Katana Part 1

Katana

Welcome to the Black Gold Project. I will be posting excerpts from various conversations I will be having with various sisters. Sisters of every hue and age. This particular conversation was recorded nearly a year ago. It has been an interesting ride, bringing this project into fruition and deciding how it will develop over the next few years. We jump in here with Katana, a Washington Resident, she was working with youth in the foster system at the time. Since then she has been accepted to Law School and I is working on her Master of Legal Studies. I believe she has a bright future ahead, and I was encouraged by our talk. Here we are talking about how the messages we receive can affect our personal view of our worth and place in the world.

MJ: What are some phrases you have heard that have challenged your self perception/acceptance?

Katana: I think just..it's been a combination of things said from both white people and black people. One's  been that I'm not black enough or not Latino enough. Because I don't speak Spanish. That's another issue where I am not enough of something.

Before I met my boyfriend, guys particularly, white guys "You're pretty for a black girl." or  "I've never dated a black girl before".

Well your not going to now. [Laughs] Just those kind of comments, it's just like, Why can't I be enough of something?

Why do I have to be "pretty for a black girl? Why can't I just be pretty? Or whatever else you feel about me, why can't that be enough?

That you have to now tie my racial identity in with that. So that's always been kind of frustrating.

MJ: What makes you smile?

Katana: Umm…my dog. [Smiles] Winston. My family

Michael:  What's his name? (I hadn't heard her)

Katana: Winston…Winston Bishop. My family, my mom, my brother.

My brother goes to school at Central, so he's not here as often as we're used to, but when he does come to visit. It just makes me happy to have our family together.

My boyfriend, my friends. Even my job, even though it's stressful, but you know seeing the positive outcomes in my client's cases makes me hopeful. Not just for their situation, but just about life in the world in general.

MJ: How  would you describe your relationship with your skin?

Katana: I think it's been…a rough relationship. Up until about two years ago. When I came to… accepting myself, but it's always been that…I always…with my mom being very fair skinned I always wonder like…and obviously I know why…why my skin was not like hers.

Or why I wasn't…kind of having like an uneven skin tone-why couldn't I be darker, or look more Hispanic. or look more black.

So it's kind of been a difficult…journey and times where I wish I could take my skin, be somebody else when I was younger. But now I don't think I would trade it for anything [smiles]. Especially since everybody else wants already to be me or us.

MJ: Unhuh

Katana: So with that comes a new sense of pride in that there's obviously something that I have or something that black people have that everyone else seems to want. And so just holding on to that.

MJ: What would you say your relationship to makeup is like?

Katana: Umm, well prior to Rhianna just being the wonderful woman that she is and coming out with Fenti Beauty, I never found anything that actually matched me.

Unless my makeup was done by a makeup artist that I worked with for certain shoots. More so Kendetta [Indicates the HMUA offscreen @kendettaartistry IG/Twitter www.kendettaartistry.com. ] because [with] other people…I'll look a little grey, or even ashy toned or I'm orange, or darker but in a way that contrasts with my actual skin tone.

So [with other make-up artists] it's like "What are you doing here?" Which adds to the reason why, I mean I don't know how to do makeup but another reason why I, prior to this point invested in it, but it didn't seem to matter how much I spent on the product…nothing matched me.

Nothing looked like my actual skin tone. But now with a few of her products I've actually been able to walk out of the house and it looks natural. It blends with everything and I don't look like an Oompah-loompah or you know, just like I haven't put lotion on that day.

MJ: It seems to be a similar thing whenever there is something being created [for people of color} and there's no real representation from a person of color. I know from us personally because you've worked as a model and in different areas just trying out different things. I had a comment that when I met you in person, you looked way different than the pictures that other people had taken. How's your experience been in that area, like working trying to see if you wanted to be a model.

Katana: Part of the hiatus that I took um within the past few months really was  directly related to the fact that I don't feel, like aside from  working with you, I didn’t feel like that other photographers were capturing my true self. But also that it seems to be that if you don't do, if you're not… and I'm not shaming anyone but if you're not going to do boudoir, or nude work or whatever…then[the photographers tend to have an attitude of] I don't really need you for anything else.

It seems I mean from my perception that if you're a woman of color in the modeling industry if you're doing kind of those things there's more opportunity for you, but if you're not wanting to do that out of personal preference then the opportunities are very limited.

Also not wanting to deal with that anymore…has kind of mad e me shift how I feel about the modeling industry.

 I don't feel like there's enough representation, which was a reason why I wanted to originally start trying to figure out where I could be in the modeling industry. I am kind of at a point where I don't have the time to deal with that nor do I want to.

So I am trying to sit back and evaluate what other creative things that I can bring to this particular industry. Unless you fit the look that they want you to be, there's not that much opportunity. 

 Then I find more recently, it seems like white models that have dreads or look exotic, or have appropriated hair styles, that they're getting these certain opportunities and getting praised for it yet I see fellow black models that naturally have dreads and are just being themselves and they're sharing the same struggle as I am.

Why this person has that as their natural hair and you're putting in colorful extensions that look a hot mess, and you're the one that's thriving out there but this person isn't?

Carefree Black Girl

MJ: That's an excellent segue to the next topic. What's your relationship like with your hair, or how would you describe it.

Katana:  Uhhm…Now I can appreciate it, before it was just like relaxer after relaxer after relaxer and just in the past couple of weeks I had a conversation with my cousin and we were talking about how much we wished that we appreciated our hair, in its natural form, or in protective styles. I didn't start getting any kind of braids put in my hair until about a few years ago and I think about, I mean my hair's growing now, and healthy now, all of the 21 years of damage that I put to look a certain way and [what] fed into all of that.

 I wish I could go back and just and have appreciated everything that my hair represents. because also black women's hair is a political thing. From you know the afros and all the different natural styles either it's not professional or it's unkempt, or whatever someone always seems to  have an issue with it. It is what it is, and that's how they want to feel then that's their preference.

Seeing other black women that have these hairstyles, and when my mom first got her dreads and at that time I was still getting relaxers, my mom had very long beautiful hair, and she still does but I just remember thinking like "Why would you do that? ", like she cut off all her hair and it was long and straight…and then seeing her transition from that baby stage to now having them so long. It's made me grow to appreciate [and feel] ok this is something I can now get on board with. I should have been back then…It's our crown and I don't think it was something that was emphasized enough.

“It’s our crown

and I don’t think that was emphasized enough.”

We'll have part two of the conversation up soon. Where Katana talks more about her job, and some of the challenges and triumphs of being a woman of color in the reserves.

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