Stay Frosty…But Know When to be Fierce
By: Julia E Hubbel
Tags: Elections, Politics, Black Women, Power, Race

Stay Frosty…But Know When to be Fierce

A good mantra for our times

Corporal Hicks, his handsome face shiny with sweat, faces off with his fellow Marines and tells them to Stay frosty.

Just before most of them get wiped. But they do stay frosty, right up until they’re grabbed by the Alien, and not before wiping out a good number of the monsters.

I love that movie. Perhaps what I love best about it is Sigourney Weaver, whose character has lost everything including her rank, her daughter and a great deal more, and who has to come face to face with these creatures for the rest of her days, including after being cloned. She gets tired, she gets exhausted, but somehow she always stays frosty when she most has to, so that she can be fierce when required.

Stay frosty.

Since Weaver, we’ve had so very many superb heroines, from Roomi Napace (in many films), Charlize Theron, to a burgeoning number of women of color in roles that place them in frosty, badass roles. We need more. So Hollywood, please see:

I would, too. Lotta those sheroes in my life already, in real life. I’d just like to see that normalized on film, the way Weaver normalized- no, transformed- how we saw women in sci-fi films forty years ago.

Stay frosty but know when to be fierce.

There is a fierceness which is nothing more than flailing helplessly around in public or private about shit you can’t control. Not only is that a waste of energy, that kind of wah-wah (I WANT MY HAIRCUT) wastes energy and underscores victimhood.

Truly fierce folks know when to hold off that anger and when to unleash it. How to do your research and bide your time and show up prepared to do the work. That’s fierce.

Lt. Ripley legitimized the powerful military woman who got it the fuck done.

If you happened to see Netflix’ The Old Guard, you might have noticed a Black marine who does the same thing. Here’s what Kiki Layne has to say about it:

From the article:… “there are Black female superheroes in real life that really exists. So why don’t we see that in film more? I’m grateful to be a part of being a representation of that and showing the strength that we have in that way.”

Speaking of real life, as in right now:

Like her or love her, it’s what Kamala Harris has done for little Black girls all over the world.

That’s hardly all:

From the article:

At least 117 (89D, 28R) women will serve in the U.S. House (previous record: 102 set in 2019), including 48 (43D, 5R) women of color. Women will be at least 26.9% of all members of the U.S. House. Women are currently 23.2% of House members in 2020.

24 (16D, 8R) women will serve in the U.S. Senate (current record: 26 set in 2020), including 3 (3D) women of color. Women will at least be 24% of all members of the Senate. Women are currently 26% of all members of the Senate. This does not include Senator Kamala Harris, who will ascend to the Vice Presidency. Senator Kelly Loeffler (R) has advanced to a runoff in the special election for the seat she was previously appointed to that will take place after the new Congress is sworn in.

At least 48 (43D, 5R) women of color will serve in the U.S. House (current record: 44 set in 2019).

Stay frosty. Know when to be fierce.

Here are some more firsts, including women of color, gay, transgender women:

Look, I can’t speak for you. But for my money, as a woman who grew up in a diverse world with extraordinary women of color all around me, this election, as frustrating as it continues to be because of one particular White baby man, has been a watershed of good news. I may not agree with the agendas of some, if not most of the Republican women, but I remain enthusiastic that there are more women in power in general.

For a comprehensive list, please see this:

This story touches on the rise of female Mayors of color:

This year has shown us that worldwide, women leaders tend to be a shitload better at managing the Coronavirus than too many men (they give life, they respect life, they for the most part want to protect life, ya think?). Not all, with one particular horrific example of a Trump enthusiast as female governor:

Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD) Source: CNN

Look, being female ain’t enough. Helps to have brains that aren’t addled. Helps to not have hitched your wagon to The Party of White Male Morons. But that’s just me.

I’ve been supremely fortunate is that I grew up with Black supersheroes. In that way, having them in my immediate family normalized that kind of excellence, but it’s made me damned near giddy to see what this year’s elections have given us.

These women, like Weaver, my first sci-fi supershero, knew when to be frosty and when to be fierce. They learned how to channel the daily abuses they experience into personal power. We could all use such examples. This year I have immersed myself in more articles, more connections, more relationships via Medium and other venues to have even more of these extraordinary women of color in my world, informing my world view. Selfishly, and I am happy to admit this, these women have made my year a great deal better in so many ways that I couldn’t possibly list them here.

So you will forgive me if I do a happy dance as I watch the rise of Black, Brown, Asian, American Indian, gay, bi-, transgender folks in American politics. The wave of “otherness” that apparently scares the holy shit out of the outed White Supremacists.

Good. They should be.

Stay frosty. But know when to be fierce.

The reason I trust the rise of these folks is simple. They have been through, as a group, typically a good deal more than you and I as White folks will ever experience. If you are willing to read their stories you get it. What I get, and have grown up with, is that these folks as leaders will have vastly more patience, compassion, and understanding than our previous cohort simply because of what they have suffered.

How Black women feel about being used to continue to uphold institutions that harm them is perfectly put in Nikki Brueggeman’s piece:

I wholly get her point. There is plenty of change coming, albeit slow, horrifically so. Still, the more Black women are elected, the more of what Brueggeman addresses will change. Of course it’s overdue. Of course it will take time. But birth rates alone will guarantee those changes, long after I’m dead. I’m just damned glad to see what I believe is the beginning of a new world that rewrites so much of what we have continually gotten wrong.

Some people fear the Black women et. al. in power means retribution. They’re not paying attention to the track records of Black women in power already. Here’s one way to understand how these leaders have learned to be both frosty and fierce:

From the article:

But the African-American women we interviewed seemed to rely more heavily than others on that quality, because of the frequency with which they encountered obstacles and setbacks resulting from the intersecting dynamics of race, gender, and other identities. In each case they bounced back, refused to get distracted or derailed, and maintained forward progress. One explained, “We were all told that you had to be smarter or run faster or jump higher or be better than anybody else around you just to stay in the game. That was a lesson from early, early on — from my parents, teachers, mentors, church. So you come [to your job] with that orientation.”

The women we studied developed three skills that were key to their resilience: emotional intelligence, authenticity, and agility. They became EQ experts, adept at both reading the interpersonal and political dynamics of their organizations and managing their reactions to situations that threatened to undermine their sense of competence and well-being — what some scholars call “identity abrasions.” They practiced authentic leadership through deep self-awareness and an ability to craft their own identities. And they demonstrated agility in their capacity to deftly transform obstacles (including self-doubt and excessive scrutiny) into opportunities to learn, develop, and ultimately exceed expectations. (author bolded)

Photo by Eye for Ebony on Unsplash

I cannot speak for the Black women in my life, only what they choose to share. They are, every single one of them, subject to far more abuse than anything I could imagine. If your Black friends trust you enough they will tell you. Many of them share it online. It’s pretty bad.

But they stay frosty. I am well aware that those words are painful. Medium peep Rebecca Stevens A., who is one of the sanest, gentlest and kindest voices on the topic of race on all of Medium gets her fair share and perhaps a lot more. She not only stays frosty, but she writes with the kind of fierce care for the reader which demonstrates an extraordinary understanding of how people choose to show up, blaming their pain on a minority or woman or both. Anything to avoid the mirror, where the truth has a terrible clarity.

There’s your enemy, and he is us, says the mirror.

In a year that in some ways has been one helluva shit show, those are some of my biggest Christmas gifts. The legitimization-no, the normalization-of Black women in more and more places of power, State house and Capitol Hill and now, the White House. Mayors. Judges. They are in for a ride, as this article from Zora points out:

And. They can handle it. After all, they’ve had plenty of practice handling abuse. These are not fragile women. They are supersheroes.

And I am damned glad to see them coming.

Photo by Clarke Sanders on Unsplash

Graciously dedicated to those women who keep on adding so much value to my world: Rosennab, Marley K., Dorothy Hines, Ph. D., Jeanette C. Espinoza, Rebecca Stevens A., Allison Gaines, Deborah L. Plummer, Sharon Hurley Hall and far more too numerous to list. Attending.