GRWM To Try To Survive Fascism

Div's Diary | Reflections on the 2024 Election Results and Trying To Find a Way Forward Entry 004

If you feel like you’ve lost right now, I want to say thank you. You have to actually be in the fight to lose it. You showed up as an active participant in our future and know that by many, you will never be remembered as a woman or a queer person who surrendered. You didn’t just vote, you responded to a threat on all of humanity– a threat to our entire planet. Know that by many, you will be remembered as a man who understands what it truly means to protect the vulnerable.

Pride may feel like an imposter emotion we do not get to have in this moment. Especially when the odds are stacked against us, but we must make space in our bodies for that pride nonetheless. In a fascist leaning country fueled by willful hatred and run by bullies, you had the courage to oppose its power. Never forget that only power can contend with power. You are powerful.

And I know so many of us are ready to use that power to the tune of, ¹“If we burn, then you burn with us!” But let this be your checkpoint to pause… Unclench your jaw, relax your shoulders, take 3 very deep breaths, and let’s talk about the things we can collectively do in the months ahead. Get ready with me as we try to survive fascism!

---

Note: I am not a make up artist, so the way I’m laying out my “get ready with me” is based on my enthusiasm as someone who uses the art of make up to express my creativity. But have watched enough tutorials to know the basic order of things. The first day I was able to peel myself out of bed after the election results and put my make up on, as I went through the process I realized that each step had something to teach me about how to try to get through what’s to come. I’ll take you through each part of my GRWM process and let you in on how something as small as doing my make up may have been the thing that helped me hold on to hope. - Div

---

Moisturizer

Before a single make-up product touches my face, self-care is in order. Moisturizer provides my skin with a healthy barrier between me and the work I am about to do to create the look I want. Self-care in efforts towards liberation work in similar ways, especially when we consider that so many of us use sunscreen to moisturize. We know the importance of protecting our bare skin from not only the impact of the products we use but also from outside elements that can and will cause damage to our skin overtime.

Self-care is not something we get to reward ourselves with. It is one of the most underutilized tools in the armory of liberation. And when I say self-care, I do not mean the bastardized version of bubble baths and face masks with a little beverage. I mean deep and unwavering boundaries with ourselves and others. I mean doing the dirty work of uprooting people pleasing from our very soul.

The biggest enemy we will face in the coming months and years is self-neglect. It may seem valiant at first to channel all our rage into doing everything we can to minimize the fall out of this election. It may feel like the right thing to do to overextend ourselves in the name of justice, but to do so would be reckless self-abandonment that will only lead to burnout, resentment, and directionless anger.

In the word’s of the true authority on self-care, Audre Lorde, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self preservation, and it is an act of political warfare.” You can see this in the way that black women all over the world have decided that we are no longer available for labor at the cost of ourselves. The beautiful irony is that by not fighting, we resist, and call the world around us to action. And rightfully so because self-care is not selfish. It is deeply rooted in community. When we do not take care of ourselves, we become incapable of showing up for the people who need us most.

Your first line of defense is to play offense, and while it may be tempting to put on your best impersonation of your favorite badass protagonist, what would serve us best in the long term here is to revisit our definition of self-care and revamp those routines.

Primer

If you are at all familiar with the make up process you know that primer is the most crucial step. It’s the base that holds everything together. Without it, your look will crack and crease and all the hard work you put into it wont even make it through the day.

I like to think of nurturing my conviction as my primer base. In business or in efforts to improve our lives we call this, “knowing your why”. If we can not clearly define our why we have lost the battle already.

There are very little things that can kill progress faster than being aimless. It’s great to be moved with passion to advocate for the changes we want to see in the world. But our conviction can work as a compass leading us not just forward but in the right direction.

Convictions are not just something we are born with. We pick them up knowingly and unknowingly throughout our lives. They keep our solidarity across communities from being flimsy and short lived. And the good news is that our convictions can not only be learned but they develop and progress over time.

Concealer

This is where we get to intentionally seek out our imperfections and tend to them. One of the most intimidating and immobilizing things that keep a lot of us from even trying to advocate against our own oppression is the fear that we will not get it right and it will expose our flaws to the world. Especially living in the age of call out and cancel culture, it’s a fear I am familiar with as someone who puts myself out there on social media all the time. But here’s one of my convictions: I am not entitled to safety that I will not advocate for others to have. And this is why having a good primer, or knowing your why is so important.

To live, especially as a woman or femme presenting person is to be criticized and scrutinized. This is doubly true as a black woman, I live with the knowledge that nothing I do will ever be enough. Someone will always be able to find something in my life that needs fixing or purging. There is always more sacrifice I can make in their eyes. I am often not related to by the progress I am making, but by what I haven’t done and for whom it stands to benefit. So you must decide not to avoid criticism, for you will be criticized for it, but to choose what kind of criticism is worth the skin off your back. This is what it means to never be afraid to be seen trying.

The first illusion we have to rid ourselves of is that perfection exists at all. I love a good full coverage concealer in my make-up routine, it allows me to manage my own perceived flaws (which are just things I’d like to work on or past scars I want to heal) without the pressure to immediately get rid of them all to achieve my end goal.

If we wait until we are ready to do the things we are passionate about to create the change we want to see in the world, by the time we start it could be too late. As I reflect on the polling data we have available right now and look at the demographics I can not help but wonder, how many people didn’t stand in solidarity with black women because of their fear of getting it wrong with their families 4 years ago? I dream of what we could be celebrating right now if we were willing to risk being cancelled for trying to get it right than staying in our little pockets of comfort and saying nothing at all.

Whenever I feel my heart pounding before I press post or sit down to have a hard conversation I’m not sure I even have the language for, I like to remind myself that human beings do not have a life span than lends to perfection and the chances of me getting it wrong may be 50/50, but the chances of me learning is always 100%. It’s not up to us to decide who will and who wont stay with us on our journey of progress. Cancelling people online is a double edged sword. On one end, it helps to minimize the active harm of truly malicious people using their platforms in that way. On the other end, it inspires fear of imperfection in well meaning people who are growing in their politics and trying to show up bravely in a world where intent is often lost or ignored in favor of theatrics where people have little to no grace for one another.

There are so many other character traits more worthy of our time than perfection. Manage your flaws, let them heal over time. Those who are meant to stay to witness our growth into our best selves will. Sometimes what we truly need is less perfection and more courage. And that is exactly what concealer is, the courage not to rid you of your flaws but to effectively acknowledge and manage them as you grow.

Foundation

Foundation as it pertains to make-up has always fascinated me. There’s so many facets to getting the shade to match just right. You not only have to consider the shade itself, but also the undertones, skin texture, and kind of coverage. Many people have taken to mixing different brands and colors to get the right shade and this reminds me of community.

Community is the foundation of all liberation efforts. From the Black Panther Party to the women’s suffrage movement, oppressive systems have always worked overtime to keep us as independent of each other as possible. There is not only power in numbers but also in variety. Community is not a one-size-fits-all but community is for everyone. There is no scarcity of battleground to cover and sometimes it seems this creates a kind of anxiety in us, urging us to “do all of the things all of the time”. This approach keeps us busy yet unproductive, dispassionate and lacking any true sense of purpose or joy. If everything is urgent nothing can be prioritized. Many of us may have learned about community through the lens of obligation and duty.

Because we are rarely pitched the idea that we can not only use what we are good at but also what we enjoy to dismantle these systems that seek to keep us oppressed, the queer person who loves to bake is told to march in protest without ever been told that making bread for their neighborhood is a radical act of resistance. And it is not to say that marching and exercising our right to protest has no merit. But I believe, we need to see a freshly baked piece of bartered bread as an act as strong as a brick thrown at²Stonewall in 1969. The efforts we make in our community, prioritizing the elderly, disabled, and most vulnerable, will always be more effective than a million women marching and going home alone to Amazon as their only resource for all their needs.

Community also allows us not to know everything. Just like using a variety of foundations, we get to play towards what we are best at. We get to approach the worlds problems like combination skin, If I am still learning about the science and prevention measures of climate change, I don’t need to change everything about myself so that I am the authority on climate change to prove I care about it. I merely need to find someone in my community who is knowledgeable and already doing the work so we can work together, supporting them with my own knowledge towards a collective solutions based strategy.

Most of the work we want to do is already being done. The work we must do is to find the people doing that work and get in where we fit in. As a millennial, I know the dystopian era of books and movies, and even some of today’s romantasy, would have us believe its time for us to take down the bad guys and the bullies, when what we really should be investing in is living out our wildest animal crossing new horizons dreams.

Community is a soft power. It’s rooted in empathy and often, even love– love for humanity and love for our planet. This explains why oppressive systems always seek to disband communities; Movements built on hate will in turn hate each other, But a soft power built on unity and empathy is always the hardest to break.

Brows

Whether you glue them up, shave them off, thin them out, or draw them in, brows are the soul of the face. This part of our GRWM is all about expressing ourselves. Art in all of its forms is what keeps the victors from owning the narrative of history. I will keep this part short and sweet, create like your life depends on it.

Contour

Embrace the dark days. This is what will shape you and remind you what you’re standing up for. It is not a question of if they will come, it is inevitable that they will. When the news gets bad and the hopelessness tries to sink in we will understand why all the previous principles are necessary. On these days we cry. We grieve and let it deepen our resolve but we do not quit. It will not be dark always.

Highlight

Celebrate the small wins. One of my favorite Star Wars quotes is, *“³Darkness rises and the light to meet it” that is how I think of the balance between contour and highlight. Contour is used to shape our face, but highlight is there to draw attention to the best parts of our features.

We can not feel progress that we do not acknowledge. We must give it a name and carve for it a shape and hold it up to all of the world to witness.

Blush

Love deeply and choose love often. It keeps the color in our face. None of this happened because we hoped too much or because we were too passionate. Our country didn’t get to this point by being too sensitive and feeling too deeply. We got to where we are today by thinking it’s weird to tell our friends we love them. We got here by idolizing apathy and thinking nonchalance is cool. We arrived at this moment on the silent wave of a thousand cringes we never allowed ourselves to have. We got here by being a loveless, unfeeling, joyless generation and had the audacity to call it adulthood.

Our world has bought into the fallacy that love is a weak emotion. But Bell Hooks says, in her book All About Love, “The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, and pain. We risk being acted upon by forces out of our control.”

Love is a declaration of courage– We do not fight for what we do not love, so we must love in order to stay in the fight.

Eyeliner

Keep your eyes sharp. Stay informed and know that the education never stops. I feel like learning how to do our eyeliner (if you’re into such things) is such a frustration learning curve. Everyone else makes it look so easy but it can often turn out disastrous, and at best a little wonky, when we try it for ourselves.

Comparison is a waste of time. You will get better at your own pace but you have to give it time and attention. You have to be intentional and actively involved in seeking out the knowledge you need. Your eyeliner is never going to look as good as the person who started perfecting their technique when they were 14 years old when you’re just getting into at 35. But it doesn’t mean you do not commit to investing time into your own progress.

I can always tell who’s a self starter when reading through my comments online. The people who thank me for information are often going to do the work themselves on turning that knowledge into action– practicing it until it becomes understanding. But the people who ask questions they could have googled themselves are those I do not give my energy to. I have learned from experience that they don’t want answers, they want the attention of seeming like they care about what I’m posting. It is virtue signaling at its finest.

When we hear the phrase, “educate yourself” we immediately jump to buying and reading an endless amount of books on theory. We approach this with obligation and even sometimes guilt. In October of 2023, when I learned of the genocide in Congo and Palestine, I knew nothing about it and that felt awful. How did I go my whole life not knowing about the suffering of so many? How was this never taught to me? The guilt and shame I felt for not knowing was only rivaled by the immense hopelessness I felt to do anything about it, and that was debilitating. Like a lot of people in my shoes, I leaned into learning by hitting the books hard and trying to consume as much as possible in as little time as possible, and I wish I knew what I know now.

Our educational systems are designed to keep us in the dark. ⁴A vast majority of our school systems are poorly disguised prison pipelines at best. Growing up, they didn’t really teach us how to think. We were often tested on our ability to obey commands and recall and memorize. Thinking critically is an independent skill that I, myself, am still learning. So, as a child who barely learned the truth of my own history in HISTORY class, it was not my fault that I did not know. But it became my responsibility to learn and what I know now is that, its impossible to truly listen and understand much of anything from a place of shame and guilt.

I had to forgive myself for not knowing before I could take on new knowledge– so I could truly hear and not act out of a need to remove my own shame or guilt. Once the weight of it was lifted I was able to learn in ways that didn’t keep me under the constant weight of guilt and shame. At this part of my personal journey, I haven’t just read educational books. I read romance and fantasy books written by Palestinian people. I’ve made playlist to celebrate Congolese music and looked up recipes from both cultures to try. I watched documentaries and movies where they were the main characters. And of course, I also donated what little money I could spare. And I have also marched through the streets of LA protesting over and over again. I am not saying those thing don’t have their place because they absolutely do. But we also advocate against the dehumanization of oppressed people by humanizing them– by not othering them. It is only then that we can see that we are not their saviors, their fight is our own.

Love will always be stronger than shame. Only when we release our guilt and shame and the obsession with being perceived as a good person can we actually be a fellow human to all people. The people of the world who are oppressed do not need to be studied, we deserve to be loved, and shame will forever serve as a barrier to keep us as far away from loving each other as it can. Start with what you know now, and know that your eyes will grow sharper over time.

Lip Combo

Use your voice! There are so many different ways that we speak to each other. We will never get around doing the work of having the difficult yet necessary conversations that need to be had. If I cut off every single family member who didn’t want to march with me in October, who then becomes the candidate for change? Holding space for the hard work of advocacy will always be a part of the work.

But I think sometimes we underestimate how powerful we can convey our advocacy through things like color alone. The way we dress, the colors we wear, the signifiers we boast, the color of our hair, and if we are still wearing our masks, it all sends a message. One of the ways in which white supremacy seeks to control us is by stripping us of our identity and therefore our autonomy. Uniformity paves the way for *⁵classification and helps to make it easier for us to become targets. If you are a person who is vibrant in the way you exist in the world like a bold lip and matching lip pencil, now is not the time to blend in. I think we should all be using our own discernment and common sense of what is a safe and unsafe environment to do so, but as much as we can help it, let us never forget that how we exist says more than words ever can.

The Finished Look

Go out into the world and know that this is what it means to try your best. Show off your work and be proud of who you are.

1. Quote from the hunger games movie series

2. A Brief History of Stonewall 1969

3. The Last Jedi Edit

4. More about the school to prison pipeline

5. Learn more about classification In this post I talk about the way we dress but to clarify further, different cultures have different was of presenting ourselves from West African prints to Hijabs and rainbow pins. I also think this extends to queer folks and neurodivergent people as well. If we all take on the aesthetic of white supremacy out of fear those of us who still choose to be our beautiful vibrant selves can be more easily bullied or targeted.

---