Un-Becoming Moesha Mitchell When TV & Magazines Weren’t Enuf.
One of the most frightening lies that is told to young people is that the transition from young childhood to teenagerhood, is the first time in life when they start to make their own decisions. They must start deciding what kind of adult they will be. Because of the pressure from this misnomer, failing as a teenager meant that I would be setting the foundation for me to fail as an adult. I couldn’t sit with the idea of failing and, like all young people, I needed guidance.
One day, I woke up and I didn’t feel like I was a child anymore. I was in a societal inflicted purgatory. I was not quite a child and not quite a teenager. It was clear that I was entering a new stage of life, but what did that mean? We like to say that it is our experiences and our relationships that shape us. But in fact, it is the lessons that we learn and the decisions that we make thereafter that determines who we are Becoming. [word to Michelle Obama]. We ask ourselves a series of questions and we make proclamations to ourselves that creates the mold of who we think we should be in each stage of life.
By the age of twelve, I decided that I wanted to be like the 90s sitcom character, “Moesha”, aka Mo to the-, aka Brandy, aka “Have You Ever”, aka Ray J sister, aka the only Cinderella that I acknowledge! During my adolescence, (I may be wrong) Moesha was the only teenage brown skinned girl in a leading role on network television.( I didn’t have cable until I got to High School, so I don’t know much about what was on cable television.) Moesha was smart. She wrote poetry and short stories. She spoke expressively and listened to rap music. She had the body image I thought I was supposed to want. She got along with most people, but she still had a small close circle of friends. The guys fawned over her. Her parents adored her. She was very mature, independent, knew what she believed in and she seldom faltered. I wanted to be exactly like that. So, I started reading books, I had good grades, I had my core group of friends, and I started smiling at boys instead of tackling them for taking my stash of AirHeads. It was all good and I obsessively studied Moesha until the day they aired the episode when Moesha’s father, who owns a car dealership, surprised her with a brand-new Saturn. In this episode, Moesha turns down the car because she wants a Jeep! I couldn’t believe it. When I was young, I believed that regardless of whether it was something that I wanted, I had to appreciate any and everything anyone ever gave me. I could not believe that not only was Moesha blessed with a car, but she was also blessed with a NEW car, and she had the audacity to say that it was not good enough. That was when Moesha was not cutting it for me anymore. I never watched the show the same way again. [Now as an adult who has been in therapy, I can recognize that Moesha didn’t have to want the car. She didn’t ask for it and she had every right to give it back. Sometimes people give you what they THINK that you should want, instead of listening to what you say you want.]
And so, by losing my “ideal Brown girl she-ro”, my moral compass lacked direction. I was back to square one. By the time that I was around the age of fourteen, I really had no one to tell me exactly how to be a teen. My parents are Haitian immigrants. My mother tried her best to prepare me for my teenage years, but her lessons were based on a different time and an entirely different country and culture. I was raised alone, so I didn’t have siblings to turn to. I had older cousins, but I never really knew how to ask them for what I needed. I was beginning this new journey alone and I needed directions, so I channeled my inner Moesha and looked for answers in books.
I avoided getting books from the library as much as I could. I enjoyed the experience of buying a fresh book and knowing that it was mine. I loved writing my thoughts and opinions in the margins of the pages. For me, that was the epitome of the reading experience.
One day, after picking up a book at the bookstore, I decided to look through the magazine wall. I was searching for a magazine that would tell me exactly how to survive High School. I heard of flirting and really had no idea what that was or how to do it. I needed tips on make-up and fashion…but I couldn’t find one that had a face like mine on the cover. The only magazines that I knew of that targeted teenage Black kids were publications such as “Word Up” magazine. Publications like this were focused on music and they all came with posters of B2k, Lil Romeo, Lil Bow Wow, etc. (that I proudly hung up on every empty wall space in my bedroom). The only decent magazine that closely met my needs was “Cosmo Girl''. It was good, but it really was not for girls like me. They didn’t have make-up tips that would look good on chocolate-brown skin. They didn’t tell me that I needed to add pomade to my hair BEFORE I tried to flat iron it. Nobody wore the clothes that were in the magazine at my school or in my neighborhood. There were no Baby Phat, no Roc-A-Wear and there was no Enyce. At that time, those were the “cool” brand names in Black/Latinx communities. By the time that I was sixteen, I knew that I wanted to create my own teen magazine targeting self-identified Black girls (SIBG). It would have the latest trends, an advice column, book recommendations, journaling prompts, make-up and hair tips, interviews with the hottest teen stars, and a lot more. This was necessary and important for all SIBG.
I watched SIBG I knew make countless mistakes because they didn’t have much direction. I watched them make great decisions and advances that I didn’t know were possible for teens. In a sense, I wanted to help strengthen our community and help raise and support more evolved, well-rounded, self-aware, self-loving, self-respecting SIBG. This was very important to me because I knew that I was not the only SIBG that needed this. I was lost 60% of the time during my adolescence and the experiences that my friends and I had made me sure that a space needed to be created.
By the time that I got to college, print publication was not selling the way that it was in the past. This was a little heartbreaking for me because I realized that if I were to continue to follow my dream of creating this magazine, I was going to have to make it digital. It pained me because I remembered how it felt to get a fresh edition of “Cosmo Girl '' from the newsstand. I loved the smell of the paper. When I would quickly thumb the edges of the pages, the aroma of different samples of perfume would come together and the fragrances would entice my senses. (This is slightly embarrassing, but I would take out all the perfume samples and save them. The days that I thought I looked my best; I would rub the samples all over my clothes and body till the paper felt like it was burning my skin. I wanted to get my sample’s worth!) I folded over important pages and cut out headlines, pictures and sayings and I stapled them to my bedroom walls. The SIBG that would read a digital version of my publication wouldn’t know what none of that feels like. My dream was then deferred.
I went to a university in Manhattan. They had an accelerated program in English/Publishing. My plan was to intern at Vibe magazine (an adult version of the type of magazine I wanted to create). I saw myself getting coffee, taking messages, and filing papers. Then, upon graduation, I would get an entry level job with them. Eventually, I would get in contact with Danielle Smith (the editor-in-chief at that time) and she would give me the chance to pitch my idea. I envisioned myself standing in a boardroom with an Oak Tag presentation board with pictures plastered all over it. (There was no Canva back then. Lol). I envisioned them thumbing through handouts nodding and understanding everything I was saying. They would then tell me that they loved my idea. Soon after, they would give me a chance and a few pages in Vibe to test the potential success of my magazine. People would love it and write in and request Vibe to make it a separate and full publication. Then, I would get the promotion of all promotions and I would be the editor-in-chief of “Vibe Girl” (or a wittier name). A deep brown (not racially ambiguous!) girl smiling with whatever hairstyle she wanted would be on the first cover and every cover thereafter. I had it all figured out in my head.
But none of that ever happened. School wasn’t giving me the tools that I needed to make this dream a reality. There is a fundamental difference between teaching and instructing. At this school, the English professors were cold. It didn’t feel like they were interested in teaching me or helping me make my dreams come true. They were instructing. I would often feel lost, and I was told to go read a book for an explanation, rather than the professors explaining things to me themselves. After only three semesters of college, I lost and forgot my love of writing. Just the thought of writing consumed me with so much stress that my heart would start racing and I could not breathe. I would sit in class and feel like I knew nothing…and my professors would agree. After a series of traumatic life events and my overdeveloped disdain for school, I decided that with the arrival of the New Year, I would not return to that school.
January 2008, I crossed the bridge over to Brooklyn and signed up for Education classes at Long Island University (LIU). It’s interesting how even though I didn’t know a soul at LIU, I felt more comforted and more like myself than I had ever felt at that other school. LIU Brooklyn was the closest I could have gotten to going to an HBCU. It was so incredibly Black and beautiful. I was interested in meeting people, but I didn’t want to make friends there. At the other school, I met some wonderful people, and I was very active in student life. Perhaps, that is what caused me to lose focus on my dream. At LIU, I forced myself to be alone so that just maybe I could succeed.
Towards the end of my undergraduate education, I started to become haunted by the fact that teaching alone wasn’t going to fulfill me. I don’t regret spending the time and money to learn how to educate. Those experiences taught me how to think critically, find resolutions, and it taught me how to understand and relate to youth. I consider the knowledge and the skills I have attained as necessary tools I need to still create that magazine if I ever wanted to make it real.
Often, I feel an urgency to try to make it happen. I’m feeling it weighing on me now more than ever. For one thing, I am raising two daughters. But most importantly, our SIBG are dying. They are being shot by cops, they are being kidnapped, they are enslaved, and their bodies are being invaded. They are being murdered and their families seldom get justice nor closure. A lot of SIBG don’t get to know that they have a right to bodily autonomy. A lot of SIBG still have patriarchal ideas about THEIR sexuality. I just want SIBG to learn how to love themselves and learn that their existence and place in this world was inherited from the purest and most beautiful parts of the Earth that was created by God. It is their own- mind, body, sexuality, and agency in this world. They need community, sisterhood, mentors, and the freedom to be their authentic and magical selves. That’s what I needed, and in 2021, I see that is what a lot of young people need.
I feel like I am doing a disservice to a lot of SIBG. They need a space to ask questions, they need a space where they can be exposed to things that they never thought they would be interested in. They need a space where they feel understood by community and a place where they feel free to simply exist. My old-school early 30s-year-old self isn’t sure that social media can create this type of space. I suppose that it may be up to me to help them create that space. It may be up to all of us to support SIBG by reflecting on our own journeys through life transitions.
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Haitian-American Black Woman who writes for all people who self-identifies as a Black woman and girls to spark reflective and inter generational conversations.