Love's Gonna Get Us

via The Beautiful Struggler - Me, Myself and Eye

As we are a pop-culture obsessed society, our music of sway on how we view ourselves and how we behave. Well, some of us. A few of your favorite sanging cousins have penned odes to the independent woman doing it for herself. And your cousins in the streets have become very loud and proud about their ability to ~~charge~~ their own bags and pumps without a man's help. Ne-Yo calls her "Miss Independent", but I thought we already had a name for the woman who's self-sufficient: "an adult". I was honestly perplexed when this song and the subsequent odes to the woman paying her own way came out. If you are a single adult woman living on her own without parental support, how else would your bills get paid? I am well aware that there are some women who rely on handouts from men. But that's hardly the norm. So why celebrate something so...ordinary?

Yes, I work. These big collar shirts don't buy themselves.

It's almost offensive. It seems like there is an implication that while the indie misses are stacking for themselves, the rest of the women are just waiting for Captain Save A Hoe to come upgrade them. Or, perhaps it's just a declaration of a man no longer interested in being a breadwinner for a woman. Hey, maybe he wants to build generational wealth, which is fair. But I still find something troubling about these cuts and, more importantly, the attitude that they inspire in listeners.

"I love her cause she got her own". Not 'cause she's intelligent, thoughtful, funny, loving, compassionate. But because she has things. Fancy things that she bought for herself. Women have been guilty of loving ( men because they had things for centuries. Perhaps it's payback time? I don't rock with consummate materialism. Now I like to have nice things just like you. But I'm from Brokeland, and certain things you just don't do. And basing ones self-esteem or assessment of others based on their ability to acquire material goods is one of 'em.

Maybe he just wants her to have nice purses so he can borrow them.

On one hand, I see a win in women being proud to earn and make big purchases for themselves without a man's help. Never would I advocate waiting for someone else to do it for you. But on the flip side, I am not comfortable with the idea of being judged by potential suitors for my 'baller status' (or lack thereof, I should say). Part of that has to do with the fact that I'm an artsy, struggling creative type. I work in the hood, for the hood. I feel confident that my payday is coming, but it's not gonna come for me on the same time frame the sister with the MBA is gonna get hers. Should I be waiting to deal with my fellow middle-class aspirants until I get a few more 0's on my bank balance?

The other frustration has to deal with my unwillingness to deal with that same unfortunate strain we have placed on our menfolk with our financial expectations. I see far too many brothers who just become nasty and angry because they feel that they are somehow inadequate because they aren't balling out of control. Women already have to deal with amount of value placed upon our looks. Now we gotta be balling too? Your boy Hov seems to know a lot more about women's brands than I do. I had a man ask me what brand my shoes were once. This is not a world in which I want to live, friends.

We'd all prefer to be judged by the things we are good at. I am not good at being rich or having a big butt, at this point. So I hope I am not simply projecting my perceived inadequacies via my frustrations with the independent woman. But I feel that men and women are piling on these unreasonable expectations for our lovers and that a lot of us are coming up short because, well, Jay-Z and Beyonce are already married.

A little off-topic, but not quite:

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