Doing Some Laundry Pt. 2

A few weeks ago, I was having a mixed sex conversation about physical preferences with a group of friends. And as many males do, this one male acquaintance went in tough on the type of woman he prefers.

“She has to be tall, thick but not too thick, light skin, with long curly pool hair.”

As a proud caramel kinky-haired girl, I am not offended by these types of remarks. Every person has the right to date whoever they chose. And because I don’t really know him that well, I wasn’t going to attempt to school him on how many beautiful women he was losing out on by having such a narrow list.

BUT, then he went on, “I can’t date any girl my complexion or darker. Dark skinned women are not cute.” Houston, now we have a problem! Its one thing to praise certain physical traits because they are what makes your soldier stand at attention but to demean another in the process; that’s when I have a difficulty sitting by and remaining silent.

I am all for knowing what you like and standing by those desires. Take this past week for example. I was having another conversation with a black male I had never met before that night about the Lakers (I’m a diehard fan by the way, don’t mess with my team!) when Grace informed the group that the guy I was having a conversation with doesn’t date black girls. (Silent shrug) I turned to him in a non-threatening, I’m here to listen manner and asked him "Why?" He gave me his list of reasons, which he couldn’t even confidently verbalize, and all I said was "Okay." It’s not my place, nor my desire, to change every man or woman’s idea of beauty. I truly believe in the overused idiom, “to each their own.”

Whether you prefer extremely tall, skinny but not too skinny, kinky-hair, glasses-wearing women like myself or light skinned, normal height women like Grace it doesn’t bother me one bit. I know it’s a fact that I’m not every man’s fantasy girl (although at times you can’t tell me NATHAN.) However using derogatory words when describing your undesirable excluded pool of women is when you’ll get my neck rolling and finger shaking. In this case, I didn’t see the point in trying to have an in depth conversation with that acquaintance, so I made a conscious decision never to speak on the subject again. This isn’t going to be that hard seeing as I don’t interact with him very often. And if he asks about any of my light-skinned curly haired girlfriends (which he did by the way) I’ll be sure to inform them of his “preferences.”