Everything's Trash, But It's Okay

by Phoebe Robinson

Google knew it couldn’t save me from myself, probably did the sign of the cross, and mumbled under its breath, “Maya Angelou, I know you didn’t work this hard so Phoebe could do this bullshit, yet here we are.” I typed “penis.” And pressed enter.

Why? Because I am a trash person living in a trash world.

To be clear, I’m not calling myself “trash” because I’m fishing for a compliment. I’m saying this because I love myself. And you know what they say: Only with the people and things you love can you be truly, and sometimes brutally, honest.

Real talk though, if my allergic-to-manual-labor-with-the-upper-body-strength-of-an-eight-year-old self could find a dude who could make a fire as big as an entire troll doll (if not bigger), I would say adios to “spray and pray” life and yes to “leave it in and let our new lineage begin” life.

I misspelled my own name.

Instead of telling my masseuse that I needed a moment, I eked out a fart in segments like it was a seven-course tasting menu at Spago. Oy. A fart is still a fart no matter how you try and dole it out over time to lessen its effects. I think the Dalai Lams said that.

I snuck a burrito bowl from Chipotle into the movie theater and made it everyone’s responsibility during Creed to be a lookout in an after-school special and make sure I didn’t get busted by one of the ushers.

Even though The Bachelor and The Bachelorette burn my toast with their antifeminist ignorance, I watched The Bachelorette when they cast their first black bachelorette, Rachel Lindsay, and I thought, Ooooooh, this must’ve been what some white women went through when they chose race over gender and voted for Trump. Literally. Not. The. Same. Thing.

Free bleeding is generally considered a feminist move, but in my case, it was just unbridled laziness.

Is this what parenthood is? Something inconvenient happens with your kid and you must fight all urges to be like, “Peace out, dawg,” and instead help them? Like if my kid came to me and said, “Mom, I need new shoes for school and the mall closes in thirty minutes,” I can’t respond with, “Okay, but I need to read this InStyle magazine profile about some white lady in Marrakesh—YOU KNOW, A PLACE I CAN’T AFFORD TO VISIT BECAUSE I HAD YOUR ASS—doing a fashion diary and posing next to elephants that are like, ‘Bish, why you have that goofy AF smile on your face when the back of my knees are like ashy celery?’”

Point is, because I didn’t want to leave my hotel room, I free-bled for two days, which were my super light days, so it was less a typical menstruation sitch and more like a few drops from a glass of V8 Splash spilling on a kitchen counter. Then on day three, I called Olga, she gave me one pad from her personal stash, and I went to the convenience store.

THE FACT THAT I MADE THAT STUPID “SPRAY AND PRAY” SEX COMMENT WHEN I KNOW MY PARENTS ARE GOING TO READ THIS BOOK BECAUSE I WAS HOPING THE JOKE WOULD MAKE READERS LAF (TYPO, BUT I’M LEAVING I...

me: No one on this planet can completely rid themselves of their trash ways. Meaning you, me, your parents, the local nun, J. R. R. Tolkien, Selena (both Quintanilla-Pérez and Gomez), Langston Hughes, your auntie, all your cousins (but you already knew that tho), the entire bobsled team from Cool Runnings, the lunch waitstaff at Mae Mae Café who told me after I asked for the egg on my avocado toast to be scrambled instead of fried that they can only scramble eggs in the morning (so ig), Galileo Galilei, your boyfriend or girlfriend/husband or wife/side pieces obvs, manufacturers who make it impossible to open scissors packages unless you already own a pair of scissors, Lucy Liu, the movie To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (J/K, it is the most perfect movie that ever movied), poet Gwendolyn Brooks, Martin Luther King Jr., and the founder of the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital (we don’t know their life). All of them have been low-key trash from time to time. Period. End of subject. No rebuttal required.

I think admitting to our “trashery” is a positive because it helps us see ourselves more clearly and makes it a liiiittle bit easier to deal with the Major Trash that’s the world right now.

meanwhile, the Honey Nut Cheerios bee is like, “Every day, I’m legit buzzing the Bone Thugs-N-Harmony ‘Tha Crossroads’ melody because my family is dying thanks to humans, but a’ight, keep pretending Earth isn’t on life support.”

might view the word “okay” as not promising. But life is fucking hard. Extremely hard for most. And that’s why, to me, “okay” is not a state of settling (aka ordering Sprite at Wahlburgers, but all they have is Fresca and you’re like, “Sure, I guess”—see also: dining at Wahlburgers in the first place); “okay” is a state of acceptance and then pushing forward (aka coming to terms with the fact that you were sober when eating at Wahlburgers, analyzing everything in your life that led up to that moment, and thinking to yourself, I’m going back to school, I’m joining a gym, I’m completing my Alicia Keys music catalogue once and for all, or whatever gets you back on the right track in life).

In all seriousness, to me, waking up every day and not only contending with our baser instincts but also dealing with the multitude of curveballs that life throws our way and coming out the other side, perhaps a little dinged up but tougher and smarter and ultimately okay, is good. In fact, okay is great. Better yet, okay is for closers.

To put this in perspective, I’ve never seen Schindler’s List, but I’ve devoured seas three of ANTM no less than eight times. If my eyeballs could #Unsubscribe from my body, they would.

I’m also sure that you’re nowhere near done closing on the regs, nor finished with the everlasting journey of accepting and dealing with your own trash as well as others’. I know I’m not.

This is one of my favorite things about black parents, besides watching them cuss out their kids in public and witnessing the resulting fallout on their child’s face. (Truly, getting read to filth in a Burlington Coat Factory will really make you have a mini existential crisis.) But getting back to my original point: Black parents typically have five to seven celebrities that they are impressed with—and this roster of celebs will never ever change, mind you, for as long as the parents live—and all the other famous people? The. Parentals. Could. Not. Give. Less. Of. A. Fuck. About.

Sure, compatibility, sharing same values, attraction, and emotionally and financially supporting each other matters greatly in a marriage, blah, blah, blah. Whatever. If my future husb looks at me the way Trudeau stays looking at Obama, we won’t have any problems. If not, there will be some dreadheaded n***** in the lobby, waiting on bae. #ChanceTheRapperReference.

Every day, I struggle not only with rewiring my brain to not equate self-worth with how my body looks but also with not letting men and clothing companies define my own gaze.

Yet here most women are with very complicated, time-consuming, and counterproductive relationships with their bodies, which helps explain why, at times, especially for me, straight men’s opinions about us seem to matter as much as, if not more than, our own. Ooof. That last bit might be a tad scary to own up to, but it has certainly been true for me in the past.

But for real, who are these people who have swag in their twenties? Or in their teens? I’m talking about teens like the singer Monica. She was young as hell when she sang about not messing with you romantically, spiritually, or emotionally while on her period in “Don’t Take It Personal (Just One of Dem Days)” over a fire beat that had grown-ass women and men bumping it in their cars. Not only that, but It. Was. Her. Debut. Song. That’s right: Monica Denise Arnold was out there in those streets from the beginning, standing in her truth in the Always Infinity with Wings aisle. And the pièce de résistance? She was only fourteen when she did all of this. When I was fourteen and had my period, I’d quickly and not so discreetly wrap a zip-up Eddie Bauer fleece around my waist after bleeding through my pants at school, and when anyone would ask me why I did that, I’d just say, “DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT!”

Let’s take a moment because I need to drag both of us for this foolish choice. I had 36,000 DVDs for us to choose between, ranging from cutesy (Brown Sugar), scary enough to make us cuddle close together but not enough to ruin romantic vibes (The Ring), and vintage sexiness with high drama (Carmen Jones), and we. Both. Still. Chose. Wedding Crashers. That’d be like getting ready to fight any of the X-Men by choosing from myriad superhero powers including invisibility, telepathy, and weather modification and instead going, “I think I’ll use this dusty-ass musket that takes seven minutes to reload and was last used during the Civil War.” Completely stupid, right? Sure, but ya know what? Eric and I still ended up making out, so I guess watching peak Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn is enough to get my motor running, which is something I can’t unlearn about myself. Derp.

“. . . Leah Remini deserves a Purple Heart and a lifetime supply of agave syrup for all the tea she spilled in her Scientology docuseries,”

Eric began, “Ya know . . .” And then I began cautiously, “Uh-huh?” “. . . there are exercises that you can do to tone up your thighs.” NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPE. JUST FUCKING NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPE! Y’all, this the biggest nope I done noped in my entire life. Bigger than the nope I feel when I see a grown-ass dude wearing Crocs with socks. Bigger than the nope when my iPhone goes from 40 percent to 12 percent all because I played the game Two Dots for approximately three and a half minutes. And bigger than the nope I screamed when a pigeon drive-by-pooped on my arm and friends told me that means good luck. Sorry, but if birds messily taking dumps on me the way a pastry chef tries to finish icing a cake with three seconds remaining on a MasterChef challenge is supposed to signal something good is coming my way, well, let me go on record stating that I would rather have a mediocre life with C-plus peen and C-minus cuisine.

don’t you ever in your life insult my body and then drop a dollop of “no worries” on top like it’s Cool Whip on a slice of peach cobbler.

acceptable. But before I get into how society has conditioned men to express all opinions, especially the hurtful ones, about women to women, let’s return to #Thighgate2010, because every lady I know—whether she is gay, straight, or anywhere on the sexuality spectrum—has self-esteem issues in part due to outside sources like Eric.

If you want to be an asshole, then be an asshole instead of pretending women not being super down to be your punching bag means they don’t know what real friendship is or, worse yet, implying that it’s aspirational to reject whatever society has deemed unacceptable characteristics in women (feelings) in exchange for mimicking toxic male behavior (being a dick due to own lack of self-esteem). It’s not OKAY, men.

We’re still subjected to fashion and society’s two-prong attack—physical (not making clothes in appropriate sizes that will fit) and psychological/emotional (making women feel bad/sad/guilty/ashamed/like failures for not being able to fit into clothing)—in the hopes that we’ll change and adhere to the often unhealthy and unrealistic body standards so as to perform womanhood the way the patriarchy wants us to.

Um, mofo, can the designer then just make a medium that is a full fucking medium? I don’t need to be out in these streets dealing with all these smalls masquerading as mediums and lulling me into a false sense of security when there’s only enough fabric allowance for you to have a food baby made up of sixteen peanut M&M’s. These are the kinds of smalls where the bottom of the shirt rides up your stomach approximately 1.6 seconds after you put it on. And then you look like Will Ferrell in the “Need More Cowbell” SNL sketch.

An XS Spanx?!?! What in the sneak-into-the-bathroom-and-slip-off-your-shapewear-before-sex hell is this? WHY WOULD YOU GET ME A SIZE XS SPANX WHEN I’M A SIZE 10?!

Y’all, remember in school when you’d see that one black girl who straightened her hair to its maximum length, which ended up not being very long at all, and she gathered it into the shortest, barely there #StrugglePonytail where just past the elastic ponytail holder was the tiniest tuft of hair that looked like bristles from a Bob Ross paintbrush, and if you stood close enough to her, you could hear her overworked hair humming the Negro spiritual “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” because it barely had the strenf to carry on and was ready to meet its maker?

So while it’s “cute” that the prevailing thought is that being a petite woman is just about wearing the chicest outfit from fancy designers, it’s for damn sure not about fashion. The truth is, being in the single digits means you’re respected, allowed to be heard, deserving of love and a job, and more importantly, it’s acceptable for you to have self-esteem. You are worthy and aspirational. And if you don’t fall in line, then you’re shit out of luck and a cautionary tale. So, no, size is not a matter of frivolity or self-absorption. Size, to me and a hell of a lot of women, is a question of: Will I have to fight that much harder to have the full, rich, delicious life I dream of and work for? Unfortunately, the answer is yes. Don’t believe me? I have the receipts, and they are long AF, like the kind you get from CVS.

Furthermore, I’m talking about how if I can reject society’s expectation of being the “respectable black person” (aka behaving in a manner to assimilate within white society and not ruffle feathers), then I can be just as adamant about rejecting the notion of the “respectable waif” aka a woman who dedicates herself to adhering to what the culture decides is beautiful.

Well, fuck compliance. I repeat: FUCK. COMPLIANCE. I don’t want any of us to be compliant anymore. That’s for suckers. Be defiant, or if you already are, continue to be so. And for those who aren’t yet, let’s eat, breathe, and sleep defiance until it becomes our daily routine to dare the fuck out of people and ourselves.

The speech is iconic, and dare I write that, in particular, Tyra’s “I was rooting for you; we were all rooting for you” is one of the most important quotes of our time, right up there with John F. Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” Michelle Obama’s “When they go low, we go high,” and the classic Ying Yang Twins rap lyric “Ay, bitch! Wait till you see my dick.”

She was OverIt.Edu/NoneOfYourCreditsWillTransfer and made that clear to everyone.

Black mamas (and papas) know the chips tend to be stacked against them and their children, that their kids will have a tougher time getting their foot in the door than their white counterparts, and, furthermore, that they’ll have less room for error once they get beyond the door.

the realization that she perhaps wanted this for Tiffany more than Tiff wanted it for herself. And while Tyra might be the pop culture face of that realization and iconic statement, the truth is, that isn’t just a black-mama feeling; it’s a universal one we’ve all experienced.

it? IDK about anyone else, but I am, at this particular moment, extremely confused and emotionally conflicted about the state of womanhood and feminism in America.

While I was always low-key suspicious about feminism thanks to reading about the history of this country as well as being a black woman living in it, the election of Donald Trump as the forty-fifth president of the United States, thanks in part to the 53 percent of white women who voted for him, proved to me that we aren’t living in a feminist country. And ever since the night that number 45 was elected, feminism has seemed to be in a bit of a state of emergency.

Feminism, like any movement that’s designed to challenge the status quo and strive for equality, has always been in some state of emergency. Has always had to contend with blowing out fires, both internal and external. Has alw...

The induction of the “new normal” is scary, exhilarating, and so overwhelming that you might laugh or cry or be stunned to silence. Being that deeply connected to the energy vibrating from everyone around you is the stuff of comic book lore and almost too much for the human body to take while, at the same time, it’s kind of exhilarating seeing how capable our bodies are.

It became clear that Clinton was not going to hit that magical number of 270 Electoral College votes, and the world as we knew it was over. That’s not an overstatement. The hopes and dreams that Barack Obama had set in motion seemed to evaporate in an instant. Some of us cried. Others were so devastated that they put down the alcohol. There were also some who were angry. Most of all, we felt hopeless, helpless, and stunned.

Therefore, I couldn’t help but wonder, isn’t the fact that I never fully believed Trump could be number 45 a sign that my stubbornness and naïveté prevented me from seeing America for what it truly is? Yes, but that’s not entirely my fault.

Despite all this ugliness, there was no denying that seeing this black man elected president—with that black-ass name of Barack Hussein Obama, married to a black-ass woman named Michelle, who not only was accomplished in her own right but also showed she had autonomy outside of being someone’s wife, and together the two of them raised two black-ass kids—had lulled me into a false sense of security. It felt like a new era, and that anything was possible because there was proof of it every day inside the White House. It felt like actual, groundbreaking change, but now that this nation is two years and counting away from those glory days, I look back at the Obama years, and I see more clearly what that time represented for me. I spent those eight years living the way some people do during January 1 through 4.

#NewYearSameMeStrugglingToDoTheBareMinimum.

Knowing you can act a fool because you’re well respected in the workplace so no one will call you out—that is abuse of power.