Did you read "Whatever Happened to Class?" on Blackvoices? The article refers to the Real Housewives of Atlanta, Nene Leakes, Basketball Wives and other reality shows that are devoid of classy women. Yes, the Black women on these shows have money, and they dress well, but their behaviour is no where near classy or becoming of an EBW.
The article made me think about Black female characters who are (or were) classy and their perfect example was Claire Huxtable of the Cosby Show played by the beautiful Phylicia Rashad. Just take a look at this woman! On the Cosby show she was always classy, feminine, graceful, poised, and elegant. She was educated, had a job as a lawyer, and she was a dedicated wife and mother. She was a superwoman! Claire Huxtable showed strength and composure but she was also fun. She was very sexy while showing modesty in her dress. I recently saw her in the the movie "For Colored Girls" and she still exudes elegance. You may also want to read this article about Claire Huxtable as the "perfect woman".
I know, I know, the Cosby Show was fictional and no one really had such a great life like that, but that show provided much better role models than today's reality trash shows. The class and elegance Phylicia Rashad showed also appears to be genuine. Really, do Black women on today's reality shows inspire you to be a good person, get an education, or work hard? Or do they inspire you to be a golddigger, marry a rich athlete, and then use his money to start a fashion line or write a book? Do you think today's reality shows are helping our image around the world? I don't. From now on I'm going to strive to be like Claire Huxtable even though that's fairly impossible, I'm still going to try (before I do something I might even ask myself, "What would Clair Huxtable do?" wink). I think that we can all strive to be more like Claire Huxtable and less like Nene Leakes!I'll leave you with a quote from the article:
Class was once considered the essential attribute of womanhood, particularly in African-American communities where your racial background already marked you at a lower social standing and status in society.
Love Claire Huxtable! She is my WWCD also! It's amazing how she was only 36 at the start of the Cosby Show and presented herself just as refined as she is today! I see a lot of 30 somethings still fumbling around. Not Clair- always poised, calm, classy, charming, intelligent & fierce!
ReplyDeleteTo state that "no one really lived like the Huxtables" is absurd. My home looked very similar to the Huxtables, and yes, jazz flowed throughout. My mom, a stock broker, was Claire long before Claire existed. My father was a banker. His brother, a Morehouse graduate, was a minister whose wife was a teacher. They lived in the suburbs. Both of their children are attorneys. I could go on, but, but, simply stated, MANY black families live the "Huxtable lifestyle", but, tragically(for them), there are too many other black people who refuse to believe it, primarily because doing so would reveal the ultimate inconvenient truth:They didn't "make it" because they didn't put in the work.
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