What follows is Ebony’s sharp call about the demands and expectations of masculinity.<\/em><\/p>\nMe and B.I.G. just went out on our first date. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d heard about him around the way, but he seemed like such a bad boy. I was content to watch him from my stoop.\u00c2\u00a0 Then some friends were like, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Girl, I heard he done changed. He told us to tell you to meet him at the Pike at eight for this movie.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 And thought, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153If dude wanna take me out; he should take me some place where I can look him in the eye and see if he lyin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 when he talk.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
But you know, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s B.I.G., so I went.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a typical movie date. He told me lots of stuff about his life.\u00c2\u00a0 It was juicy.\u00c2\u00a0 I was surprised at how open he was about his past. He had been a hustla, but got his money legal.\u00c2\u00a0 He loved his mama. He loved his kids. He admitted to being a playa, but he told me I was special. I knew stuff that nobody knew.\u00c2\u00a0 Said he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d had suicidal thoughts but now he was ready to live. I myself was mesmerized by his charisma and swagger.\u00c2\u00a0 I soaked up every second of his life.\u00c2\u00a0 Before we left the movie, he asked if he could be a friend of mine, and then just like that, he was gone.<\/p>\n
I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not going to lie. I miss B.I.G.\u00c2\u00a0 Who doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t?\u00c2\u00a0 But I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m trying to be real about the things he told me on our first and only date together.\u00c2\u00a0 I mean, it was still dark in that movie, and I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t look him in the eye good.\u00c2\u00a0 What if he told all the ladies that they were special and knew things nobody knew?\u00c2\u00a0 He kept saying that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d changed.\u00c2\u00a0 I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m hearing him say that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d become a man.\u00c2\u00a0 I admired B.I.G., but what made him a man? He told me real men make money, have kids, and lots of women, get respect, and die too young.\u00c2\u00a0 Hmm.\u00c2\u00a0 Even the list is suspect.<\/p>\n
B.I.G. made money, yes, but Diddy was in charge of his destiny. Without Diddy telling my girls to tell me to go see B.I.G. we would have never even hooked up.\u00c2\u00a0 I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t imagine that B.I.G. didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t love his kids, but they didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really know him; he didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem to know them.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, he was sometimes at peace with his women but what about the lies, the deception, and the manipulation?\u00c2\u00a0 Everybody was celebrating B.I.G. when they killed him. So much for respect. If this is what a man is, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m glad that we decided to be just friends.<\/p>\n
All I can say ladies is don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t let them hypnotize you.\u00c2\u00a0 No disrespect to the person who was the Notorious B.I.G., but those traditional celebrations of manhood as the fearless protector, provider, babymaker get old after a while.\u00c2\u00a0 Better to watch them from the stoop than get caught up in some mess.\u00c2\u00a0 If B.I.G. had tried something different, maybe he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d still be here, but his story is still powerful. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m glad he shared it with me.\u00c2\u00a0 Gives me a point a reference for what else manhood should be\u00e2\u20ac\u201dentrepreneurship, present fatherhood, honest, healthy relationships, and caution over reputation.\u00c2\u00a0 Thanks for the teaching moment. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve still got mad love for you, B.I.G.<\/p>\n
Ebony A. Utley, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor<\/span> of Communication Studies<\/span> at California State University, Long Beach<\/span> and author of\u00c2\u00a0 The Gangsta\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s God: The Quest for Respectability in Hip Hop<\/a> <\/em>(Praeger, forthcoming).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meeting Notorious on the Big Screen I’m happy to introduce Ebony Utley who contributes this kick-ass guest post to The Man Files. Ebony cleverly writes about her “date” with rap star B.I.G. \u00e2\u20ac\u201d a posthumous movie night watching B.I.G. on the big screen in the recently released biopic, Notorious. What follows is Ebony’s sharp call […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1906,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[21184,21314,2715,1976,129,876,21655,5007],"class_list":["post-1491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-biggie","tag-ebony-utley","tag-fatherhood","tag-masculinity","tag-media","tag-men","tag-notorious","tag-pop-culture"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1906"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1491\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/p>\n