embracing my inner white girl...

come on, you know you have her. what i like to call your inner white girl, otherwise known as becky.

she's the girl comes out when you're rocking to the kind of music you'd let no one know you liked (ie. britney spears). she's the woman who shows up first when trying to deal politely with some asshole in your office, before you get mad, pull out the real sistah in you and cuss his ass out. she's the voice you use when talking to colleagues at a conference or a mixed-crowd function. she's the girl you saw when you were growing up be the standard of beauty in this county, wishing only once you had long hair and blue eyes.

i've learned to embrace my becky at an early age, when i was about six years old. we had just moved into our new house, where the schools and the environment were supposedly better, leaving behind our all-black neighborhood. i just was excited because we finally had cable. as i took hold of our neighbors, i began to realize we were the only black family on our block. the children had names like shelly and ryan and we friendly enough. it was then that i discovered madonna, the go-gos, and twisted sister. i began watching more "white shows," as my neighborhood friends would scurry home to watch silver spoons.

and i caught hell for it. my brother would tease me to no end, taunting me for watching "them white shows." he just wanted to watch sandford and son. but that ribbing stayed with me, even after we left that neighborhood. i was still watching "white shows," like saved by the bell and the cartoon jem (that was the shit!!). but i never saw a problem with it. i didn't want to be like them. i knew i was black. i was reminded of that when certain parents didn't allow me into their homes or looked at me funny. i always knew who i was, but the becky was there, too.

it's still there now, as i'm driving and singing at the top of my lungs to kelly clarkson or the pussycat dolls or gwen stefani (pre-hollaback girl). it's there when i'm watching an episode of friends or reading cosmopolitan. it's there when i almost pulled a bitch fit three days ago about my starbucks frappucino being wrong.

and there's nothing wrong with it. i'm a still a strong black woman. and i'm not afraid to say one of my favorite movies is legally blonde. i'm just a sistah who's learned to be a chameleon. we all are. we have to be. black people (and women especially) have so many roles to play, and as paul lawrence dunbar so eloquently wrote, "we all wear the mask."

and becky is definitely one of them.