Not a Tailor

Don't worry, I got both of you. I think that women have to go through hell to please men. Hair, skin color, all the superficial things mean nothing if there's nothing underneath. What makes a woman beautiful is what's inside of her heart and inside her head.
NAT, I know as a lesbian woman, you're looked upon with disdain. Men are intimidated by your choice in a mate and can't express this without being complete douche bags. I've heard your stories and your pain growing up. On the behalf of men everywhere, I wish you nothing but love and happiness with your wife. And know when they call you out your name, that's just self loathing and jealousy.
Janelle, as a black woman, I know your travels are long and arduous. You have to conform yourself to be what society wants you to be, which is pretty much a white woman, since being black in itself is a crime. Being a man, I too thought straight hair was the way to go, until I saw a woman in her natural curls, and realized just how beautiful she was being herself. I'm ashamed I went this long thinking this. To you I say, you're FINE just the way you are. Don't change a single thing, any man would be honored to have you, and if he says different, eff you see kay him.

But it reduces the need to floss! Think about your dental health!

Yes. Exactly. I mean, we have a situation where moderators literally sit as regular users and participate in conversations where someone is called a Mr. Cheney in increasingly creative ways and that legitimizes the calling of someone a Mr. Cheney, but when someone gets what I have always called 'butthurt' and complains about that, then it's dozens of posts removed (even if most of the post was legitimate discussion with a single line calling someone a Mr. Cheney) and thread bans threatened--even whilst said moderators have participated in the Mr. Cheney calling.
It's really sad to see censorship at this level. It means that moderators are busy being called to issues where someone is being called a Mr. Cheney and not to actual issues that require nuanced moderation. It contributes to family UNfriendliness, if anything.

But it reduces the need to floss! Think about your dental health!

But it reduces the need to floss! Think about your dental health!

Please. He pays someone else to both carry the crossbelt and throw the cards while a second employee combs his toupee. Should the 'sharpcarder' fail to hit a target even once, they are fired on the spot and one of the many people groveling at his feet for a crumb from his extravagant 30 course dinner takes their place. Throwing things might mess up his MANicure.

It's really upsetting that men refuse to acknowledge their role in all this. I mean, yes, I'm married to a woman, but while someone like Anne Hathaway can wear her hair in a short pixie and the media goes all abuzz about how intensely beautiful she is and how feminine and soft she is, if I get my hair cut the exact same way, because my natural hair texture is such that my hair stands on end when it's short, men will shout out to me on the street that I'm a *insert unpleasant term for lesbian starting with d* and hate men. Men treat women, ALL women, as though we're toys or objets d'art, there for their amusement and admiration only, to be mocked, ridiculed and mistreated if we DARE to deviate from what they declare pleasant and desirable, and then say 'but it's women who choose to perm their hair! It's women who do X cosmetic thing! Why are you blaming us?'
Poor mens, I guess responsibility is too hard for them. I mean look how quick they are to blame a woman for getting raped by a man. Can't expect men to take responsibility for anything!

That's because men only care about wanting the woman to conform to their ideal standards of beauty and they don't care about nor do they know about what a woman has to go through to get this ideal look. And hair is a huge issue, especially within the black community. And so many woman fight to make sure their daughters have "good hair." Hair that can be easily permed and straightened so their children will be considered beautiful and acceptable even though they have dark or brown skin.

Oh, I am not arguing with you at all. You're absolutely right and it is not my place to deny anything a black woman has to say about beauty standards and dark skin or curly hair or anything like that! I was addressing only the person saying that straight hair isn't a white thing anyway. Because it is and straight doesn't only mean razor straight! Definitely it's because 'european' standards dictate. I completely agree with you.

So you both have a point and don't have a point, here. SCHRÖDINGER'S POINT WOOO!
As a straight haired person (the only one out of my sibling group--and there are six of us) I spent a lot of time looking into why I looked differently to my siblings as a child. The answer is simple genetics and the genes for straight (truly straight) hair do indeed exist amongst white people. It's a recessive trait, though, true straight hair, but it's one of the fun ones that gives us a spectrum. If you get two copies of the straight hair gene from your parents, you'll have straight hair, end of story. But there are wavy and curly hair genes (technically wavy is a variation on the curly gene, but a less 'severe' expression of it--it's more complex than a simple punnet square and I'm simplifying here). So if you have a copy of the straight and the wavy, you'll have lightly wavy hair, if you have a copy of the wavy and the tightly curly, you'll have somewhat more 'manageable' ringlets than someone who's got two copies of the tightly curly (manageable is in quotes because it's manageable for hairstyles that fit the ideal of beauty held by the current status quo), if you have a straight and a tightly curly, it depends on the 'severity' of expression of the curly, but you may be fortunate enough to end up with wavy hair or very 'manageable' ringlets. My siblings all got a wavy gene from either my mother or stepmother. My mother, who clearly carries for straight as her hair is straighter than any of my siblings' hair, gave me her straight gene and I got my father's straight gene as well (though, to be fair, I am mixed with first nations through my father).
Now, this is all fine and good, all it discusses is how you get wavy or straight hair. 'European' genetics do indeed have sources of the straight gene and also tend to not have the most 'severe' of the curly genes.
The result of that is that there's a certain degree of waviness (often considered 'straight' by the standards of those who come from regions/ethnic backgrounds dominated by the tightly curly gene expression) that is idealized. You can use hot curlers and make this wavy hair curly when the trends go this way. You can use a flat iron and make it straight--which is actually a different kind of straightness than naturally straight hair. This allows you to have the hairstyles of the moment and the trends. My straight hair severely limits what hairstyles I can have, just as tightly curly hair limits the hairstyles I can have. Since the hairstyle trends in fashion are typically dominated by designs for and by european-descended women (who typically have wavy hair), those of us on the distant ends of the spectrum often spend our childhoods and adolescences dreaming of having that perfect, manageable hair.

Please. He pays someone else to both carry the crossbelt and throw the cards while a second employee combs his toupee. Should the 'sharpcarder' fail to hit a target even once, they are fired on the spot and one of the many people groveling at his feet for a crumb from his extravagant 30 course dinner takes their place. Throwing things might mess up his MANicure.

I did, Ivorians are Africans. Not black men.
I have 20/10 vision kid. I can see very clearly.

You're missing what Janelle is trying to tell you. People all over the world are conditioned to believe that white is right, no matter what the situation. Black or darker skin women are almost forced to straighten their hair and bleach their skin because we've been taught since the beginning that straight hair and fair skin is considered beautiful. Look at Japan, their entire beauty industry is filled with nothing but white women. They don't even advertise their own people. I saw this when I was stationed there. In India(AJ put me on this one) when a baby is born, they wish it to white. That's considered a good thing. In Africa, a country that has more dark skinned people than anyone else, they use white skinned models and put bronzing cream on them.
Look at movies here. Even when you have a movie that takes place in Egypt, white people are used. Aloha, which was filmed in Hawaii, didn't have any native actors. Just white people(Emma Stone claims to be 1/4th Hawaiian). The Lone Ranger cast Johnny Depp as Tonto, even Kung Fu with David Carradine used to be a Bruce Lee vehicle, but they thought an old white guy doing martial arts was more believable than the Chinese dude who basically invented his own style.
Even recently, the Afro is gaining prominence in the world of style. But guess who they chose to highlight it? White women. Because it only looks good on a white woman, not the women who invented it. That's what black women are up against. Not just the men, but an entire planet of people who are constantly telling them they have to look more white to be considered beautiful.

There certainly is a difference in perception between what politicians say, what people believe at home and what the local populations in the countries we are supposedly helping believe.The military is scrutinised more than it ever has before and it's unfortunate that things like Abu Ghraib tarnish the work of military personnel and feed anti western resentment.
The whole problem with Iraq was that the then US/UK governments just weren't interested in the feelings of local people. Saddam may well have been hiding military equipment in hospitals and power plants etc but it's difficult to convince the people relying on those services as to why you've blown it up.
The real problem of course is that regardless of what the politicians say, we don't get into these situations with humanitarian goals in mind. Our governments routinely trade on the reputation of people who serve their country to justify dubious agendas and people like LIB here get swept up in them - hence the view that questioning policy is disparaging the troops.
Personally, I wouldn't serve in the military - because I wouldn't want to become cannon fodder for a corrupt government. Some wars can be seen as just (as just as such a thing can be), but we haven't had one in many many years. ISIS is the direct result of ill thought out foreign policy in Iraq, just as the Cambodian genocide was the unintended side effect of US bombing campaigns during Vietnam. It's shameful and what's worse there are plenty of Yahoos for whom the US can do no wrong. Those people can't get enough of war.
I fully expect this post to mischaracterised, same as the others - but there you go.

Best way to destroy ISIS is to pull all military out of the region and circle the region with orphanages, schools, baby hospitals, etc. Rebuild infrastructure everywhere that's not ISIS owned and leave the ISIS owned areas out of it. Make the surrounding region intensely grateful to the western world for their advanced infrastructure, lower maternal death rates, etc. ISIS proof them and make ISIS look like idiots.
Every western gun in ISIS land wins ISIS another militant.

I'm not. I'm just saying it isn't in Africa only. We sell these products in the U.S. as well.

Yes, it causes permanent damage. There has been numerous accounts of women having damage from whitening cream. In some cases it looks like acid was thrown on their faces.
I am sure the skin darkening cream does not have bleach inside of it, which is a main component of the whitening cream. Whitening cream is in every part of the world that has black or brown people. It is a hot commodity.
Aren't white, yes I agree. However, this has nothing to do with not being pretty. Their are some very beautiful women who uses whitening cream because they are taught they are more acceptable to society the whiter or fairer they are.

Oh honey, I definitely, definitely would turn straight for you... if you could produce a 100% clean STI panel and actually showed signs of being able to critically analyze history.
Which, still waiting to know when St Reagan appeared before the gentleman whose bumbling resulted in the Berlin Wall coming down.

I'm sure it's just that Venkman is secretly a Philippines born woman and is terrified you'll show up on the doorstep and force Venkman to wear lingerie and heels. We fear you and your insatiable appetites here in the CABA countries.

Well, it doesn't have any relevance to the topic at hand, does it? Doesn't an international playboy like you know that you never ask a lady her age?
Do you deny that the current situations with undocumented migrants coming across the southern border AND the issues in the middle east were at least in part caused by Reagan's policies?

What does that have to do with the reality that the Berlin Wall came down after an East German politician rambled so long that he lost track of what he was saying and then when he had to summarize his remarks he ended up being so confusing that he failed, upon being questioned about what he meant by journalists, to properly read his own press release that he'd been talking about and said that the borders were open effective immediately?
This is literal reality. It is not affected by my date of birth. The wall came down because someone didn't read a press release correctly and rambled incoherently for too long. That is literally how it came down. Are you suggesting that St. Reagan came down before Guenter Schabowski and told him to screw up reading a press release?

Yes, and as we all know, St. Reagan was the greatest president who ever lived and definitely didn't sell weapons to Iran (eventually leading in part to the current situation in the middle east), fund wars in Nicaragua (leading in part to the undocumented migrant issue currently plaguing the US), give 160 billion to propping up banks that were failing or cause the bank crisis that resulted in them needing to be propped up.
Nope nope, St Reagan was the greatest of all presidents.

Yes, because knocking people in the face definitely will get a person elected as president...

It's a good thing that as he tried to give amnesty and stop undocumented migration, Reagan didn't fund wars that would encourage undocumented migration.

Oh. Wait.

I'm sure it's just that Venkman is secretly a Philippines born woman and is terrified you'll show up on the doorstep and force Venkman to wear lingerie and heels. We fear you and your insatiable appetites here in the CABA countries.