Sad Realization: I Will Never Be a Video Ho

Since as long as I can remember I've been singing and dancing in the mirror mimicking the pouty faces, sultry eyes and gyrating hips of pop stars and girls in the background of hip hop videos.

By 5th grade I was bossing my friends into triangular formations and barking "ka ka pop's" at them like a real adult choreographer. My parents couldn't afford the dance lessons I spent pretty much all of my childhood begging for so I had to make do with what I had, my own imagination and a stellar collection of Spice Girl CDs.

Dancing in the mirror & in front of my mom holding our video camera sufficed until I was a Freshman in high school and finally started taking lessons at a studio. 14 is practically 100 in dance years and it SHOWED. I had musicality and could pick up choreograph okay but what took me months to perfect was already written in the body memory of my classmates who had been taking lessons and doing double pirouettes since they were 6 (see Dance Moms).

On top of the fact that these girls had like 10 years of professional lessons on me they were also ALL Asian. I know that doesn't really seem like a big deal but let me tell you that you never forget the feeling of being an awkward in 5'5 limby, untoned body with Double D breasts and a oblong frizzy-kinky bun (nobody ever taught me how to make that cute with styling baby hairs and using gel to slick the frizz back) standing next to 15 5 foot tall, toned, long straight black haired, perfectly tanned beauties. NEVER. It's the same feeling I got when a (white) boy I liked told me that he wasn't into me because I wasn't Asian...NOT GOOD. Dancing with that group didn't make me feel beautiful or sexy (when a dance called for it), it just made me feel gross and not good enough.

But I loved dancing so I persisted, just like those Women's March memes covering the internet, I was so brave you guys. For 3 years I took jazz, hip-hop, and voice lessons at the same company and by my senior year could KINDA do the splits and could FINALLY do a clean double pirouette. But at that point I looked an my priorities, I weighed my options. I could go into Senior year still being a mediocre dancer/singer and spend 3 days a week at the studio with girls I didn't have anything in common with (the studio was an hour bus ride away from my house & I didn't go to school with my fellow dancers) or I could actually hang out with my friends, join the school paper I'd been dying to write features for and just chill the fuck out before I was off to my REAL life in SF.

The thing about that decision was that I knew I'd never ACTUALLY be good. And if I couldn't be really good then what was even the point? In the years between then and now I have pined for dancing and singing. I watch music videos and So You Think You Can Dance and I wish that that could be my life for just a second.

So today I decided to try out a dance video tutorial and have some fun for old times sake. Some things have changed since high school, one being that I grew into myself and started feeling WAY more beautiful and sexy. So when I chose a sexy Hip Hop number to Tinashe's Superlove I popped on a crop top, let my hair down and got ready to WORK IT and go "full out" as the dancer folks say.

See video below if you would like to imagine me in my living room struggling with this choreo.

OMG you guys it was kind of a disaster. The first 2 set of 8-counts DESTROYED me. Somehow indulging in this bit of "me time"  left me feeling like a red faced, awkward 14-year old girl AND an old woman...AT THE SAME TIME.

HOW???

My body creaked and cracked, my heart raced and my breath was short---and not in a good way. In a way that I was realizing my own mortality and feeling like I have WASTED so many years of being a hot 20-something video girl that I will never get back!

In college I used to joke about quitting school, losing 20 pounds, learning how to do my make-up like a Kardashian and heading to LA to stand in line to grind in front of video casting directors. I still feel I could have made it--I have huge boobs, I'm racially ambiguous, have long hair AND can grind pretty good if I do say so myself.

And NOW IT'S TOO LATE!!!

I went out with some friends a few weekends ago in leggings and a tied up T-shirt a-la Hotline Bling girl and people were LOSING IT! I had never experienced the kind of "YOU LOOK SO GOOD" compliments from people who actually are looking at me through sexy glasses (read-not straight girl compliments that are semi-useless). And for a moment that night I thought maybe I could still realize my video girl dreams.



But today I was QUICKLY reminded that I am over the hill in the entertainment world. I guess I'll have to settle for my life as a non-profit worker and just daydream of being a video girl when I'm watching Rihanna's Rude Boy for the millionth time.

Moana & Longing for Connection

As a child my mom tried to get me to join a Hula class and learn the beautiful dance of the Hawaiian people. I wanted to dance ballet. I clung to french words, pink tights and graceful gestures for my long limbs.

Then when I was 13 I accompanied my friend to her Tahitian dance class and I was mesmerized. I was intoxicated by the drums, they seemed to fill me all the way up and all I wanted was to move my hips to their rhythm like the beautiful women I saw with their long black hair flowing, their rapid hips and their graceful hands. I begged my parents to let me join and weeks later I was enrolled. I skipped TGIF (a serious sacrifice) to let those drums fill me up once a week and let my budding womanhood come out and play for an hour. An hour where my body was for myself in all it's movement and sexuality, an hour where I wasn't afraid of how I looked only how isolated my hip movements were and how much they moved with the beat.

A year later I went back to classical styles and started a jazz class but I always practiced my fa'arapu alone in my room, my CD player blasting the recording of a drum session. And one day I returned to Polynesian dancing, kind of by accident. When I began to learn the moves and vocabulary of Hula I experienced a new kind of joy. The ancient kahiko dances with their precise movements and melodic chanting made me feel connected to something bigger than myself. As I spoke Hawaiian words I felt reverence for a people who had endured so much. Reverence for the land that was stolen and the culture and language that they fought to get back. The same moves I was dancing and the words I was chanting along with my teacher were all banned in their birthplace for decades by foreigners.

Colonizers were brilliant that way. You create a kind of confusion when you cut people off from their culture, their ancestors, their language, their way of life. When you make people forget the essence of themselves, what makes them special and connected you can manipulate them. Today Hawaii's culture has been co-opted by the US. I grew up watching the mostly white casts of Save By the Bell and Full House travel to Hawaii and do horrible offensive renditions of Hula while wearing synthetic grass skirts, their blonde tresses flowing in the ocean breeze. My childhood brain was always confused by how different Hawaii seemed on TV when the Hula I saw looked nothing like that. When I began dancing myself I searched all over the island for the perfect leaves for a head piece or skirt, the skin on my fingertips frayed from the weaving and intricate knots I had to tie, the feeling of disappointment when I opened the fridge to see that my plumerias were brown on the edges, a sign that I would have to go pick a fresh batch before my performance even though I had a mound of homework and needed to detangle my hair. All of that is erased when all people see on TV is actors waving their arms around like idiots in plastic shit.

But something inside always tugged at me, something reminding me that as beautiful as it was and as connected to it as I felt, it was not mine. I am not Hawaiian or Tahitian and the only reason I was on this island at all was because the US had decided that Pearl Harbor was a strategic place to put a Naval Base. So I don't talk so much about all of this anymore, I stuff it down and only quickly mention I grew up in Hawaii before saying that my family isn't from there and I'm actually really from California.

Then every once in a while something triggers that connection and I am in a sea of tears longing for mountains and seas and flowers and bare feet. Tonight that trigger was Moana. I had resisted watching for as long as I could but when my (part Hawaiian) nephew donned a custom made Moana outfit for his Baby's 1st Lu'au I knew I'd have to watch it eventually.

As Moana sang of her island home and her longing for the sea I was reminded of the unbelievable story of the Polynesian people. A story of faith, courage and connection. I all of the sudden missed the ways my hips swayed to a Hawaiian song, the way my fingers waved gracefully and the repetitive rhythm of a Kaholo, my feet knowing exactly what to do next.

Then I was instantly filled with sadness. Sadness for MY people, for Black people. Our language, our dances, our customs, diverse and beautiful and connected to our souls were ripped away. Out of our resilience and resistance we created new culture, new language, new connection and for that I am always proud. But there is something about seeing people dance the same dance that their ancestors danced from the beginning that takes your breath away. I don't know that we'll ever have that in the same way as other people who were colonized on their own land do. It's a different story. I guess I hope I can feel some sense of connection to culture that belongs to my ancestors while also appreciating the gift that the Polynesian people gave me in Hula and Tahitian dancing.