How to be a Woke Sista
Defining myself through sexy underwear and political activism
It was a Friday night, I was at the mall with friends digging through the 5 for $12 panties bin at Charlotte Russe for some sexy underwear. 2017, that’s right, I left my granny panties in 2016 because it’s a new year and I wanted new undergarments. New undergarments meant a new lease on life.
After digging around for my size, I had all 4 lined up on my arm ready for my bargain but I was missing one more to make the final transformation. It was then that I stumbled upon a cute pair of pink and gray striped panties with the words “Woke” staged on the front.
“What does woke mean? Like you woke up and put those on?” my friend posed as she watched my slide the item on my arm for checkout. I paused for a second and pondered to myself before I responded:
“It’s a colloquialism referring to an individual who is well-informed about social injustice and political spectrums,” I responded. Apparently, new panties meant I was more pretentious than enlightened.
She nodded her head in agreement then apologize that I had to define it for her. I merely shrugged my shoulders and explained that as a “woke sista”, it was my due diligence. After all, who buys underwear that doesn’t clearly define themselves. I won’t buy underwear that said “dumb slut” because those adjectives simply do not define me.
After making the purchase, I pondered to myself, who is buying “Woke” underwear? And why was the word more important now that it’s heat pressed onto panties. How do you be a woke person? Start by definition: someone who is well-informed about social injustice. Check. Someone who knows political spectrums. Check. So isn’t everyone “woke”?
Well, the word began during the Black Matters Movement (commonly referred to as BLM), an activist movement about the systemic racism towards black people. The term is a highly popular phrase in black social media circles (#staywoke). In essence, the word became in idiom for knowing that there are social injustices, mainly those of African-Americans in the United States.
I slipped on my woke panties and modeled in the mirror. Who else bought this and doesn’t know the meaning?
It’s easy to make the claim that you’re well-informed, and even easier to put a pair of panties that claim you are, but to open your eyes and really see what’s going in the world around you…does that make you really conscious? #staywoke