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.

For Love Stories Not Told on Valentine's Day

Love. What a wondrous, complicated, exhilarating experience to love and be loved.

On Valentine’s Day there are so many messages about how love is supposed to look, who is allowed to be in love and what you should do or act like if you are “in love.” 

As half of a queer, femme, interracial married couple let me tell you, it can be hard to find examples of our love. To this day I come across articles and listicles about love and marriage that are only about how love exists for straight couples. Although some things may be transferable most things just are not. 

So for today I’ll share this love story with you. One that doesn’t look like the kind in the movies or the kind that people look to for guidance, an old wrinkled man and woman holding hands on a quiet park bench. I’m sharing it because it is just as worthy as all of those other loves of being shared and because maybe it can contribute to a larger conversation that can open up the different ways love exists for all of us.

2005

Our love has always been sacred. From the first moment I saw you at 19, a little ball of light and laughter bouncing through the USF cafeteria. You saved my number in your phone as "Bre BFF" the first moment we met and in doing so conjured the most transformational friendship I have ever had. 

2012

One late night you texted me like you had a million times before, this time with a winky face just to make me feel the weight of the unspoken. That our closeness was on the verge of changing everything for both of us, to morphing into a romantic love that would turn us into a different kind of us. 

You kissed me on your bed 2 days before we went to a Justin Bieber concert. Later you said how normal it felt, I went back to Boston with your smell on me and dreams of our babies and a lifetime of adventures. There was no going back after that, I knew I'd be yours forever.

2013

We stayed up late one night and painstakingly wrote (while listening to 98 Degrees Christmas album) what we wanted this relationship to be. We started with acknowledging out ancestors and our collective work in pursuing justice by wrapping different colored ribbons around the handle of a small broom. 

During American Slavery Black couples would jump over a broom to signify their marriage and commitment to their community.

They wrap the gold ribbon to honor the enslaved Black people whose marriages were never legally acknowledged.

They wrap the pink ribbon to honor the Lovings who fought for the legal acknowledgment of their marriage and interracial marriages therafter

They wrap the purple ribbon to honor the LGBTQ people who fought and continue to fight for marriage equality.

Finally, they wrap the red ribbon to signify their solidarity with these communities.

We ended with the commitments we needed with room to grow and change and forever be ourselves. Today I am reminded of the power of love and the power of our love, queer, grounded in friendship, challenged by difference, showered in laughter and pushed to be fully honest. Our love is revolution every day.

I commit to always being your best fried, to have fun and laugh.

I commit to putting myself first. I will not allow you to lose yourself in our relationship.

I commit to being honest, even when it’s hard. To always putting effort into our 

relationship and to being open to changes that our life together may bring.

Finally, I commit to supporting you, caring for you, loving you and expressing my love in ways you can receive it.

For the Love of Writing

In graduate school I spent 6 months pouring my heart out for my Master's paper. I wrote about my life, the complicated experience of being a multiracial Black woman. I wrote about my family, my friends, childhood enemies and the women who saved me. It was very akin to that quote about writing where you're bleeding on the page.

This blog hasn't been quite as personal. Many of them were barely edited, apologies for the typos and general lack of commas. I did this project to prove that I could and to remind myself what it was I loved about writing. I was reminded that it's writing from my experience that I love the most. Quirky noticing and painful memories that helps me explain the systems of inequality we live in every day.

"B in the Borderlands" is meant to be a play on words, it's meant to reference my first initial and a state of being. A reference to Gloria Anzaldua's famous book that brings forward that which is usually hidden and ignored. The in-between, the intersections, the borderlands. When I came to terms with my Bisexuality I remember sobbing heavily, yelling out to the universe "why do I have to have another one of these identities?" The kind that don't make sense to people, the kind that aren't seen fully. I'd already struggled through navigating a multiracial identity and couldn't bear to feel that on another plane.

But here I am, in the borderlands just the same. 

I've tried to ignore the pull to confront these things in my writing. The need to write my experience felt like a vain quest for validation, more of our fame obsessed culture creeping in, my need to be the center of attention. But the more I write, the more I share myself--my borderlands I hear from the friends that have been kind enough to read, that it resonates with them too. I remember that so much of what we know is based on our experience and the experiences that have been shared with us. We are a country of people hearing the stories of those with power and not listening to the quiet voices of those on the margins.

I cannot speak for everyone but my ability to put my experience into words is a gift and a responsibility.

Infoglut & Social Media Overload

Last week I took a break from Facebook. 

I found myself becoming overly obsessed with the amount of likes each of these posts were getting. Then, I found myself being triggered over and over again. I figured that it was time to cut my loses and deactivate for the first time since I opened my account in 2004.

This is how we live now. It's the way we connect with each other, both people that we have no business staying connected to (elementary school pen pal) and people we need to stay connected to (mom). I've taken several social media breaks (which I jokingly referred to as "cleanses") in the past for days at a time. But this was the first time I left Facebook entirely and let me tell you it felt weird.

I switched the Facebook energy to Twitter and was instantly WAY more informed on a bunch of things. I was reminded that Facebook is limited in so many ways and I had been relying on it for things it was never meant to do. It was nice to be in a space with a little less, less characters, less pictures, less everything. Twitter is how I found out about the protest Saturday and where I went to watch it all unfold in real time. Note: this is not a Facebook vs. Twitter post even though it's kind of starting to sound like one.

We are surrounded by so much stuff, information, opinions, images, facts and figures. I can only describe it as "noise." In therapy I've been working on listening to my own voice and trusting that. Let me tell you, in the current social media landscape that is VERY difficult to do. For those of us that have trouble finding out voice it's a hard task to be bombarded by other people's thoughts and feelings before we have fully figured out our own. Not to mention the consequences of how those thoughts and feelings if shared will be received by our network.

I'm so grateful for the space social media has created for me. I'm able to stay connected to people I love and people who's opinions and work I respect. I'm able to stay up to date on the latest news and information. But with that comes a kind of exhaustion, reading word after word starts to feel like sitting in a room where people are screaming things at you "I liked this movie!" "My baby walked today!" "The country is shit!" Individually these things aren't bad, it's nice to see a baby walk for the first time or feel validated in one's worries about the state of things. But when you mesh them all together in a feed with pictures and ads and doodads it's pretty mind numbing.

I'm back on Facebook now but I'm also trying to stay on Twitter because I remembered how much I enjoyed it. Add Instagram and the occasional Snapchat peruse and I'm back where I started. There's no handbook for this. No handbook for figuring out the uncharted waters of the emotional impact of information at our fingertips. For now I'll just continue to check in with myself and take breaks when I need them, deactivate if I feel like it and get totally sucked into my phone if I feel like it.

In this political moment I'll take more breaks and add to the conversation even if I don't get the likes I wanted.

Perspectives from a (kinda) Child of an Immigrant

I don't know when I stopped referring to myself as "French Canadian and Black" and made the shift to "Black and white."

It was easier somehow to tell people what they wanted to hear when they looked at my hair, then at my complexion and then search my face for other features that might give them a clue.

I stopped saying French Canadian because it didn't feel like it counted. Like when white people say they're Irish and Scandinavian but that's like from five and six generations back. The real thing they wanted to know was what my race was, so I gave it to them straight. French Canadian isn't a race and nobody even knows what it is anyway.

I always had to explain to people that the French "landed" on North America too but were beat out by the English for what is now known as Canada, save a little province called Quebec. Quebecois or French Canadians are the decedents of those colonizers who refused to assimilate into the British ruled Canada. It's a cool history of resistance until you think about the fact that all European colonizers were stealing the land from indigenous folks and claiming anyone got anywhere first is complete crap. Another reason I'm conflicted in my Quebecois pride.

I grew up in a bilingual household until about the 1st grade. Mostly, bilingual although my when my English-only speaking father was home from months out to Sea he complicated things. It weird to say that because I feels like the phrase "bilingual home" is reserved for other families that don't have a white french-speaking mother. My first two years in school I attended a French Magnet in San Diego. I remember moving to Hawaii halfway through 1st grade and staring at the kids as they asked me things in English and Hawaii Pidgin. Every morning we said the pledge of allegiance and I didn't know it in English. This is a common experience for bilingual children and for many children of immigrants who may not speak English in the home. But I still pushed back against the idea that this is my identity, because my mom is white and JUST Canadian so it doesn't really count.

When I moved to Hawaii the experience of having an immigrant parent was pretty ordinary. My best friend and I would joke about how our moms (her's Japanese) always had trouble understanding each other over the phone, both speaking with different accents of a language neither of them grew up speaking. When people would ask my mom where she was from I'd always stare shocked. That's not a question white people get asked very much and she had been speaking English since she was 16, I didn't even notice she had an accent.

Several years ago my mom's youngest sister was the first one in their family to become an American citizen. My mom talked about following suit and I exclaimed "NO! You don't want to be a citizen of this trash country!" Partially selfish (I want the option of dual citizenship in case the shit hits the fan, as it is now), it felt like an American passport would make my mom just another American white lady and I couldn't stand the idea of that.

The privilege of not wanting my mother to have an American passport is not lost on me, it's one that not many folks have.

This President and his administration aren't going after my mom. My commonality with child of immigrant stories stops at the fear of my parent being deported. Because race matters in this conversation. If you look at the list of the 7 "banned" countries it's rare that people who look like my mom (blonde and blue eyed) would not be stopped for "extra questioning."

In this time it's important for us to remember that in most cases whiteness trumps all and as we share stories and signs that say "we are all immigrants" I hope we'll remember that:
1)Blacks folks who are the decedents of slaves are not
2)Native folks who have been here all along are not

3)Not all immigrants are affected my xenophobia the same. Collapsing the nuanced experience of people who have come to this country in a multitude of different ways erases the fact that my mom and a green card holder from Sudan are not treated the same.

Practicing Self-Love by Acknowledging Limits

Today I went to a protest. More on that in a much longer post tomorrow because it's all I can do to keep my eyes open right now and I want to really write about that experience. However, there was something I realized while my body was slowly losing every bit of energy after a few hours without sustainable food.

My body is limited.

Even writing that feels like a failure. But I will practice radical self-love by holding this truth and loving myself fully. I'm hypoglycemic and that means that every few hours I HAVE to eat. Depending on how much energy I'm using (mental and/or physical) the amount and frequency with which I need to eat could be more. This fact coupled with my peanut allergy means that access to food I can eat isn't always available.

I've known this for a little over 3 years but that doesn't mean I've really accepted it. People that know me expect that I travel with snacks and always have a healthy meal brought from home for lunch. This is how I try to prevent my body from betraying me and limiting me. But there are times when I push it because "everyone else can" and because eating in a corner while everyone else is having fun makes me feel weak and like a frail oversensitive weirdo. When the lunch meeting goes too long or I have an after work hour event to attend with no real break for dinner I panic, freeze and then keep it moving. Only to be met with intense hunger pains and lightheadedness 30 minutes later because I ignored what my body was telling me. 

This changes the way I exist in a way I'm still frustrated with. It wasn't always this way, I used to be able to go a full day without eating anything but cereal. I would excel at my classes, ace the test, take incredible notes with barely anything fueling my body. And that almost makes it worse, the memory of days when I didn't have to think "how many snacks can I fit in this bag?" or "is there going to be a fridge there for my lunch?"

Today it happened again. As I packed my bag for the protest that same wash of panic came over me, how long will we be there, how long will this half a tuna sandwich, almonds and popcorn sustain me? The panic hit me again when the protest speaker exclaimed hours later "we're not leaving until all the detainees are released!"

As I walked out of the terminal exhausted and starving I felt the same guilt I always fell: I should be stronger, the detainees don't have food, they're tired from traveling, I need to be more. Luckily I had a community of people with me making sure I took care of myself and showering me with words of love and concern for my health. 

Tonight I'm trying to take in those words of love from my friends and family. 

I'm trying to remind myself that this body is worthy of care and love even with its limits because it's the only one I have and it is enough.