All the Space You Require
The DJ fades down his last song as the stage lights fade up and music for the first scene fades in. As the curtains roll back all I’m thinking about is “This is my territory and I’m taking up space.” In this first scene, we’re walking onto a subway in midtown Manhattan to go to our bougie office jobs. I’m picturing Anne Hathaway meeting Meryl Streep in the Devil Wears Prada to prepare myself to strut. Deep breath in, deep breath out.
“1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,” I counted in my head to the mellow beat of John Legend’s Good Morning. It was my turn to strut out and meet the gaze of the audience in my black, off-the-shoulder top, cream pencil skirt, and black open-toed block heels. “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,” I counted in my head once again as I strut on beat and swayed the hips that held my 5’2” frame while my supportive friends screamed louder than the bang of the music. No smiling, Brea, you’re in bad bitch territory and you’re the bad bitch in question. All eyes are on you.
“This campus is yours. This stage is yours. Take up all the space you require.” I hear the motivational sermon echoing in my head.
I attained my undergraduate degree at a predominantly white institution. Located in the South, a beach town mostly populated by a fusion of white college beach bums and white southern retirees.
To be Black and relatively conscious at a PWI is to be in a state of exhaustion all the time.
Thankfully, my particular university had a cultural center, a space dedicated to the recruitment, retention, and achievement of Black students through support, education, and advocacy. The students, faculty, and staff I met through that center were probably the only reason I survived in that place for four whole years.
To be Black and relatively conscious at a PWI is to be in a state of exhaustion all the time.
My days on campus were never complete until I made a trip to the center at least once, but I was typically there two or three times before the day ended. When I wasn’t in my classes or at home, if you wanted to find me on campus you would most likely catch me in the center. It was my lifeline.
From our consistent educational and cultural programs to just the everyday Black student culture, I survived my undergraduate years because of that place.
Nothing says taking up space like a squad of Black students rolling 7 deep across campus to break off into our respective classes. It says to those white beach bums “We have the right to be here and take up space as our full Black selves and we dare you to say sumn bout it.” We fill up that bland white space with our communal siblinghood when we give each other nods and smiles and “hey girl hey’s” and intercommunal greeting phrases with our big voices and distinct cadences when we spot each other from across the way.
The center has held a fashion show during Black History Month every year since my freshmen year, 2016. Our cultural director — who also happens to be my cousin — had been begging me to be in the show every year since then. People always admired my sense of style and nothing- less-than-supernatural ability to take a 10-minute walk to class on a cobblestone walkway in heels, and he just had to have me in his show.
Freshman year, the inaugural year: “Brea, I’m putting on a fashion show for Black History Month. You wanna be in it?” he asked. “I would love to Sean, but I got a lot going on right now. Maybe next year.”
Sophomore year: “Brea, we doin the fashion show again in a few months. You in?” “Not this year Sean, I’m sorry.” He caught me in my roughest year and I simply couldn’t fathom catwalking to the beat of my crippling depression.
Junior year: “Brea Perry, you know the fashion show is coming up. What’s good?” “I’m so sorry fam but I can’t this year. I PROMISE you next year is my year, though.”
My senior year finally came around and by this point, Sean wasn’t asking. He already had me written in for scenes. “Cousin, we startin rehearsals next month. I best find you there.” Well alright then, I guess that was that.
Our very first practice of the semester, our cultural center’s director, mastermind, and showrunner for this fashion show- who was also an AME preacher and professor of Africana Studies — gave his famous pre-first rehearsal speech I had heard so much about from years past.
“Black students, this campus is yours. I don’t just run this fashion show every year so you can look good in your stilettos and fly in your air force ones. I do this for your confidence. For your personhood. This is for your soul. By the end of this show, I’m going to have you walking on that cobblestone pathway to your classes like you own this campus. Because you do. This place is just as much yours as it is those lil white kids’ who show up to your classes dressed in sweatpants and entitlement. I don’t care if you wear sweatpants and chucks to class every day, you will walk with your head held high with the same sense of confidence as that mediocre white student who stole your idea and got all the credit for it.
This campus will know that they ain’t gotta love you, they ain’t even gotta like you, but they WILL respect you. You’re gonna walk in and command every room you’re in because this space is YOURS.”
My soul was not ready. Here I was, in the middle of our makeshift practice space for the day, ready to stunt on this heauxs with tears in my eyes.
In a space where the volume of our voices and the cadence of our AAVE were constantly policed, where our leadership, our brilliance, and our excellence was constantly diminished in favor of white mediocrity, Black students would leave this fashion show filled with the audacity to take up all the space we require. That’s what it meant to be a part of this show.
Cut back to the performance stage-turned-fashion show catwalk platform. We’re on the 8th and final scene. The theme is hip hop streetwear. We end the scene in a 90s throwback guys vs. girls dance-off (the girls won, obviously) and a subsequent family cookout-style group dance as we walked off the stage. And that was the end of the show.
In a space where the volume of our voices and the cadence of our AAVE were constantly policed, where our leadership, our brilliance, and our excellence was constantly diminished in favor of white mediocrity, Black students would leave this fashion show filled with the audacity to take up all the space we require.
But the show wasn’t over. Nah, we continued the show into everyday campus life as each of us dared to take up more space than we ever allowed ourselves before. Every sidewalk leading to an academic building, every aisle leading up to our professors, every hallway leading to our dorm rooms became our catwalks. Not just to stunt on these heauxs (although we did indeed stunt on these heauxs), but to command every space we were in like we deserved to be there.
My confidence was never the same after being in that show. It was one of the most transformative experiences of my college career, and one of the last big memories I made before COVID cut my senior year short.
It’s funny. Up until that point, I never realized how much I naturally shrunk myself on campus when I wasn’t in the center chopping it up with the other Black students, faculty, staff, and anyone else who found themselves there. I had just as much of a right to be there as every other white student but I never walked like it. What a concept.
I’ve been out of college for almost a year and a half and I still look back on that show as one of the most transformative experiences of my undergrad career. “This campus is yours. This stage is yours. Take up all the space you require.” I still hear that sermon reverberating in my head, even as I walk from my kitchen to my living room as I carry my oven-baked cookies and wine to my couch to binge Living Single after a long day of working from home.
What I once saw as a fun lil activity to do to close out my time in college with my favorite people and form some fun memories has now formed a sort of spiritual discipline in me; a way of reminding myself that I am fearfully and wonderfully made. It reminds me that I am indeed the shit and I deserve to command all the space I require for my big personality, big voice, big imagination, and big dreams.
When I feel like shrinking myself, I force my mind to reach back into that memory bank of strutting to the sounds of the audience screaming. I deserve to be here. My existence matters and I must take up all the space I require.
