This made me feel sick

[Circe]

... okay, then, let's just call it racist. I'm not quite seeing how that makes it better, though - and the fact remains that we don't know what that poster's racial background is. All we know is that she's the kind of lady who thinks, a) wearing your hair natural is a flaw, and, b) fat = lazy, and, c) that any of this is a good reason to hate on a child who depends on her.

Winner.

You're right. I was focused on the wrong element. I do think there is a huge difference between being critical of your own group and being critical of other groups, but that's not really what's at issue here.

As someone who has had 3 step-parents, one not so great and two absolute saints who certainly could have compiled some of the referenced lists of annoyances and frustrations, I'll just say that I realize that parenting is incredibly difficult, as is step-parenting, in its own ways.

Still, I hope the more negative posters would try to adjust their attitudes and find better ways of coping. I know step-parents can sometimes really resent traits of their spouse's ex in their children, and I think that anger gets transferred to kids unfairly pretty often. Looking back I know there was a lot of that with my "not so great" step-parent.

You do raise an interesting point - hope I'm not sidetracking the conversation, but would you talk a little more about the difference you perceive? Because I have to say, if, for example, another person of Jewish descent decided to tell me that - just to pick one of the more aesthetic stereotypes - my nose was just redonkulous and that if I really cared about my presentation I'd get it fixed, my first thought would be, yeah, self-hating Jew, buying into anti-semitic tropes and reproducing them. In my eyes,it's still the same set of prejudices, just slightly more pernicious because of their presentation at one remove. What's your take?

 

[MissStepcut]

I think that, within groups and cultures, there are things that outsiders don't understand and should generally avoid commenting on. My SO's family is Bengladeshi, and they have a lot of views about the cultural strengths and weaknesses of certain "Bengladeshi" traits. Some of them make me uncomfortable, as a white person raised in a liberal area, but ultimately, I think people are within their rights to comment on their own culture and hash that out between themselves.

For example, some things I've heard that made me sort of bristle: on the subject of bathing, SO and his dad will complain about a "brown person" not bathing enough, and how much brown men reek if they don't shower 1-2 times a day. Or they'll say something about other Indian people running on "colored people time" and how, if they're going to live in the U.S., how they need to adapt. Fine, that's not for me to say.

Someone else mentioned misogyny: I think it sounds very different when a woman says something about how she thinks other women should behave than when a man does. Women are still defining what "equality" means in professional settings. I'll hear a woman say, "She thinks just because she has kids she can leave at 4:45 every day?" I'll hear another woman say, "Oh, when Bill leaves at 4:45 to pick up his kids, all the women fawn over what a great dad he is; when I do it I get flak from other women!" This is the discussion we have among ourselves as a group, as we debate what it means to be a woman in a professional setting. I think discussing these issues isn't misogynistic, it's us hashing it out. And I think women are more "entitled" to say things that might sound misogynistic coming from a man, because it's our issue to deal with.

On the subject of hair specifically, I've mentioned before that my little brother is half Hawaiian and half Black (adopted). His hair has been the source of a lot of drama and self-consciousness for him. He's now 11 and has been asking to get it straightened for 3 years (I think he probably first got the idea watching me flat iron our some bedhead curls). It's hard for him to brush and manage his hair. Lint and fuzzies get caught in it easily. My parents live in a 99% white community, and so the barbers don't really know what to do with it. As his big sister, I can see how a preference for hair straightening would build up, and I am not really sure what sort of hygiene or maintenance is "de jour" in the Black community, but I know little bro uses a leave-in conditioner we found to try to make it slightly more manageable.

So, basically, I can see how it could be a source of frustration for a step-parent, and I definitely don't think one Black person describing another Black person's hair as "nappy" is necessarily racist, or bigoted. (Though I've never called bro's hair that, and I wouldn't. He has tight, corkscrew curls like an Egyptian.)

ETA: As for your example, you're still talking about intra-cultural expectations. I think that's the crucial distinction.

ETA II: What I am trying to say is, for groups, in general, there is discussion and debates about terminology, criticism of one's own cultures, behaviors, expectations and traditions, and that groups are entitled to a higher bar within their own group to use certain terminology, and to be self-critical of one's culture. It doesn't seem right to me that an outsider would censor that.