Fetishized
My worthiness is
measured in cup sizes and big booty.
Integrity is dismissed and compromised.
Body parts named policed and sexualized.
They say:
“it’s the sway of my African belle derriere
the clumsiness of my breasts
the fullness of my lips
and the arch of my back”.

Objectified by the media,
my nudity is
plastered on billboards
and marketed in raunchy music
videos and sex magazines.
Bartered in foreign currency for
a bit of the exotic experience
and sold for consumption.
I’m just an experiment.
I am a product of disrespect.

Patriarchal society trashes my
name with a twisted perception
of my body.
Lewd, incapable of love.
A belligerent woman
with an insatiable sexual appetite.
My tinted shade
is salaciously appreciated
with sexist comments
but not pursued.

Grope me in public
Bring me to
my knees because somehow my
history conditioned me to be
a sex slave and the rape culture
is nothing but a myth.
His ego must be massaged.

Stereotyped
I am the proverbial angry black woman
waving the blood stained banner
cussing out at everyone
like the world owes me something.
The world owes me nothing!

Archetypes of my history are
smudged on the walls of public
laboratories as a legacy of colonialism
imprinted on my consciousness.

I am a symbol of trauma and degradation.
I wear the shroud of shame that
Sarah Baartman wore when she was been
paraded in the freak shows in
London and Paris.

“Too much”, they say!
Too much!
“Carolyne, that dress
doesn’t flatter your body size”.
“Your hair is nappy. You need
a few lashes of lye on your scalp”.

See, I can’t control the way that my
thighs rub when I walk
or the way that my booty shakes
when I move.

Anecdotes of my femininity
leave shards of my identity dripping
over my thighs.
Affecting the way that I see
me and you in the hegemonic depictions
of my identity as and African woman.
I wear this beautiful body with pride.

***

Link to the Italian translation