Author Archives: Tiffany

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About Tiffany

I am "biracial", but I'm mostly lots of other things

it is both

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there is no light without darkness… there is no darkness without light… everything is everything… my joy only runs as deep as my sorrow… it’s all good…

“Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. It is both.

Appreciating the gloriousness inspires us, encourages us, cheers us up, gives us a bigger perspective, energizes us. We feel connected. But if that’s all that’s happening, we get arrogant and start to look down on others, and there is a sense of making ourselves a big deal and being really serious about it, wanting it to be like that forever. The gloriousness becomes tinged by craving and addiction.

On the other hand, wretchedness–life’s painful aspect–softens us up considerably. Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person. When you are feeling a lot of grief, you can look right into somebody’s eyes because you feel you haven’t got anything to lose–you’re just there. The wretchedness humbles us and softens us, but if we were only wretched, we would all just go down the tubes. We’d be so depressed, discouraged, and hopeless that we wouldn’t have enough energy to eat an apple.

Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us. They go together.”

Excerpted from “Start Where You Are”

by Pema Chödrön

unsavory initial recognition

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i’ve no idea where i found this.  it’s been waiting to be posted since last july…

in light of the current posting trend over here, i found the last line to be somewhat relevant…”document(s) white recognition of beauty and attraction in their slaves.”  not quite so “flattering” as the modern recognition.
An attractive and well dressed mulatto woman from New Orleans. A sixth plate dagu

Her light skin color was itself evidence of miscegenation.
She was quite possibly a free woman and as such, the photograph would contribute little to a study of slavery. Yet the likelihood remains that she was enslaved. If so, this woman’s attractive looks and fancy dress imply she could have been owned or hired as a slave mistress.

Interracial sexual exploitation, along with brutal punishment and separation of families, was a terrible aspect of slavery. The practice was far from unknown throughout the antebellum South and existed with special visibility in New Orleans. If the daguerreotype of this woman could for a moment be interpreted in such a fashion, then commissioned by her escort, it would document white recognition of beauty and attraction in their slaves.

re: beauty-full

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these depictions are what inspired me to blog about the beauty standard thing in the first place.  i don’t know how that post became so personal, but i suppose it’s fitting after my long absence that i should lead off with a bit more of myself.  anyhow, i wonder what the subjects of these renderings and/or the artists who created the images would have made of this ‘epitome of beauty’ stuff.

Head of a Mulatto Woman by Joanna Mary Boyce

Portrait of a Mulatto Girl – 1935 by Aaron Douglas

Mulatto with Bowler Hat by Jules Pascin

Study of the Head of a Young Mulatto Woman, Full Face – by Anthony Frederick Sandys

The Quadroon-1880 by George Fuller

The Octoroon

beauty-full

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so, while i was “away” one of the big community newsflashes was that mixed-race is the new standard of beauty.  um…ok, cool…i guess…or, whatever!…i’m not really sure where i stand on this one, because, just like race, a standard of beauty really has no basis in reality.  that’s merely an opinion.  however, the fact 64% of the people polled in the Allure magazine survey that delivered us this “good” news are of the opinion that they generally find mixed-race women to be the epitome of beauty, leads me to ponder a couple of things:

1. we’re not so invisible anymore.  they didn’t choose light-skinned black people with “good hair,” or asians who may also be perceived as a little hispanic too as the exemplification of beauty.  they chose mixed-race.  it was on list.  that’s progress, no?

2. i firmly believe that there is no such thing as race, not in terms of the universal reality which i perceive to be very different from the mainstream worldly reality.  yet within the confines of the discussion of the topic at hand (funny (and frustrating) how this ‘non-existent’ thing is so confining) i would say that we are all mixed race.  so who amongst us is not full of beauty?

3. i also think about all the previous generations of mixed people who may have felt invisible and/or less than and/or all that jazz… i think about me… i wish i could have told this girl that if she could just wait 10-20 years or so, some of the things she felt uncomfortable with and perhaps even unloveable because of would come to be perceived as beautiful… so she should just rest assured in herself and wait for the world to catch up…

wow! these pictures make me so uncomfortable. just like i was back then.

now…not that i’m all caught up in thinking of myself as some biracial beauty…but…i gotta say…progress, no?

if i had to identify something beautiful about this picture, i would say it’s that i seem unapologetically present and, dare i say, confident even. i’d like to see phrases like that enter the equation when calculating the standard of beauty… confident, present, compassionate, passionate, gracious, generous… how ’bout those undisputably beautiful things?