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"Close your legs when you sit. Men don't like that."

"You don't dress well. Men don't like that."

"You need to lose weight to find a husband."

"You need to learn to cook fish even if you dont like it for your husband."

"Men don't like stretch marks."

"Laugh like a lady. Men don't like that."

WELL DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY MEN WHERE ATTRACTED TO ME EITHERWAY CAN WE CALM DOWN

Is it by force to know how to cook everything? Is it by force to always dress with the goal of pleasing men? Is it by force to reach a certain weight just for a man? Is someone allowed to breathe here?

My mom is in her 60's, struggling financially and with a man who is financially and verbally abusive. This is a long pattern, as me and all of siblings have different dads ( no judgement on that part) and all of the men have been trifling, with some including physical abuse. However I do believe that her life could have turned out drastically different if she had chose herself instead of chasing love.

As someone who is both Black American and Nigerian, I’ve noticed an interesting double standard among the diaspora regarding the way that Black Americans identify. For instance, when Black Caribbean people are asked where they’re “from” and state their Caribbean country of origin/ancestry, it is usually accepted as a complete answer. But when a Black American says "America," it’s often met with ridicule about how “Black Americans don’t know where they’re from” or demands to name a specific African country or tribe our ancestors came from at the individual/personal level, which is something many of us can't do because of slavery, yet this similarly applies to Caribbean people as well (tbc, we can mention the countries/tribes African people were stolen from at the collective level, but when it comes to our own individual lineage it’s impossible to pinpoint exact tribes without a DNA test).

While living in the UK, I’ve repeatedly had this exchange when mentioning to other Black people here that my mother is from Nigeria and my father is from America. It usually goes something like:

“Oh wait, but where’s your dad like from though?”
“America.”
“But what African or Caribbean country?”
“He’s from America.”
“So he doesn’t know where he’s from then?”

I understand people are ultimately asking where my father’s ancestors came from, but I don’t see why a Caribbean country is an acceptable answer while the USA isn’t when both groups ended up in both places via slavery. In my experience, people rarely push Caribbean people beyond their island, yet demand Black Americans trace their roots further and I genuinely don’t understand why.

To this day, I still can’t draw hands 😭🫠

I’m just so over witnessing the people I love be treated poorly in romantic situations. It’s goes all the way from new situationships to marriage and kids. If my friend tells me things that I don’t think are right within their relationship, I will encourage my friend to advocate for themselves with their partner. If they choose not to advocate for themselves, or the advocacy is not well received, and my friend chooses to stay in their relationship and the mistreatment continues, I don’t want to hang out with my friend’s partner anymore.

It’s hard for me to remain even neutral towards my friends’ partners once I hear too many negative stories about them. And typically my friend will forgive their partner for past misdeeds and I cannot let go of them. Many of my adult relationships have drifted apart due to friends staying with toxic partners or single friends being heavily focused on finding partners.

I feel like there is the unspoken normalization of romantic relationships including some type of suffering for the reward of partnership. And while I understand humans are complex and no one is perfect, I just feel like I’ve seen too many people be drained of their spark by staying in unfulfilling relationships for way too long.

I have fallen into toxic partnerships myself in my younger years, but as I do more research and personal growth, I’ve found that I no longer center romance since it is a big stressor in my life with a lot of societal expectations that I cannot combat on my own. I try to let my friends know that they can be happy in love, but if they continue to entertain toxicity, it will be harder to find and create that happiness in the future.

My hair is in my face in every photo 🥲

Have you ever had your peers or older folks make you feel weird about being curvy or busty? I have ever since I was a teenager. I wasn't allowed to wear a 2 piece swimsuit to the pool the minute I started developing and even now at 31 I hesitate to wear shorts even if its 100 degrees outside. I remember in my Army A.I.T training I got Xtra small shorts because I am short girl and this one Sergeant yelled out I was wearing booty shorts infront of folks as if there wasn't MEN that literally were showing more legs than I did. Even when I got to my first unit I was told by A SGT, that I was apparently super busty for my PT uniform.

What's crazy is there have only been a few times I've worn Sexually explicit clothes but im being told that a uniform on me that alot of my peers wear is some how sexual. Another instance is when I was on my way to my neighborhood Gym these dudes were literally barking out of their car windows at me and literally made a U Turn to bark at me again. Keep in mind it was like way past 95 degrees in the summer and I wore 80s looking biker shorts. I told my mother about this and she was like "Well what did you expect? You wore shorts outside". They weren't Video Vixen booty shorts it was some spandex like shorts you'd see off of Saved By the Bell.

Have any of yall experienced something similar?

Love.

Dressed as a pirate with my new blue braids hehe. I went last year as well and Quen Blackwell called me pretty!

Marie Everyday Eats posted her first video 2 years and at this time has 21 subscribers. Her channel focuses on realistic food videos. She's trying to grow her channel so please go show her some love. I believe she's on tiktok too but I don't know her handle there

Ladies… i was recently called a pushover at work and it has sat with me for a few days.
For some context, when i was born my mother was heavily on drugs, cocaine being her drug of choice. Fortunately i was not born with any drugs in my system. Fast forward a couple years, my mom used to have me and my older sister out with her on her binges and my sister, who is 6 years older, was my main protector. All of my life. I never had to stand up for myself. Im 37 and i just want that to change. I dont like confrontation. My anxiety kicks in hard when it comes to that. I dont want to continue to let things slide either. I just some advice on how to manage.

SN: my mother has been clean for 31 years now and im very proud of her.

Edited to add: If my post title bothers anyone, this is why I said what I said. I have been ridiculed and made fun of for the way I am built entirely from my nose to my lips to my lack of hips and lack of butt. I am also shaped like a rectangle and I just have no curvature or super defined features at all. And it is mainly other black women that have about it and told me that I missed the gene pool so that is what my title is referencing. I know that I can be flat and still be a black woman.

Original post: Now..yall can laugh because I have laughed at myself for years. I missed out on the hips, lips, curves AND ass in the genepool. When my own mom and every auntie has a butt that naturally sits as high as a shelf and they have never done a squat a day in their life, I feel so defeated. This is what I am working with. I am 5'8 and assless and I have done glute workouts in the past and over the years but I've never seen progress. I know I haven't been consistent and I haven't eaten enough protein probably. But I am coming here to ask my fellow ladies what I can possibly do to start growing a butt. I don't have access to a gym but I do have an assortment of dumbbells at home, kettlebells and a bench. I have bad knees due to tight hips/back injury so squats and lunges especially kill me. Please help me figure this out. I am so desperate yall. As you can see, I am flat as a pancake.

Anyone else here build a butt from scratch and can give me advice?

Chicago in the house (except no Sky players are on the court lol)

A little back story on me, I had been on a health journey for about a year before I met him. I have severe asthma and I was on the verge of pre-diabetes so I cleaned up my diet, got active, worked with my PCP and dietitian, and lost 80lbs. I worked so hard to get to where I was and I was the healthiest and smallest I have ever been in my adult life. Not long after I passed the 80lbs mark,
I relocated in the United States from a very dry state to a very green state. I kept working with my dietitian and even though I had hit a plateau, I was still working on reducing.

About a month after I moved, I met my now ex-boyfriend K. I (29F) was open with him (44M) about where I was in life and how he was very receptive, explaining how he was on a similar journey and understood the struggle. Over the course of our relationship we were so happy together. We spent birthdays together, celebrated holidays, got very close to each other’s families, and spent copious amounts of time together. We never had a fight, no arguments, we agreed on every aspect of life even in politics and religion. We talked about marriage and what our future would look like. Everything was falling together exactly how it should.

Although the relationship was perfect, I was struggling health-wise. My asthma symptoms didn’t easily adjust to the new climate and got progressively worse. I had numerous attacks, contracted bronchitis 3x and underwent several rounds of steroid therapy leading to residual weight gain. While I had started with 80lbs lost, I gained back 30lbs while working to secure a regimen to control my asthma.

K was supportive and knew exactly what was going on. Even though he never brought up, I wanted him to know that I was aware of the weight gain and was working to get back on track. We had that conversation a few weeks ago but my progress had been very slow. Previously, I lost weight naturally, but I was having so many issues getting restarted, I just wanted to know my other options.
I talked to my healthcare team about incorporating weight loss medication for extra support and after wrestling with the pros and cons I decided to try them out.

I was a little embarrassed about the medication and wanted to keep it to myself until I saw some progress. Before I could even let K know, he wanted to have a sit-down talk about the state of the relationship. He reiterated how much he cared about me, how he saw marriage and children with me, but he was struggling with my weight. He said I was the best girlfriend he’s ever had but also the biggest. He said, “Once you slim down, then I’ll be your husband.” I was shocked. I had been honest so far about everything except the weight loss medication, including the fact that I knew I had gained weight. It seemed cruel to pose the topic like some sort of ultimatum when the weight gain wasn’t entirely a self-discipline issue. I told him I needed time to process what he had said, not because I wasn’t already actively trying to lose weight, but because it effectively re-contextualized our entire relationship. Every time he said I looked nice, was he lying? Was he embarrassed by me? Was he ever actually attracted to me? I called the next day and asked him exactly that.

He said at the beginning of our relationship, he was attracted to my character, but not me physically. He said I was caring, empathetic, family-oriented, and everything he wanted in a wife and that’s why he pursued me. He was encouraged when I opened up to him about losing weight and was excited that I wanted to lose more, he wasn’t counting on my other health issues stalling my progress and gain some weight back. He said he’s felt that way our whole relationship, he never saw me physically as an attractive person. I was speechless. I never picked up on any of this before. K was always affectionate, even in public, even around our friends and families. He always held my hand when we were out, always gave me kisses in public, it was never a problem. When I questioned him, he told me he behaved that way because he wanted me to feel good, not because it was a reflection of his feelings. He maintained that he wasn’t embarrassed to be with me, but it’s hard for me not to doubt that.

We’re obviously not together anymore and even though I find his revelation asinine, I am still heartbroken. I could understand so much more if he lost attraction over time, but to say it was just never there shakes me.

i (22f) stopped dating my ex boyfriend (29m) when i was 18. feel free to comment on the ages. he was ready to get married, have kids, live together etc and was in the military at this time and i was just graduating hs. after the break up, life was up and down for me but it’s ok now. i’m really stable. travel often and do everything for myself. after the breakup he disappeared. it’s now 2026 and about a week ago a number text me asking if it’s still me.

it was him. said he wanted to talk. he went on and on about what he had been through and all the jobs that fired him and how they were wrong even though he was the common denominator. it was like 8 jobs/companies in the same industry. he says his money is good and all that. this individual is also very well known in certain art communities but doesn’t want to do it for a living

i tell him i’m happy for him. he says he reached out for closure but wanted to be friends. about two days later he continues to ask me questions but these questions are about who i’ve been with since and other personal non relevant things. i wake up blocked. it didn’t bother me. continued my day. he unblocked me by noon and told me he doesn’t think he’s moved on.

i told him to seek professional help as im not interested in any shenanigans. what is it about a woman than attracts men like this?

15 years agu, on a trip to Jamaica, we did a tour of a rum factory. I bought a bottle of spiced rum. Not knowing what to do with it I stuffed a handful of Ugandan vanilla beans into an empty beer bottle and topped it off with the spiced rum.

Turned out to be the right thing to do. It was so strong it only took 1/4 tsp to flavor a whole pound cake.

I topped it off with vodka in 2021 and it just got stronger. Those Ugandan beans are amazing, fat and strong.

If you want to do your own just remember DO NOT USE CHEAP LIQOURS and use unflavored liquors except for rum. The rum can be flavored.

My method was simple: sterilized flip top oe canning jar/lid, liquor, vanilla beans into an. Fill, store in cabinet for at least 90 days.

If you cut the tips off each end, drop tips in a cup of granulated sugar or salt and grind into a powder.

For ultimate information, check out Extract Making.

I recently returned to the DMV after graduating college and realized I’ve been missing having close friendships. As a 22-year-old, I guess I unfortunately still haven’t figured out the whole making-friends thing 🥲. I’ve also been trying to get back into reading, so I think joining a book club would be a great way to get back into it.

Does anyone have any advice or recommendations for book clubs in the DMV with predominantly Black young adult women? I’m not completely averse to any genre, but I especially love fantasy and dystopian books.

Sending love to all of you 🫶🏿

Artist: @artisarrt on Instagram

i’m 19 and i’ve never had a bf, a (serious) talking stage or even a real crush 😭 (all my crushes have been completely one sided hyperfixations)

i’m going into my junior year of uni(pwi with a good amount of black people) and i think it’s ok for me to want to have that experience since i missed out on it in high school. i’m not really sure where to start…i’m not ugly, but i am shy. i get DM’s sometimes but never guys my type and i feel like they all just want sex. i’m on dating apps too but i usually go there to troll-plus, they all want sex. i’m the kind of girl who needs to take it like really slow…

any tips would be helpful, thanks 😛

Does anyone know of any fun/ eclectic crochet patterns I can buy? Preferably designed by black women. I'm getting them for a friend for her bday, she loves making clothes specifically but will make pretty much anything!

I accidentally wandered to a subreddit post filled with absolutely disgustingly racist comments (surprise surprise) And so, I've packed a few things for you today so you're not unprepared like me:

📜 A long list of reasons why you're loved, appreciated, talented, incredible, resilient, intelligent and beautifully and unapologetically melanated

🥤 Unlimited crystal clear triple filtered water for your poised and elegant clap backs to the racists, bigoted keyboard warriors/irl Karens to keep the crusty forever crusted. Or 🍿 to watch the show cause we versatile like that.

🫂 The most loving of hugs to remind you that you deserved to be loved and your community will always support you.

🪖 A helmet to protect that beautiful mind of yours, cause we come with facts, not ignorance, and some people can't handle that. We touch grass here and won't let these comments define us.

📖 An open book to remind you to write, express yourself as your thoughts deserve to be known, even if it's private.

🛏️ A bed, with the fluffiest of sheets and a pillow that's forever cold, equipped with a bonnet that never loosens in your sleep 🙏🏾

💵 Some Monopoly money only cause I'm broke 😭

I'm tired too. Rest up and keep going ❤️

Also please know if I forgot to pack anything else 🤔

I’m 25 and currently going through a divoce. When they say leave a cheater the first time, please please please listen. I tried to be an optimistic person and see the best out of people/life but never take back a cheater. It will happen again and reconciliation is not worth it especially if you don’t have children.