Translator: João Vital Parente Correia Reviewer: Vanessa Soneghet
I’ve always been considered an ugly girl,
at least for me, or most of the people around me.
My parents, in this case, were the only ones who really appreciated
this singular beauty.
(Laughs)
Despite always having a very low self-esteem,
like every black child, at that age,
there was a specific group of people who treated me differently.
At that age, there was a group of people who, in fact,
knew that I was a not very pretty girl,
clumsy, clumsy …
but who also knew that, in some way,
I would become a very beautiful woman when I grew up.
This group of people was made up mostly of men;
older men.
Generally high school cousins,
friends of second-degree cousins, or, then, strangers.
That when they were in the street with my father,
behind a counter, returning the lunch money, they would tell him:
“Wow, your daughter is beautiful, it’s going to be a lot of work when you grow up …
There’s going to be a lot of hawks. “
And laughed.
Eight or nine, I had.
I kept wondering …
what does and what made men like those behind the counter
and with which so many other men saw in a child of eight, nine years,
some possibility of beauty.
How they understood that somehow I would give “work.”
How they understood that somehow I would have suitors.
How did they understand that a girl
who did not try anything to be sensual, to be beautiful,
who did not know about makeup, about décolleté, who was just a child,
how did they know that this ugly child would work?
That was one of the questions I’ve always asked in my life.
Why do I look ugly, why do people see me ugly,
but why is there a male plot that you’re sure I’ll be pretty?
Where does that come from?
I started to ask myself and I started to stop questioning myself,
because I felt ugly, so it was better for someone to say,
“Nátaly, you’re ugly, but you can become beautiful,”
than someone saying, “Nátaly, you’re always going to be ugly.”
It was about 11, 12 years old that I understood what I was.
I understood that I was a mulatto.
I understood that people treated me and saw me as the mulatto.
And what was the mulatto at that time?
At that time, to me, mulata was a less worse category of black woman.
People would say, “Nátaly, you’re ugly,
not even smoothing your bad hair, it works.
Luck your you’re not so black. “
I raised my hands to heaven and said, “Lucky me I’m not that black.
God did not make me white, I grieve for it,
but thank you for making me a mulatto.
It’s less suffering. “
With my 13, 14, 15 year olds out there,
I began to understand what the media, what society said
about what the mulatto was.
I began to understand that being a mulatto was not so bad.
That to be mulatto was to be the color of sin,
that to be mulatto was to have engaging, sensual curves,
that the mulatto put me in poetry,
that the mulatto placed my body in bossa nova.
I was not “the mulatto,” but I would become the mulatto.
And it was the expectation that my body would develop,
that the curves appeared and I could, finally,
being the woman who sambava, made me receive praise.
These were the only ones.
I accepted …
they called me a mulatto, you know: mulatto, mule …
which is a hybrid …
of horse and donkey.
It was a term that was coined in the colonial past
to classify the children made of the rapes committed
by the owners of the large houses, in the black enslaved.
And that, today, is a racist term that characterizes black women
fair-skinned, thin, but curvaceous
and that, certainly, by a biological determination, know sambar,
after all, it is in the blood to know sambar.
At 16, I was waiting for the mulatto.
“Oh, where’s the mulatto?” They had told her all along that the mulatto girl would arrive,
I’m here waiting for this mulatto … “
(Laughs)
“I’m here in high school wanting to lose BV …”
People need to think I’m beautiful somehow.
And the only compliment I’ve heard my entire life is that I would only be beautiful
on the day that my body developed and I did the mulatto,
So where’s the mulatta?
I waited for the mulatto,
and then the mulatto woman did not appear.
The mulatto was not coming, I was worried,
my palsy friends, bundudas, and I still straight, I would say:
“Where is this mulatto bullshit that I’ve been promised all my life?”
(Laughs)
Where is my self-esteem that would be with her?
Where is the only expectation of self-love
that I put inside a butt and a breast?
What have you promised me all my life?
“She will be very beautiful, she will sambar …
she’s going to roll,
she will have a body to give envy,
because she is a mulatto, and mulata is less worse. “
I waited for the mulatto, the mulatto did not appear,
and here I am today.
(Laughs)
(Member of the audience): You’re beautiful!
(Applause) (Live)
My body stopped developing at age 13.
At age 13 I did not grow up anymore, I did not develop physically,
so at the age of 13 I started to panic.
At the age of 15, I was desperate.
And I began to realize that, in fact, the mulatto woman would not arrive,
and that I would need to understand and find other ways to deal with my body.
With 17, 18 years I began to hate my body,
because the mulatta did not come.
So there was nothing that would save me, I had no expectations of improvement.
I hated my body a lot.
I hated who I was in a very deep way,
to the point of hitting me in nights of crisis when I was bad.
To the point of punching my own breasts because they did not grow
so much that people said they should have grown up.
At 17, 18, I went through a period of hating my body;
hate my slim body.
This body here, a lean body.
Like me, a teenager, so much in my time, so fruitful of my time,
who read women’s magazines, who saw TV, who saw novels,
who knew that the ideal
it was the thin body; How could I hate my lean body?
How could I hate a body that was standardized?
How could I hate a body that was valued?
How I managed to hate a body that in all spaces
They said it was the best?
I hated my lean body.
It’s because?
It would be because …
the mechanisms of racism are much more complex
and much deeper than any pattern of beauty?
Did I hate my lean body?
because, somehow,
the fact of having inferiorized people on account of their traits
and of their cultural origins,
Throughout history, it has been worth more than beauty standards.
which change over time; Is that it?
Is racism, in fact, a serious thing?
Is racism, in fact, structural, is not it conjuncture?
Is racism in society
much deeper than you realize?
Is the senzala still not over, is the senzala still here?
Is it senzala …
When do we find a black boy in the street and get scared of him?
Is it a slave to despising the person I am?
Is it senzala when you are surprised to realize
that we black women are intelligent?
Is it slave
When are you surprised that I’m here talking to you?
Is it senzala when I am surprised?
for being here talking to you?
Is not the senzala in me, is it not in you?
Did we get over it?
There are women where the mulatta woman arrives.
And when the mulatto arrives, what happens?
When the butt arrives, when the chest arrives,
What happens to these women?
They ask to never be born,
because they do not support the way they are treated,
because they do not support the way they are objectified all the time,
in all their relationships, in all their spaces.
When the mulatta arrives, it is unbearable because they can not walk in the street,
because they can not talk to people
without feeling the discomfort of the glances, of the jokes directed to their bodies.
When the mulatta arrives, these women ask God:
“Why did you make me a mulatto?”
And I would ask God, “Why do not you make me a mulatto?”
So what’s the difference?
The difference is that racism is structure.
And it will make you hate yourself.
With that you hate your body, your life, your origins,
regardless of who you are, just be black.
You can be thin, you can be fat, you can be rich, you can be poor,
you can be intellectual, you can be illiterate.
The senzala is for everybody.
In a way, perhaps, more intense for some than for others,
but the slave quarters are here.
The slave is when I hate my body,
when I hate my reality,
when I hate who I am,
to match a stereotype of beauty
of this current slave society.
If racism does not kill at the entrance,
it makes you want to die on the way out.
If racism …
it destroys in a clear and brazen way, the black one of skin retinta, black, dark,
racism, speaks my name as a form of love: “mulatto, beautiful, sensual …”,
and then stabbed me in the back.
To paraphrase Augustus of the Angels,
“racism spills in my mouth while kissing me.”
We do not need master of sugar mills, we do not need brutal lashing.
in our bodies, because the senzala is still here in our minds,
in a virtual, non-corporeal way.
While we still have black people who feel overwhelmed
for who they are;
while we have black people who do not feel they belong,
who do not feel valiant because they are;
while I still hate a body that has never done anything to me,
because society says I must hate;
while I think the only thing that values me
is a racist ideal, imposed on me,
when my body had not yet developed;
As long as that happens, the senzala is still here.
The slave is still now.
And the whip, even if very quietly,
continues to whip our minds.
Thanks.
(Applause) (Live)
I’ve always been considered an ugly girl,
at least for me, or most of the people around me.
My parents, in this case, were the only ones who really appreciated
this singular beauty.
(Laughs)
Despite always having a very low self-esteem,
like every black child, at that age,
there was a specific group of people who treated me differently.
At that age, there was a group of people who, in fact,
knew that I was a not very pretty girl,
clumsy, clumsy …
but who also knew that, in some way,
I would become a very beautiful woman when I grew up.
This group of people was made up mostly of men;
older men.
Generally high school cousins,
friends of second-degree cousins, or, then, strangers.
That when they were in the street with my father,
behind a counter, returning the lunch money, they would tell him:
“Wow, your daughter is beautiful, it’s going to be a lot of work when you grow up …
There’s going to be a lot of hawks. “
And laughed.
Eight or nine, I had.
I kept wondering …
what does and what made men like those behind the counter
and with which so many other men saw in a child of eight, nine years,
some possibility of beauty.
How they understood that somehow I would give “work.”
How they understood that somehow I would have suitors.
How did they understand that a girl
who did not try anything to be sensual, to be beautiful,
who did not know about makeup, about décolleté, who was just a child,
how did they know that this ugly child would work?
That was one of the questions I’ve always asked in my life.
Why do I look ugly, why do people see me ugly,
but why is there a male plot that you’re sure I’ll be pretty?
Where does that come from?
I started to ask myself and I started to stop questioning myself,
because I felt ugly, so it was better for someone to say,
“Nátaly, you’re ugly, but you can become beautiful,”
than someone saying, “Nátaly, you’re always going to be ugly.”
It was about 11, 12 years old that I understood what I was.
I understood that I was a mulatto.
I understood that people treated me and saw me as the mulatto.
And what was the mulatto at that time?
At that time, to me, mulata was a less worse category of black woman.
People would say, “Nátaly, you’re ugly,
not even smoothing your bad hair, it works.
Luck your you’re not so black. “
I raised my hands to heaven and said, “Lucky me I’m not that black.
God did not make me white, I grieve for it,
but thank you for making me a mulatto.
It’s less suffering. “
With my 13, 14, 15 year olds out there,
I began to understand what the media, what society said
about what the mulatto was.
I began to understand that being a mulatto was not so bad.
That to be mulatto was to be the color of sin,
that to be mulatto was to have engaging, sensual curves,
that the mulatto put me in poetry,
that the mulatto placed my body in bossa nova.
I was not “the mulatto,” but I would become the mulatto.
And it was the expectation that my body would develop,
that the curves appeared and I could, finally,
being the woman who sambava, made me receive praise.
These were the only ones.
I accepted …
they called me a mulatto, you know: mulatto, mule …
which is a hybrid …
of horse and donkey.
It was a term that was coined in the colonial past
to classify the children made of the rapes committed
by the owners of the large houses, in the black enslaved.
And that, today, is a racist term that characterizes black women
fair-skinned, thin, but curvaceous
and that, certainly, by a biological determination, know sambar,
after all, it is in the blood to know sambar.
At 16, I was waiting for the mulatto.
“Oh, where’s the mulatto?” They had told her all along that the mulatto girl would arrive,
I’m here waiting for this mulatto … “
(Laughs)
“I’m here in high school wanting to lose BV …”
People need to think I’m beautiful somehow.
And the only compliment I’ve heard my entire life is that I would only be beautiful
on the day that my body developed and I did the mulatto,
So where’s the mulatta?
I waited for the mulatto,
and then the mulatto woman did not appear.
The mulatto was not coming, I was worried,
my palsy friends, bundudas, and I still straight, I would say:
“Where is this mulatto bullshit that I’ve been promised all my life?”
(Laughs)
Where is my self-esteem that would be with her?
Where is the only expectation of self-love
that I put inside a butt and a breast?
What have you promised me all my life?
“She will be very beautiful, she will sambar …
she’s going to roll,
she will have a body to give envy,
because she is a mulatto, and mulata is less worse. “
I waited for the mulatto, the mulatto did not appear,
and here I am today.
(Laughs)
(Member of the audience): You’re beautiful!
(Applause) (Live)
My body stopped developing at age 13.
At age 13 I did not grow up anymore, I did not develop physically,
so at the age of 13 I started to panic.
At the age of 15, I was desperate.
And I began to realize that, in fact, the mulatto woman would not arrive,
and that I would need to understand and find other ways to deal with my body.
With 17, 18 years I began to hate my body,
because the mulatta did not come.
So there was nothing that would save me, I had no expectations of improvement.
I hated my body a lot.
I hated who I was in a very deep way,
to the point of hitting me in nights of crisis when I was bad.
To the point of punching my own breasts because they did not grow
so much that people said they should have grown up.
At 17, 18, I went through a period of hating my body;
hate my slim body.
This body here, a lean body.
Like me, a teenager, so much in my time, so fruitful of my time,
who read women’s magazines, who saw TV, who saw novels,
who knew that the ideal
it was the thin body; How could I hate my lean body?
How could I hate a body that was standardized?
How could I hate a body that was valued?
How I managed to hate a body that in all spaces
They said it was the best?
I hated my lean body.
It’s because?
It would be because …
the mechanisms of racism are much more complex
and much deeper than any pattern of beauty?
Did I hate my lean body?
because, somehow,
the fact of having inferiorized people on account of their traits
and of their cultural origins,
Throughout history, it has been worth more than beauty standards.
which change over time; Is that it?
Is racism, in fact, a serious thing?
Is racism, in fact, structural, is not it conjuncture?
Is racism in society
much deeper than you realize?
Is the senzala still not over, is the senzala still here?
Is it senzala …
When do we find a black boy in the street and get scared of him?
Is it a slave to despising the person I am?
Is it senzala when you are surprised to realize
that we black women are intelligent?
Is it slave
When are you surprised that I’m here talking to you?
Is it senzala when I am surprised?
for being here talking to you?
Is not the senzala in me, is it not in you?
Did we get over it?
There are women where the mulatta woman arrives.
And when the mulatto arrives, what happens?
When the butt arrives, when the chest arrives,
What happens to these women?
They ask to never be born,
because they do not support the way they are treated,
because they do not support the way they are objectified all the time,
in all their relationships, in all their spaces.
When the mulatta arrives, it is unbearable because they can not walk in the street,
because they can not talk to people
without feeling the discomfort of the glances, of the jokes directed to their bodies.
When the mulatta arrives, these women ask God:
“Why did you make me a mulatto?”
And I would ask God, “Why do not you make me a mulatto?”
So what’s the difference?
The difference is that racism is structure.
And it will make you hate yourself.
With that you hate your body, your life, your origins,
regardless of who you are, just be black.
You can be thin, you can be fat, you can be rich, you can be poor,
you can be intellectual, you can be illiterate.
The senzala is for everybody.
In a way, perhaps, more intense for some than for others,
but the slave quarters are here.
The slave is when I hate my body,
when I hate my reality,
when I hate who I am,
to match a stereotype of beauty
of this current slave society.
If racism does not kill at the entrance,
it makes you want to die on the way out.
If racism …
it destroys in a clear and brazen way, the black one of skin retinta, black, dark,
racism, speaks my name as a form of love: “mulatto, beautiful, sensual …”,
and then stabbed me in the back.
To paraphrase Augustus of the Angels,
“racism spills in my mouth while kissing me.”
We do not need master of sugar mills, we do not need brutal lashing.
in our bodies, because the senzala is still here in our minds,
in a virtual, non-corporeal way.
While we still have black people who feel overwhelmed
for who they are;
while we have black people who do not feel they belong,
who do not feel valiant because they are;
while I still hate a body that has never done anything to me,
because society says I must hate;
while I think the only thing that values me
is a racist ideal, imposed on me,
when my body had not yet developed;
As long as that happens, the senzala is still here.
The slave is still now.
And the whip, even if very quietly,
continues to whip our minds.
Thanks.
(Applause) (Live)
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