I'm a recovering debutante. I wouldn't go as far as saying a belle because I ain't with that frilly froo froo. Or girdles. I have a brain and I use it. I don�t own too many slips, or dresses, or wear much white. I don�t own a lacy parasol except for that one time where I had to accessorize with my lace ribbons for my annual Olan Mills photo.
If any black woman could be deemed a Southern belle, it�s my grandmother. I call her �Nana Boo.� Immaculately dressed, always smelling of fresh showers and Poeme perfume, loving, observant, and poised, Nana Boo will forever reign as my standard of respectability. In the black lady�s salvation army, she�s the general. Her fierceness is quiet. Her side eye is as pronounced as her wardrobe. Nana Boo�s experiences growing up as a black woman in the rural Jim Crow South laid the foundation for my early acknowledgement, and later debunking, of the rigidity of Southern black respectable womanhood.
Nana Boo's battles to make me ladylike started as early as I could say the word �no.�
�Wear these ribbons in your ponytails to be pretty.� No.
�Put on these white stockings and black Mary Janes to be pretty.� No.
�Wear this two-piece matching skirt and shirt set with red apples and rulers on it for the first day of high school.� Hell no.