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The other day I was talking to Anthony about love and the rarity of seeing love expressed between black couples on screen. My girls who are now in middle school are getting their first glimpse of what relationships look like and I see myself trying to carefully guide them into what love really looks like . I feel kinda bad for them but I will get into that in another blog. Relationships start around the 5th grade. And for the most part they are innocent. Maybe the guy says I like you , will you be my girlfriend and then he pushes you on the swing or maybe he pushes you down. You just never know with guys. Most of the time it evolves from there . Sometimes it doesn’t and will never.
I had my first boyfriend in the 6th grade . We were broken up into pods and his pod was down the hallway from my pod . I didn’t get to see him until recess and after school. During recess he would say hey and run away . After school we would hang around and probably didn’t say two words to each other. One day he brought my books to the truck and my Dad said , no we are not doing this and that never happened again . We didn’t talk on the phone and we may have passed a note that said hey what’s up but nothing too intense. I think we stayed together the entire school year, I don’t really remember. And then we moved along to the 7th/8th grade and that’s where things got sketchy. First of all we were all entirely too young to try to date . But two, the innocence of relationships had started to fade. Now that I’m older I’m blaming it on the media. Why ? Well you tend to do what you see and if you don’t see it …how will you know what to do? And though being in a relationship is instinctive, knowing how to be in a relationship is lead by example.
grew up in a two parent family. I saw love daily and unconditionally. My household was traditional in some aspects. My father was the breadwinner but so was my mother. My dad had two jobs and my mother owned two businesses. Both my parents attended my school events , Mom took us to school, Dad picked us up. And daily I saw the expression of love between my parents daily . So I kinda knew what to expect when it came down to relationships
By the time 8th grade rolled around I just didn’t want anything to do with a relationship. See it was by the time 8th grade rolls around we are that the age that the media paints a picture of what love looks like. And if you don’t believe let’s take a look at the movies that were out around that time… Boys in the Hood, Juice, Poetic Justice, New Jack City, Menace to Society , Boomerang,Friday and then there was Jason’s lyric ( that my parents didn’t let me watch ). Now they showed a view of love that happened to be a little dysfunctional not all but mostly. Now before you guys try and cancel me …I didn’t say these movies weren’t good. I enjoyed watching them and they were a staple from my youth. But they didn’t show a great picture of what love looks like for everyone Where are the black movies like, Frankie and Johnny, Sleepless in Seattle or the Notebook. And let’s face it what young black impressional person wants to watch a movie that doesn’t have young black impressional people in it.
I don’t know if its unconsciously or consciously but the media tends to create a broad reality that is not a total reality. Now we can go and google couples and we won’t see ourselves, we can google love and we won’t see ourselves. On the other hand we can google baby daddy drama or baby mama and you’ll immediately see us. What’s going on here…I have more . Stay tuned…Basically
Tesha
