Whew, Chile! Are you me?! Numbers 1, 2, increasingly 3, 4, and 5! Always ‘the only’ or dishearteningly worse, when the other was Steve Harvey making me Monique. The exhaustion, the emotional toll, THE BETRAYALS of humanity, the loss of expectation, only seeing the worst. Thank God you are in a creative profession…
I’m bipolar, and have had the, uh...distinction of spending time in my local psychiatric hospital on a few occasions. Everything that you wrote, with the exception of the dating part, as I’m An Old Married Woman, could have been written by me. I felt as though I was reading my own journal.
You’re back! With a truth bomb. Nice to read you again. Just say no to North County. Stultifyingly dull. Interesting how many of us ran for our lives after graduation.... and how much better life is away from there.
I cannot tell you how much I thoroughly enjoyed this piece! I lost my mother in November to cancer and the love and tenderness that you evoked with your words hit me in a very raw and tender place. As a young black man and the only of my mom’s kids to finish college.. I have dealt with a similar internal debate of…
I loved your blog! Reading this article is like someone wrote about my life. I’m not bougie; I have very specific tastes.
Please please write a memoir. Your observations on intergenerational tensions between family members who grew up with a certain standard of living and those who rose from poverty to that level are important. Your insight into your mom’s pre-rejection of people based on outward markers that she actually shared, and her…
Since this seems to be the North County escapee’s club meeting place, hello from a Bellefontaine Neighbors born escapee.
*tips glass of fancy cocktail in respect and recognition to other bougie person from across the speakeasy-style bar that you need a secret password to get into behind the barbershop*
Damn, I guess the Hawks really are in the House, huh? Hazelwood Central grad, class of ‘90 here....and current teacher in the Ferguson-Florissant school district.
Thank you for this article! I guess most people think I’m bougie or Republican or whatever because I’m also not down with anti-intellectualism and the social structures of the south that many Black people use to define their “Blackness”. It’s also why I never go home. So many people use that stuff as an excuse to stay…
Oh man, I wonder if it’s the St Louis in you. UCity raised here, went to Clayton. Hated everyone and everything, and turned into a version of it. My parents relocated to CWE, but I still hit the Loop, which was what I held over Clayton snobs(again, I turned into my own version of it).
Great piece, Danielle. Other than my parents being lower middle-class, this is me, right down to growing up in St. Louis. (Oddly enough, the family that once called me “bougie” now asks my opinion about watches, cars, and computers. Huh.)
Bravo! As I have always said as a libra and being constantly labeled bougie or spoiled. I am well -adjusted and will whoop yo ass in some spades.
Applebee’s is bland food, even for what it is. You’d do better at a TGI Friday’s or Chili’s. At least they do casual dining well.
Embrace the bougieness. Southern Blacks have bougieness in our blood. Go to New Orleans during ball season to see some real snobby shit.