Why “doing what I want” is not for me
Today, I saw a 20-something white man, leaving a barbecue spot post-lunch, walk in the middle of the crosswalk and start twerking. He was wearing a red sports team shirt and one of those toy baseball helmets that have holders for beer cans on either side. Everyone he was with laughed at the gesture.
I wanted to scoff at it. I wanted to judge him. But at that point, everything clicked for me.
This world was not made for me.
Because I know that sometimes I, too, feel like twerking in public to let off some steam. Especially if a good song is on. I even know that my take on it would have incorporated far more range-of-motion in the hips. But you know what? I’m not a white man. So I can’t do that. I can’t just run and jump and freely fly about this American landscape thinking that I’m just going to be okay. My body is at stake. My reputation even more so.
So it brought me to the helpful and thoughtful question:
“Why should I even do what I want?”
What does that even look like? What would that even bring me? Would it bring me joy? Acceptance from my in-group? A couple laughs? A release of stress?
Pshhh, who needs those things. No matter how deep my urge to wiggle my glutes is, I know I don’t want to come off like him.
There are certain people in this world who just go ahead and do what they want. And they live by that code. There are folks who actually live like that, and I have to keep that in mind. Because sometimes I forget. I forget that I can’t go in the middle of the street like that, risking my body for some chuckles because guess what… I’m judged by a different standard. I’m an ambassador for so many people. My race, my family, my height bracket and most definitely my gender. My bones may break under the weight of that responsibility, but that’s the price of my place in all this.
Twerking is a form of expression. And after 17 minutes of googling, I know now that early forms of the dance are believed to be traced back to the Transatlantic slave trade. That conjures up so many images. But to me, I interpret that as men and women in great anguish aboard ships would twerk as a way of separating the booty from the chains. Powerful stuff.
When it comes to the more modern version of the popular movement, I googled for another 10–12 minutes: “The origins of twerking can be traced to Côte d’Ivoire in West Africa, where a similar style of dance, known as the Mapouka dance, was originated. The dance has existed for centuries and consists of a series of movements emphasizing the buttocks. In more modern times the word “twerk” was first coined, as far as it is known, in New Orleans in the 1990s with the emergence of the bounce music scene.” (description via TWERKFIT, a white-led “revolutionary” dance fitness class)
So you see, there’s a lot to it.
And I think back to that silly white man, likely fresh off of a hearty meal, a little bit drunk and happy that his team won. Did he know any of this before he callously threw ass in broad daylight? Doubtful. He doesn’t understand the weight of his actions. He just does what he wants. So when I noticed it, I started by looking at his actions with disgust… but I instead decided to process. And then at that point it became less about him, and more about me. I realized that I couldn’t subscribe to the same callousness that he moves through the world with. The same kind of carefree inertia that one’s cheeks move with when your technique is perfected.
Because if this the kind of thing we categorize as doing what one wants… well, count me out. I’m not here for that purpose. I have other aims in this life. From this point forward, I plan to only twerk in private, where my expression can be mitigated to my liking.
I think you should always do what’s meant for you. What you’re called to do. But I’ve been here long enough to have seen enough. And even as I sit here writing this, I sense an urge to quake my undercarriage. But, no. I won’t stoop as low to simply “do what I want” and call it having a good time.