(ThySistas.com) There is an art to the way we deliver an insult and call it affection. Among Black women, we can sometimes refine the practice into something almost surgical, a small cut placed so precisely, and wrapped so warmly, that the person bleeding often thanks us for the concern. What interests me is not the cruelty itself but the fear hiding beneath it, because most of these little remarks reveal far more about the one speaking than the one being measured.
Consider the family cookout. Somebody looks you over, tilts their head, and says with a grin, “Girl, you got real small, you sure you eating?” Everybody laughs. Of course you laugh too, because the only other option is to name the thing sitting underneath that sentence, and naming it would turn a pleasant afternoon into something nobody came prepared to have. So you let it slide. But you felt it. Just a little pinch that had nothing to do with your plate and everything to do with hers.
Long as I have been on this earth, I have watched that same move happen in a hundred rooms. Kitchens. Church pews. Baby showers. Some group chat going off at eleven at night. Break rooms where the coffee is always burnt. And the pattern almost never changes. A remark rarely lands where it pretends to be aiming. Any woman who has truly made peace with her own body does not spend her energy studying yours. Someone settled and safe inside her own marriage does not need to ask, loud, in a full room, why you still not married at your age. That question is a mirror she is holding up to her own reflection and turning toward you so nobody catches where she is really staring.
Take the weight talk first, since it comes wearing so many costumes. Lose a few pounds and suddenly they worried about your health. Gain a few and, would you believe it, they concerned about your health. Either direction becomes an opening, if you pay attention. The body is just the doorway. What walks through it is a woman comparing her reflection to yours and coming up short in her own private math. She would rather hand you that discomfort than sit with it herself. So she wraps it in “I’m just saying this because I love you,” which happens to be the phrase people reach for right before they say something they know good and well is not loving at all.
Marriage remarks cut a specific way, and Black women my age know that cut intimately. “You too picky.” “You gone be alone with all them degrees.” “A man don’t want a woman who make more than him.” Now listen close to who is really speaking there. Too often it is a sister who settled, or who is holding a union together with prayer and duct tape, watching you move through the world unbothered and unowned. Your freedom reads to her like a bill she already paid and cannot get refunded. She is not warning you. She is grieving. And grief, when a person refuses to look at it directly, has a way of coming out sideways and landing on whoever stands closest.
Money brings out something even uglier, because it touches how people were raised and what they believe they deserve. Somebody sees your new car, your little vacation, the closing on your house, and the very first words out of their mouth are not congratulations. They are “must be nice.” Two small words carrying a whole freight train. Or here they come, curious real fast about how you afford all that, as though your success requires an explanation and their own struggle requires none. Watch closely and you will spot a person who cannot celebrate you because your ordinary win is quietly indicting a choice they made, or a fear that kept them small. None of it is about you. It never once was.
Hair. Lord, the hair. We could write volumes on how sisters police each other’s crowns. Go natural and somebody sighs about how you “just gave up.” Wear a wig and here comes the whisper that you “trying to be something you not.” Loc it, relax it, shave it clean, and there is always a mouth ready with an opinion nobody requested. Underneath every last one of those little comments sits a woman who has not yet forgiven herself for her own choices, so she reaches for the closest scalp to referee. Free women do not do that. Anybody at peace with her own head lets you keep yours in peace.
Clothes work the same. “That’s a bold choice.” “I could never wear that.” “Well, it’s different.” Each one is a soft blade, said sweet, meant to make you second guess the mirror you already checked before you left the house. Then there is education, which might sting worst of all, because so many of us fought so hard for those letters behind our names. “You think you better than us now.” “You talk white.” “College made you funny acting.” None of that is you changing. Somebody just feels left behind and would rather trip you than ask themselves why they never got up and ran.
Careers close the whole circle. Land the promotion and here comes “must be who you know.” Start the business and here comes “hope that lasts.” Climb a little and somebody in the family, or somebody who calls herself a friend, cannot manage a clean “I’m proud of you.” Instead they hand you a compliment with a hook buried in the middle of it, hoping you swallow the whole thing before you notice the barb.
Here is the part I really need us to sit with, because it would be too easy to read all this and cast every other woman as the villain while crowning ourselves the eternal target. The truth is harder and more useful than that. We have all been on the throwing end. Every one of us. More than once I have caught myself ready to say something small about another woman’s choice, and when I got honest in that split second, the ugly little feeling was never actually about her. It lived in a place in me that felt uncertain, unfinished, unseen. Insecurity is not a character flaw reserved for the pettiest sister you know. It waits inside all of us for a soft moment to speak.
So what do we do with all this. First thing, we get quiet enough to hear ourselves before we open our mouths. When something rises up about another woman’s body or her ring or her paycheck or her hair, pause and ask the honest question. What in me is uncomfortable right now, and why am I about to make it her problem. That single beat of self examination is where grown women separate from mean girls who simply got older.
When it gets thrown at you, remember this and let it settle all the way down in your bones. Nobody was ever really reporting on you. They were confessing about themselves, whether they knew it or not. You do not have to catch what somebody throws just because their aim was good. Let it fall right on the floor between you, step around it, and keep going exactly as fine as you already were.
Sure, some of that shade is real dislike. But so much more is just fear wearing a smile, hoping you will not notice, praying you will shrink so it can finally feel tall. Do not give it the satisfaction. Stay standing. Stay soft where it counts and unbothered where it matters. And whenever you can manage it, hold a little grace for the ones still fighting a battle inside themselves that has absolutely nothing to do with you.
Staff Writer; Raven Jones
Raven writes about music, relationships, and the everyday ups and downs of Black women… She keeps it honest, encourages other sistas, and can be reached at RavenJ@ThySistas.com.