You Can't Touch My Hair

by Phoebe Robinson

  Well, we’ve reached the end of this book. Normally, I’d be like, “Byyyyyyyyye,” and go back to updating my nail-art Pinterest page—#ImBasic—but not today. Today, I’m ending this book like how my parents do phone calls: by saying good-bye and then talking for another thirty minutes. (Mom and Dad, I’m teasing! I love our long chats.) Anyway, dear readers, it turns out there’s still a few more things I have to explain, and I have to explain them to my all-time favorite person: my two-and-a-half-year-old biracial niece, Olivia.

  Olivia is what they call in the biz “a Toyota Prius.” In other words, she’s a hybrid—half-black and half-white. She’s new to this whole living thing, and she’s got a lot to learn. And she seems to be a quick study. She’s already got walking, laughing, and telling people to read to her on lock. Plus, she has that awesome baby scent that makes her smell like everything that’s good and right in the world. Clearly, life has been nothing but a parade of awesomeness. But she’s going to get older and encounter her fair share of ding-dongs who are going to make life difficult for her because she’s a woman. Meaning she’s not going to be paid as much as her male counterparts in the workplace, she’s going to be catcalled by men for many of her teenage and adult years, and she will have to pay a “luxury” tax for menstrual products because forty states including New York, Ohio, and California deem those products as unnecessary. Yeah. No. I’m going to have to pull a Sam Waterston on the OG Law & Order and object to this lunacy. Spending five to seven days of every month preventing my undies from turning into Jackson Pollock paintings is not a luxury, so to those forty states, I say this: My tamp-tamps are as gahtdamn necessary as the black castor oil Jermaine Jackson uses to paint the hairline on his forehead.

  Anyway, I can go on and on listing all the inconveniences and discriminatory things that women experience, but then this essay would be five hundred pages long, and I know you don’t want to read that. Besides, gender discrimination is not the only thing Livvie will have to contend with. Being biracial comes with its own unique set of concerns. For instance, because her racial identity is more complex, some white people and black people will make her feel as though she doesn’t belong in either group. Subsequently, the way she is treated will be markedly different than how either of her parents are treated. And that treatment will help shape her in different ways that none of us in the family will be able to predict. This all awaits my little cinnamon angel, and so I want to prepare her for this as much as possible.

  And while I’m certain that her parents, PJ and Liz, are going to do a phenomenal job raising her, their hands are obviously very, very full, teaching her to take care of herself, sharing their appreciation for the value of a dollar, and that whole not letting her die thing, so they might forget to mention other equally important nuggets such as making sure she has the video of DMX singing “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” downloaded on her phone so that bundle of joy is at her fingertips at all times. If I know my brother and my sister-in-law as well as I think I do, PJ and Liz are going to be so focused on making sure Olivia becomes a phenomenal citizen that the DMX tip and other such gems might fall through the cracks. Not on my watch!

  So that’s why I’m taking the knowledge I’ve accumulated over the past thirty-one years and paying it forward to Olivia in a series of letters . . . which is a mode of communication that’s super obsolete and will make me less cool in her eyes when she gets older. Heck, she might even be like, “What is a letter? People just blink three times to send message to each other in this day and age.” Well, Olivia, I’m in the mood to kick it old school, so I’m typing it up and putting it in this book so your parents can let you read it when you are an appropriate age. If you’re hankering for some Auntie Phoebe knowledge now, then you can have them read these letters to you “radio edit” style, and they can omit any mentions of peens and vajeens and F-bombs. So without further ado, enjoy. And if, at any point, I’m turning into my parents and going on and on, feel free to imitate Andre 3000 in “Hey Ya!” by going, “Alright, alright, alright, alright, alright, alright, alright, alright, alright, alright, alright, alright, alright, alright, alright, alright” and close the book.

  Letter #1: Lisa Bonet Is Bae. Queen. Jesus.

  Dear Olivia,

  If you only take one thing away from these series of letters that I’m writing you, let it be the following: Actress Lisa Bonet is Bae. Queen. Jesus. This might seem like quite the exaggeration, but I assure you it is not. It’s very important that as a person of color, you find people in media who have the same background as you so you know that you belong. And in my eyes, Lisa Michelle Bonet is the dopest, chillest, coolest, most badass, most interesting, and most gorgeous half-black chick in all the land. If I ever get the chance to be in the same room as her, I will Tebow before her and offer my left kidney should she ever need it. OK. I should probably back up because I understand that Bonet is before your time, Olivia. Some other biracial lady is probably your main shero right now, but I’m telling you to put her aside, because Bonet is the OG.

  Bonet is best known for playing Denise, the eldest daughter on The Cosby Show. I don’t want to say too much about the show because of Bill Cosby (Cringe alert! Ask your parents about him later), but I will tell you that it was one of my favorite shows as a kid. On it, Bonet was funny and intelligent, and she pulled off the perfect blend of masculine/feminine clothes, like a biracial Diane Keaton. Plus, every guy wanted to date her, even when she had braces! I wished I could be like her when I was a teenager, not only for the example her character set on the show, but for how she lived her life in the spotlight, too. While she may have played by the rules on The Cosby Show, she went on to show the world that she lives by the motto of “I’mma do me.” Bonet took control over her career in a big way, even when she was acting on The Cosby Show. She straight up defied Bill, who wanted everyone in the cast to have a squeaky clean image, by acting in the X-rated movie Angel Heart. She also refused to play the Hollywood game by rocking dreadlocks, no matter what kind of character she portrayed. And best of all, she was adamant about keeping her private life private, never playing into the celebrity fame game like others in her generation. In other words, she became, for me, the ultimate symbol of giving zero damns. And for this, she is Bae. Queen. Jesus.

  So yes, I want you to let Bonet be your guiding light, but that doesn’t mean she should be the only inspiration you have. Obviously, your parents are another light, and hopefully I am one, too. But there should be other biracial peeps you can look to as inspiration. That’s why I’ve created this very handy list featuring some of the most important half-black people that you ought to know.

  Mariah Carey: She writes her own songs, can hit notes that only Clifford the Big Red Dog can hear, and dated Nick Cannon of Drumline fame. We all thought that was going to be a “LOL, J/K, BRB” situation, but then they were married for seven years and had two kids before getting divorced. Moral of the story: One person’s Deuce Bigelow: Male Gigolo is another’s Citizen Kane.

  Barack Obama: Uh, hello, he became the first half-black president. Plus, one time, when he was discussing the state of race in this country on a podcast, he said nigger and everyone freaked the hell out. Like “ripping their hair out, leaving only some stringy Gollum-like strands” freak out. Obama clearly knows how to keep it spicy.

  Halle Berry: Talented and a number one stunner. It’s not fair. Also not fair? That I’ve spent a considerable portion of my adult life unsuccessfully trying to emulate the scene from Die Another Day, in which Berry seductively struts out of the ocean. You will fail at attempting this, too, and that’s OK. Stuff like that will keep you grounded.

  Jude Law: LOL. J/K. I just included him here because when I Googled “famous biracial celebrities,” Law popped up in the search results. Google is ignorant sometimes. That said, he is mad cute, so he’s on this list.

  Malcolm Gladwell: He has written many important books that you should definitely read (Outlie
rs is my fav, BTdubs), and he’s incredibly well respected. I once saw him at a restaurant in upstate New York and was like, Oh shit, is that my uncle? It was not. Point is, Gladwell kind of looks like he could be a member of any black person’s family, and I think that’s pretty cool.

  Grace Colbert (biracial girl in Cheerios ads): This may seem ridiculous now, but in 2013, Cheerios released a thirty-second ad about a mixed family eating cereal, and the world panicked.

  Sade: Sade is the truth. Everyone loves her music, and she’s very potent in romantic situations. That’s why you can’t listen to Sade with just any guy or gal (I don’t know your journey yet) because her songs seal the deal to Commitment Town. So unless you’re certain you’d bone someone during the unsexiest of situations—Good Morning America’s George Stephanopoulos yammering in the background about pesticides harming America’s produce—don’t listen to Sade with this person.

  Slash: IRL his name is Saul Hudson, and yet he still went on to play guitar in one of the best rock bands of the ’90s (Guns N’ Roses), was an animated character on The Simpsons, and continues to wear sunglasses all the time without anyone giving him shit for it. A fucking SAUL did all this, so you have no reason not to be a badass, Olivia.

  Jennifer Beals: She was in Flashdance and The L Word. What more do you need?

  Stacey Dash: She kind of sucks, but whenever I rewatch Clueless, I fall in love with her all over again. So check her out in that movie and skip anything she does on FOX News.

  Tiger Woods: He was one of the greatest athletes in the world until his roving peen got the best of him and everyone learned he was a sex addict who continually cheated on his wife. Two takeaways here: 1. I think golf is hella boring, but if I discover you’re naturally gifted at the sport, I’m becoming your manager so we can get rich, and 2. if you’re having so much sex that you need to pull a Walter White and have multiple burner phones in order to juggle all your jump offs, maybe bone less?

  Maya Rudolph: One of the funniest people on the planet. I mean, what is life without humor? If you can be a sliver as funny as her, then you’ll be made in the shade. Also, one time, she was checking into a hotel as my buddy and I were checking out of it, and she started talking to us like we’re friends. So I thought, Are we friends? And she responded, No, but I like your sunglasses, though. Olivia, Maya Rudolph can read minds like she’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

  Prince: He began as a wunderkind, then morphed into a sexy provocateur, then became an elder statesman of music who influenced countless acts. He carried himself with the confidence of an auntie who thinks you ain’t shit because your potato salad sucks. Essentially, he lived all the lives I would ever want to live. And when you are older, I will play you all his music and we will have the most epic and adorable auntie-niece dance party.

  The Rock: He’s hot and funny and has an adorable relationship with his dog. He’s basically perfect. Even though I’m afraid he would snap my hips like a wishbone if we ever had sex, I would still give it the old college try so I can have his babies. Hmm, I guess you didn’t need to know that about your aunt. And you can’t un-know it. Sorry ’bout that.

  Derek Jeter: He is a legendary Yankee and was a notoriously charming playboy. Stay away from dudes like him and date dudes named Saul. And I don’t mean the Sauls that grow up to become Slashes. #Callback. I’m talking about Sauls that marinate in their Saulness and the most excitement of their life is when their new Blue Apron package arrives.

  Bob Marley: He’s a legend. Duh.

  Well, Livvie, that’s my guide to VIP biracial people. Hope you learned a lot and feel confident that you can take on the world! If you’re ever lost or filled with doubt, just ask yourself, “What Would Lisa Bonet do,” and you’ll be all right, ‘kay? She is, on the regs, sexin’ on that hot Samoan dude from Game of Thrones, and before that, she was married to Lenny Kravitz and made the ultimate Blewish (black and Jewish) child in Zoë Kravitz. Bonet clearly knows what the hell she’s doing, so follow her lead.

  Love,

  Auntie Phoebe

  Letter #2: Throw (and Do Everything) Like a Girl

  Dear Olivia,

  Just so we’re on the same page, I absolutely loathe when musicians give their GRAMMY acceptance speeches and say, “I just want to thank all my haters. Y’all are my motivators.” Calm. Your. Tits. Rapper Dude. Stop taking yourself so seriously. You didn’t invent anything; you’re just really good at slant rhymes. Anyway, even though I’m so over the hater shout-out at award shows, there is one time I’m all for saying it. It’s whenever, not if, but when, someone goes, “Olivia, you [insert a verb] like a girl.” This will usually be said in jest, as if being what they consider the “lesser” sex is funny (eww) or as an insult so you’ll feel bad about yourself (double eww). Either way, the underlying message is the same: Being a girl is quite possibly the worst thing in the world, and anyone who is female should either be pitied or laughed at. Screw that!

  Being a woman is not a horrible fate one is saddled with, and I resent the idea that half of the world’s population is deemed, right out the gate, to be as pitiful as a pair of irregular JCPenney jeans on 80 percent discount. Sure, as I mentioned earlier, it sucks getting paid less than men, and being catcalled on the regular is nobody’s idea of fun; but don’t be mistaken, being a lady is amazing. Just look at your mom and consider the amount of things she does in a given day—working, cooking, balancing a checkbook, loving you and your dad, doing the “Single Ladies” dance from memory, gobbling up knowledge from books and newspapers, laughing at the BS society throws her way, and continuing to kill it. She is a great example of how women can kick ass. And there are tons of other dope things dub-X folks do. Take softball player Mo’Ne Davis. She was just thirteen years old when she could throw a seventy-mile-per-hour fastball. Or how Misty Copeland made ballet history when she became the first African-American woman to be made principal dancer at the American Ballet Theatre. Or the fact that Emma Watson announced she is taking a hiatus from acting to solely devote her time to her work as a UN ambassador for her new feminist organization HeForShe, which encourages men to be involved in making gender equality a reality. The point is, women are clearly awesome, and you need to remember that, Olivia. That way, whenever someone tells you that you’re doing XYZ like a girl, then you can whip out, “Thank you, hater, you’re my motivator,” and then go back to being XX chromosome AF.

  In fact, be XX chromosome AF should be your life motto. It’s mine, although it took me a while to figure that out. I’ve always been proud to be a woman, but I just needed a kick in the pants to truly take ownership over my “ladyship.” That booty kick came when I was twenty-three, which is no coincidence because that is when I started doing stand-up comedy, a field that has become one of the great loves of my life. Despite my devotion to the art form, there’s no denying that it is a very male-dominated world and one that discourages women from fully embracing those dub Xs.

  Because the industry is so male-dominated, many female comics have to engage in hyper-masculine behavior in order to be taken seriously. It’s present in everything, from how we’re expected to talk about comedy to how we physically act when we perform. For example, when comics do well, we say we “killed,” “murdered,” “destroyed.” When we have a terrible set, we say, we “ate a massive dick,” “bombed so hard,” “died.” At shows, there’s always an air of competition. Most of the time it’s friendly competish, but still, the vibe is the same: On some level, we want to do so well that the next person cannot follow us. That they do horribly. That they dine on that giant sauseege we prepared for them. What I’m saying is that the comedy world oozes machismo. The most glaring evidence of this is the fact that 90 percent of shows have a mostly male lineup, with one or two spots designated for women. And since this is the norm, audiences have been conditioned to instinctually enjoy listening to anything about the male experience and to be somewhat resistant or hesitant to listen
to stuff from a female perspective. In a lot of ways, it’s almost as though anything outside the heteronormative male experience is deemed not worthy of discussion.

  Case in point: I did a show recently and said the word vagina, to which a man yelled out, “Oh, God!” Another time, a guy sitting in the front row turned beet red and literally covered his face à la Taylor Swift winning an award because he had to listen to me talking about the very real issue that afflicts women when they gain weight: Their down-there, lady-bit area also gains weight. Naturally, the women in the audience laughed those “This happened to me, too, girl” laughs, while the dudes were shocked and horrified. I’m sorry, if we can hear and love it when Louis C.K. jokes about letting his dog lick peanut butter off his peen, then everyone can get on board with me being like, “Yo, just so y’all know, women gaining weight in their vagina area during the course of a relationship is similar to those time-lapse videos of a soufflé rising in the oven.” Whether or not I was funny when talking about my body wasn’t even the issue. The real problem was that I dared to talk about my body in the first place, and that shocked the male crowd.

  The point is this. Male comics, and the entertainment sphere in general, are encouraged and celebrated for discussing all things dude-related, especially if what they are talking about is their body. It’s feels as though we live in a world in which everything seemingly comes back to the dong. Olivia, I once had a male comic, who went on stage after me, start his set by talking about how he would have sex with me. That’s it. No humorous line of reasoning. No interesting commentary. Just some thought about how he would bone me. And people laughed. Not pity laughs, but belly laughs. Meanwhile, I was just watching this unfold, waiting for anything that resembled a joke. None came, yet he got rewarded by the audience for his Brick-Tamland-“I-love-lamp”-level rambling about what he and his penis would do to me. And just to be clear, this is not some one-off wacky situation. Every single female comedian has multiple stories about a comic or a heckler reducing her to a sexual object. She also has multiple stories about a time when she did feminist material or jokes about something from the female perspective, and the audience was like, “hard pass,” as if it’s too big of an ask for men to relate to something outside of themselves.