Competing with the siSTAR in the mirror!

Do you remember her? The beautiful picture perfect girl in your class every guy wanted to kiss and every other girl wanted to be? Miss popular, people vied for her attention and what hurt most was that the guy you were absolutely crazy about was so busy trying to catch her attention he didn’t even know that YOU existed. It was their fairytale world and you my dear needed to wake up from the nightmare you thought you were living! You would list the many imperfections you THOUGHT you had and wonder if there was some magical way you could make them all disappear. School was made up of gremlins and goblins that took every chance to scare the living daylights out of you. It’s that exact harsh place where you develop your insecurities, are made to feel you not good enough and where the birth of your alleged shortcomings begun. My nickname at school was “boskop” – nappy head, that name stuck like glue and I had to walk around the first phase of my life trying to shake the name off by straightening, ironing, braiding, coloring my hair, no chemical processing was not used in my quest to be pretty, I wanted to be just like “them”. Nappy was synonymous with ugly, I took that burden with me into my teenage years MY “nappiness” would define how I looked at myself - not good enough, not pretty and not worthy! It affected my relationships with the opposite sex to a point where I ended up with the guys your mother would warn you about. Carrying all the pain inside it, brews, simmers slowly, years of hurt waiting to spill over and then one day, One day for the first time in your life you feel like you fit in, hiphop welcomed ME with open arms. I needed to rebel against the demons that was trying to taint SELF. Aaaah the stories, the rhymes the catchy hooks, I was HOOKED! I found acceptance of self within the culture, played Paris’s “Assatas song” on repeats and whenever I felt I was going to that place of uncertainty … REWIND selektor!!!!! When Isis, Melody, Roxanne Shante, Boss, Yo Yo, Latifah and Lyte and many other queens came on the scene with defiant charisma I was thinking, “oh I know what this means I need TO COME CORRECT!” Finding my sanctuary at South Africa’s most influential hiphop haven, THE BASE, I healed self. I met women who understood the plight of knowing ones self and finding your identity and purpose. When I first grabbed a microphone, boy I had lots to tell, years of anger and hurt flooded out BUT realization came over me. As much as the bitterness was eating away at me I started accepting some of the responsibility, as much as THEY pushed me down, I allowed them to. I was so used to accepting their harshness that it became second nature for me to shrug my shoulders when insults and remarks were thrown my way. It took a bad relationship, hiphop and understanding self for me to walk to the mirror, wash my hair,let it dry naturally and use an afro pick to style it. Not only was that my first step in a positive direction it became symbolic of washing away all that was irrelevant, fake and unnecessary. I have become WOMAN! I AM WOMAN! I promised myself that no one in this lifetime would ever get the opportunity again to tell me what or WHO I should be. I stepped on the stage calmer, more focused and oozing of self-confidence that my own homeboys were hitting on me. I wore my self-confidence like a signature perfume! Then it happened, the positive within emanated around me so much so, that positive people gravitated towards me, the aroma of self respect, and confidence drove those against me to step to me and show respect, I sat in my bedroom writing rhymes and for the first time I OVERSTOOD the only person I should ever be is me, the only person who can elevate me is me and most importantly the only person I should ever compete with is ME! OUTDO YOURSELF, NO ONE ELSE!! Contro ‘Versy