India Arie – Get it Together .mp3
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Eleanor Roosevelt said it best. You should never let anyone bring you down mentally or emotionally. In the past couple of weeks I have really taken this statement to heart and applied it to my own self. People will try their hardest to bring you down with them. But you have the power to let them do this or not. Choose for yourself that you will never let anyone do this to you.

You see, people who try to bring others down or make others feel bad are really unhappy with themselves. So in order to make their miserable existence more tolerable, they have to make others miserable. These kinds of people come in all races, religions, classes, genders, and ages. They prey on the weak and helpless. These people are haters. They don’t hate you, they hate what you have. They hate to see you doing good. Their engulfed by jealousy and hatred for you and others like you. So the only way for them to feel good is to hurt you. They live and thrive off of your suffering. Suffering that they love to inflict.

You have to make sure you are strong in mind, soul, and body in order to resist the venom these people spew. Never let these people succeed in bringing you down to their miserable state. So many of us don’t realize that we have so much going for us, that we let these people come into our lives and bring us down. They can be family, friends, coworkers, or strangers. Their abuse can last for years or seconds. You have to be strong and know who you are, so you can avoid their vicious lies. Don’t doubt yourself. As long as you continue to do good the Creator will protect and provide for you.

This is just some knowledge I wanted to share with you all. Please take Mrs. Roosevelt’s statement to heart and learn from it and live by it.

Peace, Wiggy Wack ♥

For Precious Girls Everywhere

Before I give my review for the movie Precious. I just want to say I am so over these films (Precious included) that only focus on sad stories of African Americans. But that topic is for another post.

Warning This Post Contains Spoilers!

The movie is about a young girl named Claireece Precious Jones, who is sixteen and still in junior high. At the beginning of the movie we find out that Precious is pregnant with her second child by her father. Her mother is an abusive, sexually frustrated woman who hates her daughter because she is jealous that Precious’ father is having sex with Precious instead of having sex with her. The mother also sexually abuses Precious. Precious’ first child- who lives with Precious’ grandmother- has Down- syndrome, something that her mother likes to scold her about.

Precious begins attending an alternative school. And despite her mother’s insistence that she is dumb and should only be on welfare, Precious does well at her new school due to her teacher Ms. Bain’s help. Ms. Bain looks out for Precious and encourages her to push herself to learn. She stresses the importance of an education to Precious more than anyone else has done.

The movie follows Precious to where she gives birth to her second child and subsequently begins to raise the child in a halfway house (her mother attacked her and her baby, so Precious left home). Precious continues school and raises her child with the love and attention she herself never received.

After months of not hearing from her mother, Precious’ mother comes to visit her in the halfway house to tell Precious her father has died of HIV. Precious has herself tested for the virus, and thus learns she is HIV positive. Precious now mentally stronger does not look at it as a death sentence but concerns herself with her children and her goal to get her first child with her. The movie ends with accomplishing this goal, walking down the street with both children with her.

On a scale of 1 to 5, I will give this movie a 3.75. It chronicles Precious’ life very well, even though sometimes it is hard to watch. Precious is the product of a broken home and suffers from retarded reading and writing abilities, self hatred (in her desire to be light skinned and thin), and low self esteem. She has experienced the dreadful act of incest with both her parents thus destroying her sexual health. Her story is tragic and is an eye-opener to what some of our youth in the ghetto often face. Even in her pathetic state she finds some triumph, but her future is still uncertain.

The movie is somewhat stereotypical and I fear people of other races will see this movie and view it with condescension. “Precious” reminded me of “The Color Purple” in that they share similar stories and topics, such as, incest, abuse, lesbianism, color consciousness, and strong females. All in all the movie was well put together and entertaining. Gabourey Sidibe, Paula Patton, and Monique made this film work. They each gave a great performance and did justice to their characters. Mariah Carey and Lenny Kravitz surprised me with their acting abilities and I applaud them. The rest of the cast also did well. There was no bad acting in this movie. I have to say Monique’s performance grabbed me and made me hate her character. She portrayed Precious’ complex mother exceptionally well and was well deserving of her Golden Globe award.

Well that’s enough for my review. If you haven’t seen “Precious” go see it. I must warn you that this movie is graphic and should only be viewed by those sound in mind and 18 and over.

Peace, Wiggy Wack  ♥ (Yellow was Precious’ favorite color.)

Now if you read my blog you know that I am a Muslim, African American woman who wears hijab. But I know much about the hair issue among my people. I can talk black hair with anyone. My own Afro-textured hair is a very important part of my life, something I have struggled with and eventually learned to embrace. Underneath my hijab I experiment with various natural hairstyles. And even if only family members can see my hair, I am still happy to be natural.

I finally watched Chris Rock’s Documentary “Good Hair”. On a scale of 1 to 5, I will give the movie a 3. I learned things about weaves, I had not none before. But it also made me cringe at other things. So I will give the pro’s and con’s of this movie and you can decide if you want to see this movie.

Pro’s:

1. It exposes the dangers of relaxers also known as sodium hydroxide.

2. Shows that Asians and Caucasians profit the most from the black hair industry.

3. Shows the ridiculous measures black women go through to keep their hair done.

4. Subtlety shows the deep rooted self hatred some black people have of their hair, to the point they would put poison on their hair to attain a beauty standard not their own.

5. Advocates black owned businesses

Cons:

1. Doesn’t sufficiently explore the rising number of black women wearing their hair natural.

2. Very subtlety makes Afro-textured hair seem inferior to straight hair.

3. Doesn’t get to the deep rooted reason why black women and men straighten their hair and prefer straight hair.

4. Doesn’t condemn the use of relaxers.

5. Too complacent.

6. Taking such a serious issue and trivializing it, esp. by making it a comedy.

7. Talks about silly things like “weave sex”.

I don’t want to give away any spoilers but I just wanted to mention a few things:

1. The coverage of the hair show in Atlanta was good but I think it took up too much time in the movie. More important topics could have been covered.

2. At the end of the movie Chris Rock states that he’ll tell his daughter, what she puts in her head is more important than whats on her hair. I have to disagree with this, because it seems he is letting the cycle of black self hatred continue on to the next generation.

3. Al Sharpton states that his relaxer is just as black as natural hair because it came from black culture. But what he is missing is that it came from a part of black culture that taught us to hate something that is natural to us and that Euro centric looks are more beautiful.

4. Raven Symone said that we (black people) want to fit in, as if being natural is too different. Well being different is what makes diversity beautiful. We shouldn’t  strive to look like everyone else.

I will conclude here, I don’t want to get too deep because then this post will end up a page long. So overall “Good Hair” was interesting and entertaining at best, but not much of the learning experience I had expected it to be.

Peace, Wiggy Wack ♥

A while back I wrote a post that touched on the topic of black self-hatred of nappy hair. I don’t know how popular the post is, but I suggest you read it.

Now, I am sure you have heard about the documentary “Good Hair” by Chris Rock. If you google it, there will be plenty of people who have written their two cents about the film. Some liked it, others didn’t. I have been wanting to see it since earlier this year, but when it finally came out I didn’t jump to go see it. Well, I am about to watch it now and when I finish I will write my own review on it.

Peace everyone. I just wanted to inform you all that in the coming months I will start posting vlogs on Youtube. It has been something that I have been thinking of for a while now.

I already have a Youtube account, but I only have one video on it. I really have become inspired to try out vlogging on Youtube and I think it will be fun! And who knows how far I will go.

I will make posts on a variety of topics. It will just be like this blog only in video. So, Insha ALLAH, next year around February I will debut Wiggy Wack TV. So stay tuned, I will alert you when I debut.

Note: I have put a link to my Youtube channel in the sidebar under the heading “Find Me On”.

Peace, Wiggy Wack ♥

Well actually my hair has been natural for almost all my life. I’ve have only gotten four relaxers in my entire life. I got my first relaxer when I was 11 and I got 3 more until I was about 16. It took a year for me to transition back to my natural hair. So basically I have been wearing my hair in it’s natural state since I was 17.

It was only just recently that I decided to stay natural. My decision came from watching so many natural, black women on YouTube. I was inspired by their reasons for going natural and after learning of all the harmful effects of relaxers, I decided going natural was the right way to go. I am also trying to grow my hair very, very long. And I believe that hair grows best in it’s natural state.

I am going to post more entries on my “hair journey” to keep you up to date.

I love to see black models. You don’t really see many gracing the cover of magazines. But I found two magazines that had black models on the cover. Both featured Chanel Iman and Jordan Dunn.

I wish more magazines would showcase black beauty. So black girls can have someone they can identify with.

Black beauty is diverse! We don’t all look like the more euro centric Beyonce and Halle Berry.

This is the first airing of my show “Wiggy Wack Radio” on the website Blog Talk Radio. I just gave a brief introduction about myself, my show, and this blog. Please listen and enjoy.

Peace, Wiggy Wack ♥

I have been reading the book “A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue” by Wendy Shalit. Because I have not finished the book completely I will not give a review here. But “A Return to Modesty” has really got me thinking about the importance of modesty and how it affects how women are treated.

As a Muslim woman I have taken modesty for granted, given the fact that I practice modesty everyday. I take for granted the security it gives me. My hijab makes me feel unafraid of being attacked by some perverted rapist. As the Qur’an says: O Prophet! Tell thy wives and daughters, and the believing women, that they should cast their outer garments over their persons (when abroad): that is most convenient, that they should be known (as such) and not molested. And Allah is Oft- Forgiving, Most Merciful. (33:59). Sometimes my hijab brings unwanted attention, maybe because it’s different, and people are so attracted to it because it’s different.

Just the other day I was standing at the bus stop talking to my dad on the phone, when some guys started yelling at me from their car, “Hey, Baby!!” “Whoa!!”. Right in broad daylight! Thank ALLAH, no one was walking by to see it, the only witnesses were people driving by in their cars. How embarrassing! I hated it! I didn’t even look at those dudes, I just ignored them. Where has our society come to where men will treat women this.

That is not to say that men are the only ones to blame for how women are badly treated today. Women take a great deal of the blame as well. Modern women have been so preoccupied with being “equal” with men that they have totally rejected the natural things that make them different than men. These differences are beautiful blessings, but we have conditioned ourselves to treat them as ugly and inferior. In our quest to be “like the boys” we have completely lost ourselves.

Modesty is now looked at with hatred, when it was one of the very things that kept a woman safe and protected. Modesty is what kept respect for women high in the eyes of men. Today you see too many young women barely wearing anything and having promiscuous (casual) sex with any and every guy! When women forsake their modesty, respect a society has for them begins to plummet. At an all time high women are being raped, molested, beaten, and mistreated!

If we women really want to be free we must return to modesty!!

Peace, Wiggy Wack ♥

I was on YouTube a while ago when I came across a video by a Non-Muslim woman who wore a hijab. Now I must say this absolutely shocked me. I had no idea that the hijab could have so much appeal. This young lady seemed to be a college student who liked the modesty a hijab brings. She stated that since she began wearing hijab men don’t hit on her and it protects her from getting sunburns. You can watch the video on YouTube, just search “The Non-Muslim Hijabi: Why wear hijab?”

Seeing this video really made me feel good about wearing a hijab. In the world we live in today, it is somewhat hard for a Muslim lady to feel confident in her hijab when people associate her hijab with female oppression and terrorism. When I go outside I sometimes wonder how many people see me and think I want to blow something up! This video reminded me why I wear hijab. I plan on wearing my hijab for the rest of my days. No man forced me to wear it. I wear it because I am a Muslim woman, where in her religion it is a commandment of The LORD, ALLAH to wear it.

This video proves that modesty isn’t just for Muslims, it is for everyone. It was very nice seeing a woman like me who doesn’t want to reveal her body.

Peace, Wiggy Wack ♥