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 ♥