Fitting one's skin

Desdamona, a poet and emcee based in Minneapolis/St. Paul, created a lovely video poem in 2009. Entitled "Too Big For Your Skin," the video featured a poem that Desdamona had written some years earlier in memory of her mother, as well as the images of a range of women in the Twin Cities. Some were deeply involved with the area's hip-hop scene and self-identified as b-girls. Others were women like my friend Bonnie who enjoyed a range of interests but were not particularly into hip-hop. (If you ever see the video, Bonnie's the blonde woman holding her then brand-new puppy, Huckleberry.)

            The theme of the video was that beauty for women comes in all shapes and sizes, and that women's personalities were so beautiful that they simply could not fit into the confines of physical skin. Desdamona posted the video on You Tube, hoping to create a virile effect in which women throughout the world would respond with video stories or poems about their own experiences.

            The video didn't quite go globally "virile" as Desdamona had hoped, but it did receive a fair amount of media attention in the Twin Cities area. I turned "Too Big for my Skin" into teaching material and had students view it, listen to it, and comment on it in classes ranging from Introduction to Political Science to Digital Storytelling. Among women (and often men), the video poem consistently struck a powerful chord. Women used their emotional reactions to the video to embark on discussions of body image, their own issues with self-hatred and desires to be someone else, and on how gender relationships code and constantly re-code society.

            "Too Big for my Skin" came back to me a few days before the Words Beats & Life conference when I made a joke out of an inadvertent grammatical error that came over to me via e-mail. Study rooms for a summer Institute on Mentoring, Teaching, and Learning were being assigned, and since the institute was taking place in the building where I worked, the organizer wanted to know if I wanted to use my office as my study area or if I would prefer being "someone else". I knew she meant "some place else" so jokingly I replied that after years and years of wishing I could be someone else, I had finally reached a stage in my life where I felt comfortable in my own skin.

            That memory lingered into the Words Beats & LIfe conference, as questions of identity, naming and re-naming took center stage. I was intrigued in stories that participants told in how they chose their "hip-hop names" and was especially interested to learn that many of the short one-syllable hip-hop names that are frequently heard often are regarded as acronyms for larger messages. This disclosure made me want to go back to every single hip-hop artist I have ever talked to and ask them more about how they chose their names and the meanings behind them.

            It did not occur to me at the time that the "hip-hop" names might be a form of armor that shields and protects a shyer, quieter, more vulnerable self from being outwardly focused and very public.

            A few days later, the link between naming and shyness is high in my mind. Let me try and connect the dots. At the end of the second day of the Words Beats & Life conference, a series of awards were given for achievement in hip-hop. One of those awards went to Martha Diaz, director of the Hip-Hop Education Center at New York University. I happened to be near Martha after she accepted her award, and gave her a congratulatory hug. Exuberantly, she declared, "We're all going out to celebrate!"

            All included me. But quickly a huge wave of shyness washed over me, leaving me feeling almost paralyzed. Work, I could do. But go out? Socialize? Talk? Let down my hair? Be something than all about research, teaching, learning, and work? 

            I ducked out of the conference center quickly while Martha went to take a photograph with Words Beats & LIfe executive drector Mazi Mustafa. I justified my decision to myself by saying that I was tired, that I wanted to get back to Fairfax where I was staying with my aunt before it got too late, that she had been planning to make masala dosa for dinner because I was in town and it would be a treat for me, and that I wanted some alone time to write.

            The bottom line, though, was that I was shy. I was afraid I would come across as socially awkward, as a little bumbling girl (even though I am fifty years old), and that I would no longer be seen as someone who belonged with them at a conference like this one.

            The shyness continued into the next day, a fact that continued to amaze me. A young woman who had just finished her undergrad degree at Georgetown University was sitting in front of me as Fab Five Freddy was being interviewed about his experiences n hip-hop. As he dropped one amazing story after another, the woman kept turning around to exclaim to me how fascinated she was by the history of hip-hop she was learning through his experiences. The interview ended and we chatted for a few minutes. She looked like she wanted to approach Fab Five Freddy, but she also kept hesitating. Finally, I said, "You want to go talk to him, don't you?" She smiled and said she just wanted to tell him how much she enjoyed his stories but was afraid to approach him. "Just go up there," I said. "Everyone appreciates being told they're good. Especially when you really mean it."

            She approached him, and the two of them exchanged cards. A day or two later, I realized that I had not approached him. Or anything of the other more illustrious hip-hop pioneers who attended the conference. Connecting the dots, I understood why. Shyness. Big time shyness.

            Now, if you met me in person, you would know I'm not shy. I might be quiet at times, but when I have something to say, I say it and speak my mind. When I'm passionate about a point I want to make, I don’t even worry about being articulate. I just spit it all out, even if it sounds ridiculous and convoluted.

            Yet, I also remember when I first began my forays into hip-hop by interviewing and hanging out at all-women’s hip-hop events. Girls who were teenagers awed me to silence with their confidence, outwardness, and poise. B-girl icons like Ana Garcia (also known as Lady Rokafella) seemed so strong and bold that I shrunk into corners hoping I would not get in their way.

            Sound like sixth grade? Nope. I was in my mid to late forties, had worked for twenty-five years as a journalist and had stood up in front of students in classrooms teaching for nearly a decade. But awed by the “out there” personality of the artists, I found myself hiding behind my friend from Seattle Beloved1, an emcee who had done much to introduce me to the hip-hop scene in Seattle. Beloved1 was probably twenty years younger than me. Unlike me, she also was a mother. Somehow she mothered me.

            “Really,” said Beloved1 with an incredulous laugh when I told her my story of shrinking away from Rokafella. “She’s super-duper nice, and so dimunitive. You know what she told me, ‘Don’t call me a pioneer. Call me a sister.’ ”

            I had the chance to meet Rokafella again in 2011 at the first Hip-Hop Education Center Think Tank. When I approached her, she greeted me by saying, “Hi Himanee.”

            Did she know me?

            Then, she pointed to my name tag and asked me if she had pronounced my name right. We both laughed, and I told her how I had run away from her in fright two years earlier. She was interested in my research and nearly jumped with joy when I asked her if I could come out to where she was based sometime to interview her. She was amused by my shyness and I was thrilled by her openness.

These experiences left me with a question that I posed this morning to educators involved with the Hip-Hop Education Center think tank committee I’m working with: “How does hip-hop work with people who are painfully shy? I am curious for personal reasons and because the culture is so extrovert oriented.”

            The responses were insightful. One professor described a shy student who was able to get through a class presentation by pulling his hoodie up over his head and using it as “armor” to protect himself. A high school teacher talked of how a student created a different, more outward personality for himself through the hip-hop name he had chosen for himself. And, finally, Martha herself chimed in, noting that hip-hop’s fifth element of knowledge creates a space for those who feel uncomfortable with the four performative elements of break-dancing (b-boying/b-girling), emceeing, deejaying, and writing (graffiti). When I responded by sharing that it was she herself who had triggered my inquiry into shyness, she more or less laughed.

“Yeah, you were nowhere to be found after the event ended,” she said. She added that while writing is great, building relationships is what pulls people into the cipher.

Which leaves me wishing Desdamona’s “Too Big For My Skin” video poem had gone virile. If the poem could build the dialogue it has in my classrooms worldwide, wouldn’t the self-image of women be much different? Might we not all be b-girls?

 Here is a link to Too Big for My Skin.