Really?

Many thanks to Abena for this feature. Abena blogs at Girl, It's Not Just You which is a great blog.
Exams are over and I'll be posting what I've been working on recently later tonight.

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. - Emmerson

Be good.

Real Beauty

Name: Brianna McCarthy

Your girls (your art) are always so enchanting. It's interesting that they're also natural. How important do you think natural hair is to a black woman's identity?

Thank you! I think natural hair is about understanding, acceptance and self-love. That’s not to say that women who don’t have natural hair lack these things, it’s that so often we don’t appreciate our hair because it doesn’t ascribe to a particular ideal of beauty – we want to be like something else because we’ve been taught that what we have is not good enough and that needs to change. It’s not a simple matter of any woman of any race saying “I wish my feet were smaller”, it’s a pervasive mindset that we need to be different, less Black, more non-black – we struggle with our hair texture and skin colour and there is a whole plethora of stereotypes that go along with those things. All this to say, I love blackness, ethnicity, “mixedness” that’s celebrated, loved and appreciated. I hope that there’ll come a time when it won’t be necessary to even discuss this. It’s my hope that my ladies illustrate women who simply are – ethnic pride, ethnic understanding, acceptance of the diversity of humanity and strength.

Name an obstacle(s) that black women are presented with and how you think they can overcome that obstacle.

I think our biggest obstacle is how much we struggle with self esteem. Of course that can't apply to everyone but it's the biggest problem I see. Overcoming it, I believe, takes stepping into yourself, not strictly as a Black woman but as a person, an entity who has much to offer. I also think it takes a certain level of dismissing the he-say and she-say, the extra opinions that have us constantly trying to prove something. Just be your very best and love who you are.

What keeps you strong and motivated?...What keeps you going each day?

Faith. Knowing that I haven’t learnt even a quarter of what I need to learn. I tend to be an untrusting person; almost to a fault so I’d like to see how that progresses as well. I enjoy finding out new things – even when they come as hard lessons. Knowing myself,cultivating sincerity and empathy in myself and seeking excellence in what I decide to do. Fascinating, strong and extra-ordinary people are also motivators. Day to day though, my strongest motivator has to be that innate need to know, to find out, to have discourse about what happens; I’m a talker, I talk about what bothers me, even if it’s difficult because I’ve seen that there’s merit in honesty.