Sustainable Fridays: Mean Girls & The Sustainable Clapback
- Rasheena Fountain
- Jan 19, 2024
- 3 min read
“If I didn’t define myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive," ―Audre Lorde, speech at Harvard University in 1982.
I love a good remake, but I don’t think any of us need to see the new Mean Girls remake to be reminded of the dark, permanent corner mean girls have etched in the world. I am sure many of us have our own versions of mean girls in our lives—the folks that leave us scratching our heads because of the lengths they are willing to go to release their toxins into our paths. For this Sustainable Friday, I’d like to loosen the gender constraints of “mean girls” and extend this ethos to whomever the shoe fits. This Mean Girls ethos is hella inclusive!
Sustaining for Us, is about interruption, about “unsettling”, “unsilencing”, and not being constrained by the respectability that often enables our unraveling. Through Sustaining for Us, I ask how can we sustain our ourselves within threats from climate change, white supremacy, attacks on queer and trans rights, the ongoing COVID-19 crises, and other oppressions and challenges? Yes, ignoring negative energy might work sometimes, but we are here for a good “clapback” over here. I’ll borrow this clapback example from Cambridge Dictionary: “He clapped back at haters in a thoughtful, mature way, explaining in a social media post that, yes, people with mental illnesses can still date.” Like the example, the Sustainable Clapback is meant to empower and arm. In that realm, I assert the Sustaining for Us Sustainable Clapback: Yes, we can prioritize our sustainability even as the world increasingly deemphasizes our well-being.
The Sustainable Clapback does not replicate the toxic energy that taints our ecosystems. A Sustainable Clapback can be caustic. A Sustainable Clapback can be rooted in love. What sustains us in a Sustainable Clapback is that it is meant to challenge the Mean Girls ethos—to turn the perpetrator inward because it is riddled with some of that ancestral knowledge (You know what I’m saying?!!). One of my favorite quotes passed down in my family is, “Never internalize their disrespect.” This saying in my family arms me and allows me to not respond in anger. It allows me to self-affirm and to navigate toxicity from a place of abundance and turn “my silence into action”, as Audre Lorde urges.
Below are some authors who can help arm us against the Mean Girls ethos and help empower and sustain us. Also, check out the second Sustainable Fridays playlist full of clapbacks!
Authors to Read to Arm Your Sustainable Clapbacks:
“The people who do this thing, who practice racism, are bereft. That is something distorted about the psyche. It’s a huge waste and it’s a corruption and a distortion.”
― Beloved
“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence. It is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare,"
― A Burst of Light" and Other Essays
“I don't think we have any alternative other than remaining optimistic. Optimism is an absolute necessity, even if it's only optimism of the will, as Gramsci said, and pessimism of the intellect.”
― Freedom is a Constant Struggle
“All too often women believe it is a sign of commitment, an expression of love, to endure unkindness or cruelty, to forgive and forget. In actuality, when we love rightly we know that the healthy, loving response to cruelty and abuse is putting ourselves out of harm's way.”
― All About Love: New Visions
“As I swept the last bit of dust, I made a covenant with myself: I will accept. Whatever will be, will be. I have a life to lead. I recalled words a friend had told me, the philosophy of her faith. "Life is a journey and a struggle," she had said. "We cannot control it, but we can make the best of any situation." I was indeed in quite a situation. It was up to me to make the best of it.”
― Unbowed
Sustainable Fridays: Clapback Playlist:
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