Thursday, March 13, 2008

Kids today and their crazy expressions

I don't understand "hot mess", frankly. "Hot" has connoted sexiness for a long time, and still does. So I would think that a hot mess would be someone who's screwed up, but whom you still want to boink. But the sometimes helpful albeit distressingly unedited Urban Dictionary doesn't include that kind of hotness in any of its definitions, just repulsiveness. I don't know, I think there's an opportunity being missed here.

Then there's Hot Ghetto Mess, which also baffles me somewhat. And at this point you might have to excuse my cracka naivete. The front page of the site runs a film of assorted Af-Ams saying "We have got to do better." A lot of the approach seems to involve negative images and shaming. There's a large archive of photos meant to illustrate what to avoid/transcend. Here's my thing: I look at a lot of these pictures and say, "What's wrong with that?" A good number look like regular people who might be a little disheveled, or wearing something gaudy. Does being black mean that you can't get away with looking like a regular frazzled human?

Other pictures look like the more worksafe samples from porn sites. Any porn site worth its salt will employ a wide variety of models. So the fact that some black women got in there is not exactly scandal-worthy.

No comments: