Debra Dickerson's provocative essay, which I pared down a bit, appeared on Salon.com.
http://www.salon.com/mwt/...index.html

[b]I want you to want me
I laughed, I cried -- then I wondered: Why won't the "Wedding Crashers" crash any sister's wedding?

|July 30, 2005|

I was first in line for "Wedding Crashers" on opening night, hoping it would be as funny and sexy as it looked. It was. I laughed out loud and had enough naughty thoughts about surfer-dude Owen Wilson to make me squirm a tad in my seat. . . .

In particular, the highlight of the movie was the early and prolonged scenes of them partying down at a Benneton ad's confection of weddings set to "Shout" -- Hindu, Chinese, Jewish, Irish -- that will be wearing out the replay button on America's remotes when the DVD comes out.

But it was the montage of naked women cascading jubilantly into the rogues' beds, poufy bridesmaid dresses crumpled somewhere out of frame, that did the most for me. The sight of them -- alone, unarmed and unafraid, as one military motto goes -- was as deliciously sexy and just as much fun as the shenanigans at the weddings where Wilson and Vaughn wooed their willing prey. It was fitting, not to mention gutsy in these WWJD days, that this part continued to be set unapologetically to "Shout" and not some gauzy, romantic cop-out guck so we could forgive these sluts for schtupping a man they'd just met. "Crashers," at least in the beginning, wasn't about love. It was about making multi-orgasmic lemonade on love's fringes until it was your turn to star in a wedding.

That montage was a celebration of sex, carnality and the feminine ideal. It was a testament to the lion-tamer aspect of being a straight chick, that heady "bring a strong man to his knees" adrenaline rush that is one of the keys to understanding your power as a woman. . . .

But, somehow, by the end of the parade of weddings crashed and women laid, I realized I was sad. It took me an entire martini to figure out why: The crashers seduced their way through every culture and every ethnicity but mine. Why don't Owen and Vince want to seduce me, too? Why don't they want to dance with my nana at a wedding?

It's confusing to me that in a nation, a world, where black culture so permeates, if not dominates, the entertainment industry that a major Hollywood release would throw up its hands and declare Negro culture impenetrable. There isn't a white boy in America who doesn't do a jerky cabbage patch when he's happy and pronounce himself "dissed" when angry, yet Hollywood can't break the code on LaQuisha and Raheem jumping the broom? . . . .

We can provide the soundtrack, we can entertain, but we cannot participate; where have we heard that before? Whites can dance the hora, they can play mah-jongg with Chinese grannies, they can go Bollywood with the Hindus, but they can't figure out the electric slide? (That's our wedding staple, by the way. I have yet to hear "Shout" at a black wedding.) I reject most conspiracy theories, really I do, but I suspect that black culture was, however subconsciously, deemed unworthy.


Please don't misunderstand. I hate those Negroes who would bean count for black faces in Antarctica so they can get airtime whining about "the lack of diversity" blah blah. . . .

I'm talking about something else, something more than "gotcha, white folks," something y'all won't be able to dismiss as easily as all that. I'm talking about something that grieves black women, that breaks our hearts so much I have never had a conversation with another black woman about it. Or, at least not one that dared venture further than "I bet he's got a white girl" as a gorgeous brother passed by. Our hearts are broken because we are unloved. More than that: Black women are unlovable, or so the world tells us every day. Most often, it's a sucker punch. . . .

Usually, though, our degendering and masculinization is pretty easy to see coming. I watch the promos for my hero Chris Rock's new series about his Bed-Stuy adolescence and cringe when his "mother" traumatizes her son with bellowed, emasculating, dehumanizing threats like: "Boy, I will SLAP yo' name out the phone book, then call Ma Bell and tell her I did it." Hilarious, no? He looks about 10 as she terrorizes him with psychotic threats that would make Uday and Qusay proud. Who would want to bed that shrieking harridan? Who'd want to live next door to or hire such a bitch? Bets are off on how far into the series it will be before this black harpy (how redundant) is swiveling her neck and reducing a good man to shreds with her razor tongue. I have a 4-year-old son and an almost 2-year-old daughter who would go into cardiac arrest if I spoke to them that way, even in jest. Forgive me, Chris, but your "mother" proves that Zora Neale Hurston nailed it when she noted that black women are "the mules of the world."

She was speaking of how hard most of our lives were in the 1920s and 1930s, she was talking about the patriarchy and misogyny within the black community that keeps so many of us mute chambermaids who are regularly beaten, but perhaps most important, she was talking about what that hardness did to us, or rather, to others in dealing with us. Our ability to survive atrocity, to make something from nothing, to bounce back day after day -- somehow, this makes the world see us as rhino-skinned, never soft. Quadruple-lunged, never asthmatic. Incapable of giggling, blushing or shutting the hell up. Sisters are essentialized as indefatigable, never in need of a door held open, a chair pulled out. A "how are you doing, really?" I have to believe that somewhere in there is also the belief that the niceties are wasted on us, coarse cows that we are. Bears are happy shitting in the woods and "sistaz" ain't got no time for no nonsense like sweet talk, a man who rises when we do, or a lover to whisper naughty things to in the dark. And we don't need no stinking flowers either, or at least Jamie Foxx's hospitalized mother didn't; in "Collateral," she rejected them and belittled him for his foolishness. The bedraggled dandelions I got for Mother's Day this year will shrivel up and blow away before I'll part with them.

Owen, Vince: We long for those things. It's a misery to black woman why our strength, the strength that kept our people from extinction and which holds the community together yet, makes us seem manly somehow, as if no white woman has ever roughened her pink hands or survived rape for her family's sake. Or been a bitch. Why is it so hard to fathom that we can raise our children alone (if need be, rarely by preference), work two jobs and still look good in a miniskirt. Still want to look good in a miniskirt. Sisters are simply not seen as either ladylike or, to put it bluntly, fuckable. Rapeable, certainly, as the history of slavery and Jim Crow prove, just not fuckable.

I realized this in the 1980s and '90s when, because of my career choices, I was usually the only woman and only black around. I'd say nothing as my office mates, the men I partied with and who backed me to the hilt professionally, would grouse about the lack of women. I was smarter and better-looking than they were. I was, to take a page from my plain-spoken Vince, hot. I wore uncomfortably tight clothing. Makeup and sheer pantyhose. Nail polish. Jane Fonda for daaaaays. My heels were so legendary, my nickname was Spike. Oh, Debra dressed shamefully in the summertime. But to most white men, to the men who occupied the world that my life choices drew me to, I was invisible. When I finally married at 40, it was to the first man who'd asked me out in five years. I had been holding out for a brother but, realizing that was even less likely to happen, finally let that go. . . .

In the '80s and '90s, I reacted to my sexual invisibility vis-à-vis white men with faux feminist sarcasm and wannabe black nationalist contempt. But I'm 46 now and far less full of bullshit. I'm not angry. I'm hurt. It's not that I want white men to want me. I want all men to want me. I want to be seen as desirable, if I actually am. As available, if I actually am. As fuckable, though you should be so lucky. But, because I'm black, I'm somehow seen as a gender crasher, an imposter fronting as a real woman. Liable to get the sexual bum's rush at any moment. No wonder so many of us are bitches. It protects us from rejection if we make it impossible to get anywhere near us in the first place.

Sitting there in the dark, halfway through the "Wedding Crashers" montage, I realized that I was jealous of those girls just setting out in life and thought I was getting over it. . . . In the end, all I was allowed to do was watch how "real women" live. Every woman will be able to picture herself in that parade of female pleasure, female power and eternal youth. Every woman but the black ones.

A basically sweet, silly movie has me, late in life, reconsidering my impatience with nitnoy black separatism -- black dorms, Miss Black America pageants, "The Wiz." I still believe that true separatism is not a viable option for a group comprising only 13 percent of the population, but perhaps a psychological one may well be required to maintain our mental health. As with OJ and Michael Jackson, white folks have turned on me when I've been among the most "assimilated" of Negroes, and I went slinking back to the hood. I've been soothing myself, post-"Crashers," with marathon sessions of the Soul Food compilation. What a relief. What a refuge. In that parallel universe, that majority-black fantasy land, sisters can be mere women, just women, any woman. Ones with "hair like a black girl's" or ones with weaves. Light, bright, damn near white, chocolate and everything in between. Straight. Gay. Working-class and multimillionaire. Godless and God-fearing. Bitchy and sweet. All different, all little concerned with white folks, all getting laid since the brothers there (unlike in the real world) can't take their eyes off us.

For us mules of the world, it's too bad that world doesn't exist either.
[Edited 8/8/05 12:39pm]
[Edited 8/8/05 12:39pm]

My response?

I can understand her frustration, and she makes a powerful point: black women are the least desirable women in American society. Agree with it or not, the mass media is the window to our culture's soul these days. Aside from Black women who fit an motherly image, Like Oprah or Queen Latifah, or the "exotic mulatto" image (Halle Berry), or the "queen bee" image (Omarosa), black women don't get the exposure and attention their white counterparts do. Sisters like Nia Long, Sanaa Lathan, Lisa Raye, Nicole Ari Parker, etc. blow the Jennifer Anistons of the world out of the water but they may as well not exist in country's consciousness.

I disagree with some of the things Dickerson says, but I'll let you guys weigh in.

Hhmm ...

Has she seen "Guess Who"? Ashton Kutcher does the electric slide and sings Lou Rawls.

namepeace said:

I will agree that black female celebrities don't get the attention in the mainstream media that white chicks do. But you think black chicks got it bad? How 'bout Asian chicks? I have a friend who posted an online ad and, in the space "Celebrities I resemble", she wrote "Lucy Liu or Lisa Ling - I mean, what other choices do I have?". Sad, but true.

Ace said:

good point ... made me think also what about native ( indian ) american women

Mach said:

You could say the same for Jewish women. I mean there's Winona Ryder and Natalie Portman. Can you name another Jewish sista who's seen as a sex symbol?

namepeace said:

Uh, I think white folks (and most black folks) turned on O.J. and Michael Jackson when they murdered and sexually molested little boys, respectively.

Ace said:

Double Standard!!!!!

What!!!! There isn’t enough debauchery and superficial meaningless sex romps in Black film or life to satisfy her? or maybe it’s Black life she’s not satisfied with. Why should she be??? Why would a White dominant culture suddenly regard her existence or culture as being equal or compatible with theirs? Does she realize not long ago she wouldn’t have been considered human, that to regarded her as lady would be the ultimate insult in the lowest of Caucasian circles? Of course Ms.Dickerson probably realizes this, but instead of railing against the inequities of a Eurocentric class society (despite her pseudo Black feminist phase) or simply realizing its flaws, she covets the life of a White woman. Not any ole’ white women who might have had a fucked up life or might be ugly, but an attractive, bourgeoisie white woman who is considered “fuckable” by white men.

I hope that Martini went down well. Too bad your life’s long ambition of being a white woman of leisure was hopelessly dashed by the Wedding Crashers.



oh my god, like, I gotta totally see that part .....



The Artistry



"Wedding Crashers"....the empowering movie of the year



They're busy picking up woman who are not Black, and not 46.



Homogenization of black culture by profiteering White men is the only domination that I can see.






There was nothing subconcious about it, dear.









Yea, cause a sister could never land a handsome brother.....



The world or the world that matters to you...As I stated before the white world will not affirm your beauty or whatever standard you gauge love by. Their are many people in this world that love Black women. Black women who love themselves will never be heart broken.



Defining female or womanhood by the standards of an arcane European class society. Niceties??? She's been reading too much Jane Austen!!! Countless cultures of women are no less female because they worked or beared children.


Maybe you should tell them u like Cheap Trick.



So you wanna be a model, pinup, or the A typical white woman who is seemingly adored by the masses. What does it mean that White men don't find you desirable??? Is their approval more significant???


go watch Foxy Brown and get back to me.



or maybe drugs. Could we be anymore seperate???? or is that just a subconscious decision?


slinking



Yea, cause that world exist for millions of white women in their perfect universe. So Black men don't want her either I highly doubt that.





I don't know about you guys, but I see a beautiful woman there. Is she perfect??? No..... but Robert Deniro would hit that in second.

Sorry, Ms. Dickerson, being a Black woman is a thankless job and I have discussed your plight with the deepest sorrow, but your claims with regards to this movie seem rather superficial and shallow.

Ultimately it comes down to the individual of course. But in very general terms I'm usually more physically attracted to black women than to white. I also find Asian women very desirable. In a sense I guess ethnic favouritism is just as bad as ethnic discrimination (two sides of the same coin), but we shouldn't have to apologize for our sexual preferences. They are what they are, no matter if they were formed by culture, biology or something else.

lilgish said:[quote]

Ace said:

I'm not trying to single you out, but didn't Lil Gish star in Griffith's Birth of A Nation?

DorothyParkerWasCool said:

yup...she did... I would like to here your stuff on Birth of a Nation or the Klainsman and its effect on Black women. I like movies and a friend of mine says she was nice otherwise it woulda been another MJ avatar and handle.

Ace said:

True.

But Asian men would beg to differ, If media reports are true, they can't get their female counterparts to give them the time of day. Asian women are intermarrying with white men at higher rates. I'm not against that at all, I'm just saying.

You said what I was thinking. Perhaps this article, which I think makes some very good points in general, has exposed a latent element of self-loathing in Ms. Dickerson.

lilgish said:[quote]

Ace said:

Woody Allen is not a child molester. He did fuck his girlfriend's adopted, adult daughter (which is a remarkably shitty thing to do), but would you equate that with murder, or molesting children?

And, by the way, the white community shunned him plenty. After the scandal, his popularity and box office plummeted in much the same way O.J.'s and M.J.'s have.

Ace said:

I thought she was underage?

thesexofit said:

No. She was way too young for him, but not underage. And it doesn't excuse what - again - was a remarkably shitty thing to do, but they are still married.

Ace said:

Woody did and does continue to f his girlfriend's adopted, adult daughter. Michael Jackson has not been proven to have molested anyone. Say whatcha like 'bout those accusations, but there is no denying Michael has given us some of our greatest music

imagine how that thread would go over.....

lilgish said:

I do not equate fucking your girlfriend's daughter with murder or child molestation, but that's just me.

As for Mikey, I guess it's just a coincidence that he seems to prefer the company of male children and that he has paid out millions of dollars to prevent molestation charges from going to court.

But (that said), if I were an MJ fan, I would have no problem separating the art from the artist.

Ace said:

neither do I, but I don't know if MJ or OJ were guilty in their cases, especially MJ's weak case. Woody is with Soon Yi for sure.
I don't care, I always separate the art from the artist... way to get off topic and sorry for resurrecting a dying thread with a lame essay. OJ and MJ are completly different in terms of how thet fit in with society, I don't think MJ ever really assimilated.

lilgish said:

No problem at all.

Yes, I think it would be stretch to say MJ "assimilated".

Personally, I don't see how there can be any doubt both OJ and MJ are guilty as sin. Jacko was damn lucky the accusers in this particular case were scumbags (maybe that's why this time he proceeded to trial?).

I may have never thought of this even if I saw the movie but she has some good points - I can identify w/ a lot of the things she says about Black women being generally unwanted as mates, I feel like that but I try to put it out of my mind b/c it's just SO WHACK & I have enough shit to depress me w/o worrying about that shit too

namepeace said:

I think there may be a greater frequency of this in Thailand than say 30 years ago, but I doubt much has changed in the last 10 years. Of course, that's just Thailand. I guess you're talking about Asian women in America?

namepeace said:

I see all kinds of men dating Asian women - I don't think they have it "worse" than Black women. You can't base it on the celebrities out there IMO. (depending on where you live) try taking note of how many Asian women you see partnered up w/ a dude & how many Black women you see partnered up. I see HELL OF Black women by they damn selves all the time Of course this doesn't mean they don't have a man at home but it's interesting just watching folks on the street/in stores/etc.

CalhounSq said:

Fair points all. All I'm talking about is a perspective:

e.g., for what it's worth . . .


http://www.nationalreview...ature.html

http://www.modernman.com/.../1175.html

Ace said:

But at least black guys love Asian chicks. They're tight!

JoeyMFinCoco said:

I am all for dating Asian chicks. And black chicks. And Jewish chicks. Hell, all chicks! Unfortunately, I am not so open-minded when it comes to body-type, but that's society's fault!