Adiba Nelson

"I now had my seat of power, my throne, if you will. That’s why I customized my chair to look like a throne. And that’s why I liked it in my act: because I was truly in love with it and all that it represented for me. It was no longer a trap or a cage. It was freedom. It was power. It was sexy. And it was mine."

There wasn’t going to be any sparkle. There wasn’t going to be any new mommy magic.

They basically gave the Oscars the middle finger.

It’s insane the number of ways people want to pigeonhole, categorize, and ultimately TEAR DOWN women. What’s even worse is that we, as women, buy into it. We run around in T-shirts that say “Real Women Do XYZ” or “Real Women ARE XYZ.” We post these memes and quotes and think they’re funny, but what are we really doing?

She unleashed a whole new level of #blackgirlmagic that I did not even realize I needed. And honey, if I didn't realize I needed it, well then hell, you know the world just wasn’t ready.

It is made up of women that I've known since I was 8, and women I met last week.

Black women were branded as sexually promiscuous and immoral, which in turn was used as justification for sexual trauma/rape.

While most of my friends on social media are in a complete uproar over season four of Orange Is The New Black (OITNB to the rest of us), I am standing at full attention, giving Jenji Kohan the loudest slow clap in the history of slow claps.

Let me tell you something, ladies. There are a million people in this world ready to tear you down at any given moment, for reasons they know, and reasons they don’t know. They will all but sell the blood of their firstborn child to make sure you know that they think you ain’t shit.

My job is to make you feel — whether it’s lust, pride, anger, guilt, joy, sadness — whatever it is you feel, I want you to feel it.