"Laughing Kamala. She's crazy, she's nuts."
Ugh, look at her. Dancing to rap music. So cringe. Just listen to her. Cackling like that. So undignified. So inappropriate. Is this really what we want in a President?
•••
I was born in late 1961; in many ways the world was a very different place. My childhood was spent absorbing the lessons, both explicit and implicit, of what a proper, nice girl looked like. How she sounded. How she was expected to behave.
It's 1967 and my cousin and I are playing in the front yard under the watchful eye of my Aunt Sally. Sharon and I are happy and giggling. Then the giggling erupts into laughter, as loud as little girls are capable of. Aunt Sally tells us to pipe down. In 1972 my aunt and uncle converted to a well-known, very conservative religion and I didn't see my cousin much after that. A few years later my aunt called, wondering if her daughter was with us. My cousin had run away from home.
it's 1970 and my family is at a backyard barbecue. My mother is standing with a group of friends, a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Someone cracks a joke and my mom bursts out with laughter so loud it's astonishing to hear it from such a small, delicate lady. My father walks up to her, puts an arm around her shoulders, takes the glass from her hand and pours it out onto the grass. We go home soon after. My mother is very quiet.
It's 1974, some of my classmates are discussing something called "charm school". Others are passing around paperback books with titles like "Fascinating Womanhood". The books offered advice for women about how to be women that men will like. That men will want to marry. I saw instructions to smile, always smile. Be cheerful and easy to get along with. A little girlish giggling is very appealing but don't overdo it because that's annoying. Loud boisterous laughter is unacceptable. Men don't like it. Meanwhile, in my youth group at church the girls are repeatedly lectured about "causing men to stumble".
By 1978 I stopped going to church and started working part-time. I was still quiet and minded my manners, especially around my parents. It was a couple years yet until I could move out, and I didn't want a repeat of the time my mother locked me out of the house. It was in my own interest to go on being quiet.
In 1980 I moved in with my boyfriend. In 1983 I married him. For twelve long years I hardly ever laughed. Never raised my voice. Never abandoned myself to joy to the point of drawing attention to myself. I soon understood that working full-time would also require circumspect, cooperative behavior. To do otherwise would be to risk being passed over for a raise. It could get you fired.
In the eighties the world of music, of magazines, of television and films was acknowledging and even celebrating female joy, female laughter. But in my ordinary life in the ordinary world, quiet and unobtrusive was still the safest way to be a woman. The world I lived in, and the people surrounding me in it, didn't value a woman's laughter.
Four decades later laughing too loudly and too often is still highly suspicious to people who will condemn a woman as "crazy, nuts" for doing it.
•••
Kamala Devi Harris was born on 20 October, 1964. She's the highly educated (University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, graduated with a Juris Doctor in 1989) daughter of highly educated parents (both PHDs in their respective fields). Intelligent, ambitious, and hard-working (Attorney General of California 2000 to 2017, US Senator from California 2017- 2021) and has served as our vice-president since 20 January 2021. (This is the briefest possible notation of her accomplishments). This lady is formidable.
And now she's running for President.
Her opponent, about whom very much has already been noted and said, calls her "laughing Kamala". He says that "she's crazy, she's nuts". He does not value a woman's laughter.
He doesn't value women, period.
•••
Recently I was reading about her, wanting to learn more about Kamala Harris. We both grew up in the same country during the same time period; how did she deal with the pressures and expectations to be quiet and pleasant all the time? The crap advice that she make herself smaller in order to make others more comfortable? At some point or other she had to have experienced them, and what's more, she did it as a Black girl. Which could only have made it so much harder.
She stands there speaking to an audience of hundreds, thousands of people. Her voice is clear and confident; her bearing fairly exudes competence. She's intelligent, educated, full of ideas and opinions which she's not at all shy about sharing. She won't make herself smaller for anyone. She raises her voice when she needs to, and yes, she laughs. Gusty, joyous, full-bodied laughter. In many ways she's everything that I am not.
I suspect that a lot of the differences between her and I are a matter of personality and inclination; it's not in my nature to want to speak up in front of a large audience. (I talk online far more than I do in real life). To be a leader, strong and persuasive, able to see a different, better future for an entire nation and be able to share that vision, is not one of my gifts. And I doubt that it's something I could learn to do. Kamala however does it so well it seems like something she was born to do. Maybe it is.
Being the daughter of parents who valued higher education could not but make a huge difference. Growing up surrounded by women who laughed well and often would too. Kamala has said that she has her mother's laugh. I try to imagine being the daughter of a woman who laughed like that. It's just about impossible. It nearly brings me to tears.
Her life has been so different from my own, in so many ways. Yet she offers a positive vision that includes me, and the people I love. A vision for us all.
And I can't wait to vote for her.
Never stop dancing, Kamala.
Madam Vice President, whom I look forward to calling Madam President.
Never stop laughing and sharing your joy.
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Thank you for reading. This is an open thread, all topics are welcome.
