Sometimes, I want to tell a really unflattering hot mess bachelorette story about myself, like the time I was cooking half-naked on my second floor apartment and I heard someone call my name--but then i remember that the concept of “hot mess” belongs to young white women who are deemed attractive enough that their self-deprecating “mess” is forgivable because their lives have an underlying expectation of goodness and success regardless of their peccadillos whereas my mess as a black girl is not seen as charming but an endemic representation of the failings of my race whose negative stereotypes i must fight with declarations of royalty, fierceness, and beauty if not an 24/7 facade of respectability due to the societal expectation of me being low enough that the mess is assumed while the success is not, the success must be seized, the competency must be asserted, the intelligence must be proven, the confidence must be tested, and with all the time i must devote to these small tasks, i will scarcely be allowed the luxury of a benign mess. But still, I was cooking half-naked in my second floor apartment and I heard someone call my name. Of course I freaked out, thinking that 1) someone could see into my second floor apartment, 2) they recognized me, and 3) they now knew that I habitually went about my day in a state of undress. What else had they seen? Who else had seen me?
But as they continued to call my name, it occurred to me that they might have been calling for a different Maya. And yep, I eventually met a little girl with her hair in barretted braids who lives in the same complex I do. Meanwhile, I bought a frilly black apron to fend off the oil spills and still wear whatever I want at home.