Walking The Hairy Legged Walk
To The Editors:
I’ve often wondered if Lucy Perkins is as Lucy Perkins says (or writes). Her commentary on “Hairy Legs And All” (CL, April 17) finally proved that she talks the talk, but she doesn’t walk the walk.
I started shaving my legs in eighth grade, because boys in my class used to tease me. Thus, it was an unwelcome chore from the start. Because my hair grew thick and dark, I liked the way my legs looked with no hair, but my reasons for getting them that way was a heavy emotional burden. Every time I did it, I felt defeated.
When my younger sister found herself in the same situation, I told her not to let what other kids said bother her. But what kind of example was I setting if I was still a slave to a razor? I decided right then to stop shaving my legs, and I’ve never looked back. It wasn’t a willful rebellion against traditional ideas of beauty. It was simply a personal decision to be myself — a person too lazy to bother with weekly leg shaving or with what other people may think about women with hairy legs.
That was several years ago. My legs are hairy as can be and I love them. I don’t think less of people who do shave — to each his own, right? — but, Ms. Perkins, you’re one of those who wants to be different for the sake of being different. Unique — just like everybody else. Don’t preach against leg shaving if you have no intention of stopping. Don’t incite a rebellion you’re too afraid to participate in. Either stop shaving and be happy, or keep shaving and shut up. Nobody is interested in hearing you whine.
Alexandra Obregon
Davidson
Hey, That’s Not Funny
To The Editors:
In response to the article “Highway to Hell” by Lucy Perkins (CL, April 24), I would like to say thank you for the wonderfully written commentary on the injustice of having to share the road with these pretentious, self-absorbed SUV owners. Every SUV on the road consumes the equivalent of approximately one and a quarter to one and a half the space a car would take up on our already over-taxed road system. So the next time you hear yourself complain about the traffic situation while riding along in your larger than what you really need vehicle, realize that you are part of the problem, not the solution.
Also, I was left puzzled and confused as to just what this publication is trying to convey when right below the article is an advertisement, and a rather large one at that, for a fully loaded SUV. I think it a shame that a paper that speaks out on the social, economic, and political issues which negatively impact our fine city would insult us with such garbage. Was this meant as a joke? If so, I fail to see the humor.
Tom Pepera
Charlotte
Where Would
Reparations Begin?
To The Editors:
In reference to Tressie McMillan’s letter (“Reparations Issue Needs Resolution,” April 24), Ms. McMillan’s statement that the enslavement of Africans was “. . .the single greatest crime against humanity. ..(in history)” ignores the historical fact that no European ever went into the African bush to capture human beings to sell as slaves. Every single slave from Africa was first captured and sold to slave traders by fellow Africans.
That in no way, nor can anything else, ever justify the existence of slavery. History’s first slavers of note were the African Muslims and the Mongols who at the beginning of the 14th Century controlled most of the known world. European Crusaders had been driven from the Holy Land; Moorish Sultans from Africa controlled parts of Spain. The Mongols held Russia and much of Central Europe and grew wealthy selling their white subjects to Muslim slave traders. Slavic women were sold to the Sultans’ harems, Slavic men rowed the galleys or worked the fields of the Muslim lords, and the children brought a good price in slave auctions from Cairo to Baghdad. The very word “Slav” came to mean “slave” in English and other languages. How far back and to what degree do we go for reparations, even if reparations are just an apology from someone who is not at fault to someone who is not a slave?
McMillan’s assertion that she “. . .earned (her citizenship) at a far higher price than any other American walking the streets today” should come as a great surprise to many today, especially to those who gave their lives in the struggle.
A lot of genuine progress has been made during the last 50 years and much is yet to be done to gain a colorblind society. Seldom, if ever, do blacks give credit to the many whites who have led in the fight for civil rights. Little if anything could have been accomplished without white involvement. In this ongoing struggle, one thing is glaringly missing and not even hinted at from black leaders, spokespersons and letter-writers: that of forgiveness. . .in any degree. Langston Hughes, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and even Malcolm X in his final days, called for forgiveness.
I forgive every human being who ever oppressed or exploited my ancestors and am thankful for everything which caused me to be born American. It ain’t perfection, but it is the best there is.
Charles Blackwell
York, SC
A Different Spin
To The Editors:
In contrast to Perry Tannenbaum’s review, “Spin City” (CL, April 17), I find North Carolina Dance Theatre’s production of “Charlotte’s Web” to be dripping in symbolism with a corporate flavor, unique to Charlotte, but also humanly common.
The “Everyman” budding business executive, played by Edgar Vardanian, is enticed by mentor executives, Jason Jacobs and Alexei Khimenko. He is lured into a quick fix food addiction of burger and fries symbolizing corporate America. Like fast food, corporate seduction promises satisfaction but in the long term it is not life-sustaining to our hero’s soul; and an addiction to power, work, and goods takes hold, evident in the tie-noose offered by Gallardo and in the increase of his waist size due quite literally to wadded up fast food sacks!
Speaking of soul, in slips Traci Gilcrest a la tartan plaid black widow, standing in for “Everyman’s” (and our) soul or Psyche. The two mentors are fatally caught with the help of tie-guy in Charlotte’s Web — does this title cause anyone to think of banking? — while the hero manages to escape. I don’t think it’s an accident that sprawled across her web is the comment “NICE TIE.” In “Everyman’s” escape he discovers the virtuous side of the Psyche in a beautiful pas de deux. And he finds denouement, symbolized in the sexual act, as the now venomless spider dressed in a vest tosses away the evils, or paper sack, weights brought on by addiction. Our hero finds his salvation, yet the drama works on various levels. Fast food will make you fat. Sin is enticing and any addiction or character flaw can bring down the human or the whole of humanity. And good is stronger than evil.
Cheryl Lane Greenwood
Huntersville
Thanks For The Input
To The Editors:
Tim C. Davis is a jerk!! That idiot wouldn’t know good music if it bit his nose off.
Kimberly Reid
Charlotte
This article appears in May 1-7, 2002.
