Black girls need to see themselves in the check-out line. Straight up.

The year was 1997.

I had just graduated from college and was helping my (then) homie-lover-friend-now-turned-husband clean out the apartment he was preparing to move out of. Yeah, I was doing THAT. Anyway, we were having one of our many debates about some article in Vibe Magazine, my then-favorite publication and one of THE sources for all things hip-hop and soul music. I started talking about how, based on this article I'd read in the mag about Toni Braxton (and the legendary cover that accompanied it), I really felt like black girls could really use a magazine that represented them well. Black girls between the ages of 12-19 needed to see articles written by them, about them, and for them. Black girls needed to see themselves in fashion, relationships, and pop culture in positive and meaningful depictions. No more video vixens. No more Sapphires or gold-diggers or welfare queens or depictions of them as people incapable of having positive, healthy relationships with their families, the opposite sex, and each other.

This was 1997, y'all.

Numero tres on my list of regrets is not starting a magazine for black girls. This blog post is going to be my shortest to date. The reason is simple: It's not too late to start. There is another reason, though, and that reason is equally as simple: The necessity of this publication seems to be far more important than it was in 1997, and that dismays me. I don't know if it's the over-abundance of media outlets that youth are exposed to on a daily basis, but I just feel like black girls are under attack on a daily basis. I feel like they don't get to see themselves the way that I see them, being that I was once a black girl and all. I get it and I don't get it. There is a full crop of black girls who graduated high school last year just as I was celebrating 20 years of being out of high school. A lifetime has literally gone by. Things are different. Things remain the same. Things are extremely different. Things very terribly remain the same for images and the overall love of black girls.

I still struggle to see black girls on the rack at the checkout line in 2014. If you ain't Oprah, seeing us is  not a regular thing, ya know? I should go further in this blog post, but some very recent painful experiences with black girls I work with have led me to wanna' cut it short. I don't want this to be a racial equity diatribe or monologue or whatever fancy word means "rant". I just want to get my girls to see the loveliness in their existences and I want to do that NOW.

I need to just start the magazine. But in this digital age, would girls even buy it? Would it sell? Is it relevant? How do I make it relevant? Where do I start? Does anyone else think this is "urgent like a mutha**er?", as the good Darius in "Love Jones" so eloquently stated?

Give me some thoughts. Consider this a "call and response" blog post. Your turn.


UPDATE: As I was preparing the framework, I came across this beautiful, beautiful, beautiful publication. Props and love to these sistas who make it happen. My motivation is activated!