They say kids say the darndest things, but I think mostly that applies to adults. Consider this IM conversation I had with a friend of mine, a 20-sumn editor at a magazine in New York fashion magazine. She's cool with me using this story so long as I don't identify her, and since there are plenty of 20-sumns at Gotham City clothes rags, I think I'm good here.
Anywho, Miss Editor's losing a lil weight, so we're talking about workout programs and the like. The conversation goes:
Miss Editor: I think I may have lost too much weight
KTR: Oh no...you didn't lose the ass did you?
Miss Editor: LOL! People keep saying that...why is that so important?
KTR: Are you serious? Ass is one of the things that makes black women beautiful. Seriously, no homo. I'm not being funny about that, it's just something that tends to be a distinguishing characteristic of a lot of black women.
Miss Editor: So then what's the distinguishing characteristic of black men? Nevermind.
KTR: No, not nevermind. You're the woman, you tell me what the distinguishing characteristic is.
Miss Editor: Honestly, the DONKEY KONG! Seriously. I've been with white men, wasn't feeling it. Even been with an Asian guy, definitely wasn't feeling that....
The "donkey kong"? That's funny enough on its own. But made it hilarious is that this conversation took place as I'm in the middle of reading Scott Poulson-Bryant's HUNG: A Meditation on the Measure of Black Men In America. Hung is Poulson-Bryant's deconstruction of the myth of The Big Black Dick, a treatise of sorts on how the proposition of being labeled physically and metaphorically HUGE by society at large can at once make you a walking threat worthy of lynch-mob justice (Emitt Till), while rendering you nothing more than a plaything in the eyes of a mere horny college girl (Poulson-Bryant himself).
In short, the book's about the fallacy of the black phallus and what that does to those of us who through birth have to carry both the fallacy and the phallus around with us.
Just food for thought.
