The Root: Should the Other Woman Ever Confront the Main Girl?

i hadn't seen my ex in a year and a half. I ran into my ex 2 1/2 months ago; I am now 2 1/2months pregnant. He is very supportive, and we are making plans for names. However, he has not told his fiancée yet. I know it's hard on him, since none of this was planned, and there's no easy way to tell her. He says he is trying to get the courage to tell her because he knows it's all over when he does.

Allow me to add, this is the second time we got pregnant. We were broken up, continued to have sex, but the pregnancy wasn't successful. His fiancée knew about it and left him. I don't want him back. Why would I want him after what he has done to someone he claims he loves so much? No, thank you. I will not be stepping in those shoes. Co-parenting is just fine. But I want to tell his fiancée now. I think the sooner the better. What do you think? --C.N.

I think your energy is best spent focusing on the well-being of the child you're carrying and preparing for his or her arrival.

The father of your child definitely should have told his fiancée by now. And you're right, there is no easy way to tell her, and the best way for her to find out is for him to tell her. "Remember C.N.? She's pregnant again. I'm the father, again," is as good as anything else.

Hopefully, for her, this will be the wake-up call she needs to leave her fiancé for good. He's proved that he's not ready to be anybody's husband and, furthermore, that he can't be trusted. But when he does or does not tell his fiancée is on him. She's his to deal with. Add her to the list of things that are none of your concern. You may be carrying his child, but that doesn't give you any clout in his relationship.

Also, let's not pretend that you're eager to let the clichéd cat out of the bag because of some sisterhood solidarity or because you think it's for the greater good. If you believed either of those concepts, you wouldn't have slept with your ex.

You say you don't want him, but your actions say otherwise. Out of all the willing people in the world to lay up with, for pleasure's sake, you chose him? You continued to have sex with him after you two broke up, knowing he had a girlfriend. You got pregnant by him a first time and then, after a lengthy separation, had sex with him again and became pregnant, still knowing that he was in a relationship.

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Is Black Really Beautiful?

Do we as a collective really think Black is beautiful?

We all know the “right” response to that particular question…but there are so many other things we say that might be outing our honest feelings, our un-PC private thoughts.

Yesterday, I was reading “On Baby Blue Ivy Carter and the Alleged Ugliness of Blackness” on Colorlines. Writer Akiba Solomon also had picked up on a startling trend I noticed in comments about Jay-Z and Beyonce’s new addition: backhanded well-wishes to the couple, hoping that Baby Girl Carter looked more like her mother and less like her father. Solomon equated reading so many negative stories about Baby Blue as “walking among stunted souls who traffic in the idea that the full lips, large eyes, broad nose and dark brown skin of a Jay-Z is inherently ugly.”
 
Let’s admit it: A lot of us are bamboozled, led astray, and just plain brainwashed when it comes to what traits we find attractive on Black people. It’s no accident that the Black women whose beauty we fawn over — the Beyonces and Rihannas and Halle Berrys — all happen to be on the lighter end of the Black color spectrum. It’s no secret that we as a people equate lightness with beauty. Ask any woman who failed the brown paper bag test, who grew up hearing she was “pretty for a dark girl” – as if to be both is some sort of inherent contradiction, and she just happened to strike gold. But the color issue is just scratching the surface.
 
If some of us are very honest, we’ll acknowledge that there are only certain “Black” physical features that we as a collective find attractive. Curves? A blessing and curse. Full lips? Eh… depends on how full. Broad nose? On women, not at all. On men? Some get a pass, but not Jay-Z. Kinky hair? Not so much. There’s a reason most Black women “prefer” perms and even a lot of natural girls spend an inordinate amount of time and product trying to reconfigure their coils into curls.

Read more: here 

Essence: Are You Comfy Earning More Than Your Man?

Over the weekend I read a Businessweek story, “Behind Every Great Woman,” about the rise of stay-at-home fathers. Apparently, the number of men in the U.S. who regularly care for children under age 5 increased to 32 percent in 2010 – up from 19 percent in 1988, according to Census figures.
 
Granted, this is an uncommon scenario, but even though the article warns against making “heroes” out of men who are primary caregivers, I found the tone of the article doing just that. I don’t feel compelled to give a man any extra kudos for staying home to care for the children he created. Maybe now that more men are taking on full-time child-raising as a career, the role might finally get the respect it lacked.
 
What I did find interesting was a buried tidbit that backed up a trend I’d been noticing in some of the relationship questions my clients have asked lately. There’s been an uptick in women who earn more than the men they’re involved with wondering whether it’s wrong to care about their mate’s current earnings or earning potential. Apparently it comes up more often these days, because 23 percent of wives out-earn their husbands, according to a 2010 study by the Pew Research Center. And women 30 and under make more money, on average, than their male counterparts in all but three of the largest cities in the United States.
 
Usually when there’s a story about women making more than their partners, the focus is on how to assuage the male ego. But maybe that focus should turn to making sure women, deep down, are actually okay with a partner who makes less. Even for the post-feminist gains women have made on the professional front, most of us were raised on fairytales and romantic comedies, and as such, a whole lot of women still expect traditional roles when it comes to relationships – that is, a man being the breadwinner/provider. And when he isn’t, sometimes things get tricky.

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Vibe Vixen: Why I Hate Your Lacefront Wig

Recently I attended a ritzy awards show for a women’s organization. I was speaking to a friend about something or another when she suddenly grabbed my arm, cutting the conversation short.

“Look around!” she instructed. “What do you see?”

I looked. There was nothing out of the ordinary. I looked back at her like she was crazy.

“There are no lace fronts!” she exclaimed, “That’s how you know it’s a classy event.”

If you wear a lace front wig–full wigs with mesh lace attached in front and beyond the “hair line” of the wig–which is temporarily glued to ones skin around the hair line, you probably don’t care that I, and many other people (there are Facebook page dedicated to hating on them) can’t stand them. It’s a disdain unreserved for weaves, even the worst ones. And the reason is that on the vast majority of people, like 99.9%, they look awful.

I blame Beyoncé and her mother for their popularity among the masses. (RuPaul wore them for years, even as the face of beauty for MAC and it never caught on.) Somehow women believe they can channel Bey’s flowing, track free locs on a budget, and the sad fact of the matter is, no, no, no you can’t. Bey pays great money for her wig crypt (and even she’s had some glue errors). With lace fronts that cost less and are applied by anyone other than her top-notch hair team, you can immediately tell the difference, even with other celebs who seemingly can afford the good stuff.

Take for instance Jennifer Hudson, who was vilified by viewers when she showed up at the Academy Awards last year. Instead of focusing on the Versace dress that highlighted her newly svelte curves and amazing complexion, all anyone could talk about was her hair, particularly that the glue on her lace front wig didn’t match her skin tone and her hair line was an unnatural, Steve Harvey sharp. Ciara, Lil’ Kim and Trina are also repeat offenders of this phenomenon.

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Essence: It's the Little Things

Much like you, I’ve been inundated with spin-offs from the “Sh— Girls Say” series.  Most of the recent ones are trying too hard to garner a laugh, but Franchesca Ramsey’s “Sh— White Girls Say to Black Girls” videos (see part 1 and part 2) stand out, not just for their humor but also for unearthing a much-needed discussion on micro-aggressions – or, as the American Psychological Association defines them, the “everyday insults, indignities and demeaning messages sent to people of color by well-intentioned white people who are unaware of the hidden messages being sent to them.”



In character and wearing a blond wig that she tosses incessantly, actress Ramsey drops disclaimers (“Not too sound racist, but…”), offers insulting commentary (“This is so ghetto”), and encourages stereotypes (“Why are Black girls so loud?”).  Of course, I chuckled because I’ve heard most of the lines or equivalents of them before (like the infamous “You’re so articulate!” – why would I not be?). But in real life, being on the receiving end of such comments is straight-up frustrating.

Ramsey’s video made me think of my own precarious run-ins over the years with non-Black women who just didn’t “get it” – didn’t understand why the offhand things they sometimes said could be so condescending. In high school, there was the brunette classmate with the Black boyfriend and mostly Black friends who began talking with an affected “Black” accent – you know, that over-slanged way of speaking only done by Black people who memorize scripts written by white people trying to sound Black.


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VIDEO: Cocktails w. Belle, Jan 10

Super thanks to videographer Alanzo Dale,  co-host Gardy V. Guerrier,  DJ M.O.S and the Jamaal McKnight at Cakeman Raven for the delicious cupcakes!