We're Going to Need More Wine - Gabrielle Union Page 0,15

they think you should do with your vagina determine what you do with your vagina.”

As I talked, the look on her face was the slow-clap moment in movies. There was the beginning of the realization that I was really saying this, then the rapturous joy of a huge smile as she knew I meant every word. Enough with teaching people to pretend that sex is only for procreation and only in the missionary position and only upon taking the marital oath. If you’re having consensual sex with another adult, enjoy it.

So repeat after me: I resolve to embrace my sexuality and my freedom to do with my body parts as I see fit. And I will learn about my body so I can take care of it and get the pleasure I deserve. I will share that information with anyone and everyone, and not police the usage of any vagina but my own. So help me Judy Blume.

three

BLACK GIRL BLUES

Here is a secret to talking to teenagers: they open up best when you’re not sitting across the table staring at them. For the past year I have mentored a class of teens around age fourteen. I find they share the most about what’s going on in their lives when we’re taking a walk. Recently, I took them out on a particularly gorgeous, sunny day. As this one boy Marcus got a bit ahead of me, he did this stop-and-start fast walk, like some sort of relay race. He would stop in the shade of a tree, then sprint through the direct sunlight to stand at the next tree.

“What are you doing?” I finally asked.

“I don’t want to get any blacker,” said Marcus.

“You’re literally running from your blackness, Marcus,” I said. “You know? It’s a bit much. I’m not going to win any mentoring awards if you keep this up.”

I checked in on him at lunch—the other secret to getting teenagers to talk is food. He explained that the relay race was all about girls. The girls he considered the hottest in school only liked the guys who look like Nordic princes. And that’s not him.

“You’re perfect,” I said. “Look at my husband. He is not light skinned, and he has not exactly lacked for female attention. So many girls are gonna love you exactly the way you are. I’m not light.”

“You get lighter sometimes,” said Marcus. “I’ve noticed.”

I scoffed. “If you want to stay inside on a soundstage with no windows for months on end,” I said, “you too can look jaundiced. It’s because I work inside.”

“Yeah, well. It’s possible then. So I’m just gonna stay out of the sun.”

This kid I’m supposed to be mentoring had been sold the same ideal I had when I was young. I too went through periods where I stayed in the shade. I was obsessed with putting on sunblock, and in late summer I would insist on showing people my tan lines. “Look, this is my original color,” I would say, proffering my shoulder to a white girl. “Look how light I am.” I was really saying, “I have a chance to get back to that shade, so please excuse my current darkness.”

I learned to apologize for my very skin at an early age. You know how you tell little girls, even at their most awkward stages, “You’re so pretty” or “You’re a princess”? My family played none of those games. The collective consensus was, “Oof, this one.”

I was so thin that I looked like a black daddy longlegs spider with buckteeth. This is not overly earnest, false-humility celebrity speak, I swear. In case I didn’t know that, the world presented a relentless barrage of images and comments making it clear to me and all my peers that most of us would never get within spitting distance of classic beauty. But I thought that at least my parents should think I was cute. When they would gather my sisters and me for a family photo, they would check each face for perfection. There was always a pause when they got to me. “Ah, Nickie, what a personality you have. You are funny.”

In my family, light skin was the standard of beauty. This was true both in my dad’s family, who were all dark-skinned, and my mom’s family, who were very light. My mom was the most beautiful woman in the world to me—and I looked nothing like her.

With my dad, I simply wasn’t his version of pretty. His ideal is very specific: short,