Thursday, February 6, 2014

#BeingMaryJane That Damn #2 Speech


Being Mary Jane is fully into the season, but it's playing with all our emotions at this point. There's a woman who has fallen for a married man, a married man comfortable with getting his cake and what could be someone else's too, and then a woman who wants to fight for her marriage. Then there's a bigger problem which was brought up in this latest episode. That's the idea of settling for being woman number two, better known as the side chick.

In the spirit of Black History Month, I'd like to bring your attention to one of the sexiest songs of the 90's (1998) about a woman having an affair with a taken man. That song is "My Little Secret" by Xscape. It clearly showed a side chick infatuated with sneaking around with another woman's man, but the best part was the other woman would never find out.

Obviously Mary Jane's situation is a little different. Almost as soon as she found out Andre was married, she did something stupid. She walked up to his wife, Avery, and confessed what was going on. Then she continued to see Andre, knowing he had a wife and kids. In the first couple of episodes we were all brought to believe MJ felt some kind of guilt up until this latest episode, titled Mixed Messages.

At some point in the episode MJ is asked to speak at a banquet that Avery also happens to attend. Upon seeing her husbands mistress, Avery lays everything out on the table to all the women without actually pointing figures at MJ. Then as MJ is supposed to make a speech to younger women about success, she directs the speech toward Avery instead. It's all about how being woman number 2 still has its value. Read the speech below.

“You know I had this great little sisterhood speech all prepared, but I seem to have left it in my purse at the table. I don’t want to talk about sisterhood, today. I know there’s a lot of professional women here, but I want to speak to the younger girls. You guys signed up for this mentorship program because you want to be successful. You want to be your mentors! You know everybody tells you: ‘Do your best so you can be number one! But there’s another position…You know I’ve found that being number two (glances over at Avery) gives you all the glory of being at the top without all the pressures of the number one spot. See, the job of any great number two is to figure what the number one is missing, what they refused to see and what they are doing wrong. So, you know take your time, learn, be patient, get better. You will get to where you’re supposed to be if you do the work. Because remember, if you don’t somebody else will. I’m Mary Jane Paul and thank you for listening.”

That damn speech is bothering my soul right now. The speech was made to justify why it was okay for the man to be cheating by throwing shots back at his wife, but who is really winning? There is no winning when you are number one and you know your man is creeping off to be with another woman. There is no winning when you're playing the role of he side chick, but he is still climbing in bed with the woman he gave a ring to. So while the speech was an amazing comeback for Mary Jane, it was also a waste of time.

I've been there before. I was the woman accused of flirting with someone else's boyfriend, but the guy approached me and started talking to me without ever mentioning her. I was the one that casually started talking to a guy and found out some girl I had met through a mutual friend was also casually talking to him. The other girl chose to be jealous (or mad) of me, but I didn't even want to play that game. I also started off a relationship with a guy totally wrong, which encouraged me even further to strive for the position of a man's only woman. However, now more than ever there's this obsession for us women to take what we can get and don't be mad if we happen to be sharing it. I'm not down with that at all.

No comments :

Post a Comment

Lashuntrice

Lashuntrice