yet I know that Cinderella won’t be the last Disney diva to join us at the dinner table. In no time, J-Jo’s baby sister Coco will want princess get-ups of her own. And princess sippy cups, princess pajamas and whatever else that dreaded Disney store has in stock. Not that I’ll always buy into it. I’m just thrilled that by the time she asks, there’ll be another choice: An African American Disney Princess, with her very own happily ever after.

Imagine that.

Another Reason to Watch Noggin

Be sure to check out Cedric the Entertainer on Noggin, where starting today, he'll be promoting the network's Get Ready to Read campaign for the month of March. The proud papa will be alongside Moose A. Moose (aka in this house as "J-Jo's Ex" - long story), reading the Aesop fable The Tortoise and the Hair. Also spreading the magic of literacy is Isaiah Washington (am I slightly surprised they kept the brother on board?).

Of course the skeptic in me could get annoyed that they asked two black men to talk about the importance of not being illiterate, as opposed to two white or two Asian men. But I'm going to go ahead and give the network the bene of the doubt. As long as nobody breaks down crying and says they used to sign their name with an X, it's all good (besides, the illiterate black celebrity story is like, so two years ago (no offense, Fantasia).

Those network execs may not know of Gustavas Vassa, but my people been known how to read. Since before the end of slavery. Shoot...

Skepticsm aside, it's a good cause. And it's so nice to see the brothers appearing this month, instead of last, when I would have just called it Black History Month Tokenism. Instead, the station showed interstitials featuring Mae Jemison and George Washington Carver at regular intervals.

Mad props to Noggin for trying to represent.

Oh Rats

Maybe the theme song to the movie Ben was the first clue that Michael Jackson was kinda off. Sure, he had his old nose back then, but that doesn't mean he was right in the head.

Ben, most people would turn you away
I don't listen to a word they say
They don't see you as I do
I wish they would try to
I'm sure they'd think again
If they had a friend like Ben.

Now I'm not sure what they are, but I'm there's someone else out there, other than the King of Pop, who can list the attributes of rats. But as a former resident of New York City, I got no love for them at all. The first time I witnessed a rat was while I was waiting for the D train. From the platform - and not far away enough I must add - I saw that filthy animal scurry down those tracks as if it knew exactly where it was going. Bold. Unashamed. Unafraid of being seen or even worse - exterminated.

New to the city and the product of a suburban upbringing, I just couldn't understand how the critter was down there and nobody was doing anything. There had to have been at least twelve perfectly civilized human beings with me on the platform. They all saw the guy - so why wasn't anybody saying anything? Why were they just looking at their watches, talking to eachother or on their cell phones, and reading the New York Times? I was mortified.

And then, a few nights later, it happened again.

And again.

And again.

I soon realized that New York City was a rodent's world. The rest of us just happened to live there. My boyfriend at the time was completely unphased at my dramatic stories about all of the rats I'd seen. He'd lived there for several years before I had, and, like many Manhattanites, had accepted this sort of co-habitation that had been imposed on him. As far as he was concerned, if they hadn't found a way into his apartment, he wasn't worried about them. Why worry if they're everywhere? I was unimpressed by his cool, detatched, demeanor about it but eventually married him anyway.

Years later, he told me that the rats disgusted him too, but he'd come to accept it as a part of city life. Today, there's an unspoken ban on all things rodent-related in this house. Of all the random stuffed animals that somehow find homes here, plush rats (mice, too) will always find a way to the salvation Army before J-Jo can say cheese. You will never see any of these kids dressed as any type of rodent for Halloween. Even Minnie is still a mouse.

New Yorkers have come to accept the fact that the island of Manhattan is infested with them, but will there ever be a point that something gets done about it? The recent Greenwich Village Taco Bell that was swarming with rats last week should prompt more people to take a stand. They were playing and climbing on high chairs in there - another reason parents might want to work harder at saying no to fast food in general. You can't tell me there's never been a rat sniffing around a happy meal toy.

Last month's heartbreaking story about an infant being suffocated by his mother as she tried to protect him from rats in their vermin infested Bronx apartment (as the landlord was chilling in his Trump Tower digs) should serve as a reminder of how serious this problem really is.

Ben will never be my friend.

Fitty's $.02

Okay, I think I'm missing something here. When did Fifty Cent become a cultural critic? First, he publicly disses Oprah. Now he's weighing in on Britney's bald head.

Is it just me, or do Fifty and Ne-Yo have a markedly different attitude in this news clip about her cutting her hair off than the first dude? I'm sure all three were thinking "Why are you asking me about this?". But Fifty's reaction was almost emotional: "Why she do that?!?"

Granted, it's not a look for everybody...but why are so many brothers soooo opinionated about hair?

And why does America care so much about Britney's lack thereof?

Baby it's Cold Outside

Okay. I'll be the first to complain about global warming, but I sure would appreciate some right now. Just for a little bit. Only long enough to take the edge off the days when it's way too cold to take those babies outside. And the days when it's just cold enough that packing them into their snowsuits, et al. just doesn't seem worth it.

So before I give you the detailed local forecast, let me give a big shout out to the dude to the right. Lord knows our genes weren't made for this:

Today: Cloudy. Snow flurries or snow showers developing. High 31F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of snow 70%. Snow accumulations less than one inch.

Tonight: Snow likely. Low 14F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of snow 80%. 1 to 2 inches of snow expected.

I know, I know, 1-2" ain't nothing (I can already hear you, Chi-town people...). But I refrained from giving you the rest of this detailed forecast – which I know you were sooo curious about – because it will NOT get warmer by the weekend. It's supposed to get worse. As in colder. With more snow.

Some black people – other than the Jamaican Bobsledders – actually like the cold. Remember Vonetta Flowers? I've heard through the grapevine that good old Al Roker owns a house near my sub-zero neck of the woods...and I saw Cassandra Wilson at the supermarket one time. I don't say this to name drop, but to state the fact that yes, there are African Americans who don't mind chilling out in chilly climates. The thing that seperates folks like Roker and Wilson, from say, myself for example, is that they're too wealthy to willfully freeze their behinds off. Surely, they own several homes in Manhattan, Paris, wherever and can get up on outta here when the temperature dips too low. Must be nice. *sigh*

Anybody have some new ideas about what to do when it's cold outside with two rambunctious eighteen-month-olds who have grown bored with their toys and still think Crayolas are something to eat?

Things A Girl Can Only Tell Her Best Friend...When She's Five

OWD (Overheard While Driving):

J-Jo: Do you like your boots that way?

Friend: Do I what?

J-Jo: Do you like that they're brown?*

Friend: Yeah, I like them.

J-Jo: Oh. (silence) I like the flashy butterflies on them.

Friend: Thanks.

J-Jo: Even though they're brown.

* To this day, I've only been able to get J-Jo to wear one brown pair of shoes. And that's only because the boots have these little, metal, heart-shaped charms dangling from them. The girl loves shoes as much as the next sister, but they must be flamboyant. The more bells and whistles the better. I've been known to blink back tears of frustration in the kids shoe aisle at Target as J-Jo extols the virtues of hot pink Barbie sneakers with blinking lights and sparkly laces. What's wrong with plain mary jane? I just pray she keeps the habit in check: I suppose I could tolerate a wannabee Nia Long, who recently admitted to the shoe hoarding sickness...but please Lord, please don't let me raise a junior Star Jones.

I can already picture her begging me to take her to DSW. Not that there's anything wrong with that...

Oprah Unplugged

To the 152 students of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, the talk show queen is far more than a cultural icon. She's the beacon of hope that apartheid surpressed. A post-modern Harriet Tubman – with money, power and a mani-pedi.

But fans and foes alike are questioning the media maven's motivations for building the exclusive, $40 million school in Henley-on-Klip, South Africa...instead of someplace like the South Bronx. Seemed like the whole world loved Oprah – swore she was their homegirl – 'til she sent out party invitations and their names weren't on the list.

But Winfrey had her reasons, which she matter-of-factly revealed in Newsweek:

“I became so frustrated with visiting inner-city schools that I just stopped going. The sense that you need to learn just isn’t there,” she says. “If you ask the kids what they want or need, they will say an iPod or some sneakers. In South Africa, they don’t ask for money or toys. They ask for uniforms so they can go to school.”

Uh oh. It seems that the same folks who cringe when Bill Cosby opens his mouth now have a new neck bone to pick with somebody. They took the blunt comment as an indictment of urban black youth (when "inner-city" became synonymous with only black youth, I'm unsure). They took serious issue with Oprah airing our dirty laundry, 200 thread count bedsheets and all. It's not that they entirely disagreed with her, they just didn't like that she said it. They felt she was selling us out. For building a school on the continent that happens to be our ancestral home.

Oprah might have her qualms with hip hop and the materialism it condones, but she's never turned her back on Black America. The millions she's contributed to historically Black colleges, taking the initiative to build homes for victims of Hurricane Katrina and the numerous other causes she's donated to – both publicly and privately – should confirm that.

I don't think Oprah's candid statement should have come as a shock to most. It's no big secret that she's one of the few examples – arguably the best example – of African Americans who overcame poverty to find unparalled success within America. She believes that despite its many flaws, the U.S. education system does its job. In South Africa, a nation still suffering from stark contrast in equality, only 5% of Johannesburg's public high school students finish school proficient enough to college. Most South African shantytowns lack electricity or running water while many people in our projects get BET. Just a couple of good reasons to think twice about asking Oprah for an ipod.

Perhaps she could have phrased things differently, but I'm glad Oprah was honest. The fact still remains that in this country – even in the most troubled urban school – there is a guidance counselor beyond those graffitti-covered walls who gets paid to help a kid see their potential. Of course it takes a village, but we don't need a hook up from Oprah to make it happen. Not as much as others might. Surprise! Turns out it's really not all about us.

Hopefully, Oprah's perspective will challenge American students to prove her wrong. What a beautiful thing that would be, if the opening of a school in South Africa inspired kids from the South Bronx to the South Side of Chicago and beyond to know as much about Marian Anderson as they do about Mary J. Blige.

That, too, will be something to celebrate.

Daddy Diddy's Birth Announcement

As a follow up to the bling bling baby shower, Diddy made a video to announce the December 21 birth of his twin girls to his 665,267 "friends"on his myspace page, where he defines himself as a "Princess Maker".

Over background vocals of Cheryl Pepsii Riley, Diddy expains that he flew in for the birth from a film shoot and how he and girlfriend, Kim, honored their grandmothers by creating variations of their names. The video is complete with Hooked on Phonics style graphics so that nobody trips up and misspells them. Would I be wrong to predict that the old fashioned baby naming trend might go ghetto fabulous in 2007?

Congrats, Diddy! And thanks for sparing us the shot of your entire entourage nodding their heads and sipping champagne around the birthing tub. No, really. Thank you.

Paul Mooney Says Michael Richards Should Go to Africa and Adopt a Black Baby

I've always loved this guy. Mr. J considers the man a comedic genius. If we knew him, he'd have a standing invitation to dinner at our house.

Double Their Blessing, Double Their Bling

Straight from the hairdresser's mouth: P. Diddy and his girlfriend, Kim Porter, celebrated their forthcoming twin girls at a fabulous Manhattan baby shower on November 19th. The happily unmarried couple recently had a frank discussion with writer Jeanine Amber, going public with their epic love story for the December issue of Essence.

I have to admit, as an African American mama of multiples, I always feel a sense of connectedness when I hear that a black woman is expecting twins. Maybe it's my conspiracy theory that we share an ancestral homeland called Igbo-Ora in Nigeria, a small town whose Yoruba people historically had an exorbitant number of twin births. I also wonder if there actually is some real correlation between our people conceiving twins, a fondness for sweet potato pie and a documented link between twin pregnancies and yams. And when the multiple-mother-to-be is a celebrity (a la Porter, Mo'nique or Holly Robinson Peete), I instantly feel like a member of a special sisterhood, taking comfort in the fact that no matter how copious their respective cash flows might be, these sisters were just as likely to experience all the same twin pregnancy symptoms as a regular girl like me.



But that's about as far as my "common-denominator" theory can go – I know full well that Ms. Porter's babies' daddy wouldn't dream of walking up to a kiosk and registering at Tarzhay. In true Bad Boy fashion, the A-List guests enjoyed Perrier Jouet champagne in pink floral bottles. A glowing Kim and proud daddy Diddy – who also have a son together – enjoyed their guests while nibbling on pink M&M's and receiving lavish baby gifts including a custom-made changing table from Jay-Z, two cream-colored cribs from LL Cool J and a sweet chandelier from Denzel Washington. Kim reportedly laughed at a friend's suggestion that she register for a couple of diamond encrusted binkies, but that didn't stop the future twin mommy from putting an $88,000 R-class Mercedes Benz on her wish list. Hopefully, she wasn't too disappointed about not receiving it.

And we shouldn't be pressed either – from the way things look now, America will certainly have a chance to see the future hip hop heiresses receive their matching Mercedes Benz's on My Super Sweet Sixteen.
The doting Diddy might even own the whole network by then.

Aren't sick to your stomach yet? Go back for more at Cake and Ice Cream.