A Black Girl’s Comedy Saga To Finding Love
Welcome to my unfiltered thinkpad. This blog a vibrant shelf of insights on love through poetry, analysis essays, and personal storytimes. This blog is about Dating in Color, where Marie (me!), a first-generation Nigerian American woman, who grew up fundamentalist Christian in Midwest suburbs, and is now a proud leftist, writes about her love life. First off - Bad feminist moment: most days I dream that a relationship (cough, yes, a man) will provide me a safe haven from my past childhood trauma and the ever-present racism I experience. These taboo fantasies have led me down the romance rabbit-hole: I’ve consumed it all: K-dramas, Bollywood, cliche and sensationalizing podcasts on sex, to dry academic textbooks to the anatomy of the clitoris, to heart-pounding erotica fiction…
…To bell hooks’ cultural analysis, interviews with Psychoanalyst Esther Perel, to oral interviews like The Sex of African Girls, to golden-goblet shows like Love Is Blind, to feminist academic theory like Amina Srinivasan’s ‘The Right to Sex’, to black feminist literature, to sex and nature science books, catty catchy relationship podcast advice from Relationshit to inspiring dating journey fodder like Conversations on Love.
Every single one of these pieces have deeply altered and shattered my heart, rerouted my dating journey, and brought me one step closer to finding myself.
Who Am I in the Search For Love?
In this research I found safety in numbers, solidarity in other women’s experiences, relief from validation, and encouragement that even in the darkest parts of my journey, I was not alone, much less unworthy. Yet, I continued to struggle with one constant, confounding strain of advice, that appears persistently in some puzzling form or fashion, like a pest, or mushroom on pizza. People kept repeating “Focus on Loving Yourself. The one you want will come when you least expect it.” And so I did everything I could to stop myself from expecting a relationship, including going celibate.
This sort of smug, pitying self help advice held me in a MIND FUCK, because how the FUCK could I get myself to stop expecting a relationship so I could finally get my ass into one? And what was the real reason I’ve been yearning to find a man? Is because I want a man to complete me, like what the Pre-Feminist women thought? Am I a simple primate imitating the customs of the people around me? Or am I just now, in college, fully witnessing my full humanity — my innate biological desire to be in connection?
Certainly, these have not been easy questions to answer. It is so hard for me to delineate my true reasoning for seeking a relationship when societal expectations have distorted all of my inherent desires. After all, my dating journey has been so screwed over by “isms”. Oh yeah, any black woman darker than Zendaya experiences all the “isms” — racism, colorism, sexism, even homophobia-ism, because even the black cis straight women are placed into a different category of feminity than white women. [This is the part where all the white girls are going ooohhhhh… this blog is not as relatable as I may have hoped. All I can say is, ‘you’re welcome’]. Anyway, back to slavery-during slave times, traditional womanhood did not exist for the Black Woman, because she was expected to provide reproductive labor by having children, but she was expected to complete the chores of the black man, and thus was not regarded as feminine. This contradiciton within black womanhood is deeply significant in academic circles, as black afab bodies are highly policed and gratuitously exploited. Black feminine bodies are policed to uphold the white supremacist definitions of ‘femininity’ and ‘beauty’.
If all of that is too heady, let me just speak to you from my experience: I have been told by men my race that “they don’t see how Black girls are attractive.” I’ve been told by white men, “I want to fuck you so hard black girl.” When I swipe on a guy, I don’t ask “does he like brunettes?” I have to ask myself “does he like black woman, am I at the bottom of his dating priority, and please god, please god, please don’t let him be fetishizing me.” When I walk into a restaurant on dates, sometimes I stand back to make sure than the man gets the door, not because I support masculine norms but because I need to assert my desire to be treated as feminine as a white woman. And trust me, this is a problem, I’m 5’6” and have broad shoulders, and this throws men for a loop…!) During my multi-year dating journey, I have had several breakdowns (am I ugly or do I just have a wide nose and round body?) After years, of this treatment, my identity began to splinter. It’s the weirdest form of being out of tune with your body — I love the woman that I see in the mirror much more than how this same girl gets treated, how she is desired, in the real world.
This blog is my expression—an exploration of my disassociation and reassociation with femininity, desirability, and consensual relationships. But it's not a pity party; it's a laughter-filled journey. I aim to make you laugh with anecdotes and misadventures because just because I’m black doesn’t mean infallible. The mission — connect with those who may not feel desirable or connected to their inner power. Through sharing my experiences, I hope to this blog’s mission is to connect with real people, especially people who don’t feel desired in their daily life or connected to their true power, and to make apparent to them the power of love — THEIR LOVE.
love is all around us you know? it’s the millions of tiny second chances, to the kindness people are always offering, to the friends who reach out to you on sad days, to that one family member who has always ‘gotten’ it. I believe that this love is the balm that heals. This blog is a chronicle of my search for love, in my lens, both platonic, romantic, and self, as a woman of color. Here I am going to chronicle my journey. Maybe it's "Dating in Color," "Dating Diaries," or simply "A Black Girl’s Comedy Saga To Finding Love." Enjoy the journey, and let's share the love. Comment, connect, and let the laughter resonate <3