CULTURE|RACE

Do I Look Scary To You?

Please do not tell me that skin color doesn’t matter when it clearly does

What if someone nicknamed you “Scary” because they couldn’t remember your name? How would that make you feel, especially as a woman, let alone a woman of color?

I’ve never been a fan of The Spice Girls but I have wondered for decades now why Scary Spice was called Scary.

It’s always rubbed me the wrong way because she’s mixed-race, like me, and she’s the only one in the band of five women who has a name with more of a negative connotation.

In case you’re not familiar, there’s Posh, Baby, Sporty, and Ginger (I had to look them up to remember them all correctly).

Between Halloween around the corner and people I follow on social media geeking about talks of a Spice Girl Reunion on the horizon, I finally satiated my curiosity and looked up how the girls got their names.

Scary Spice said: “It was actually a lazy journalist that couldn’t be bothered to remember all our names, so he just gave us nicknames.

Nowadays, calling Mel B “scary” leaves a bitter taste in some people’s mouths given that she’s the only mixed-race member of the group and her nickname plays up to the ‘scary black woman’ racist trope.

Speaking on the nickname, she said: “I’m very kind of in-your-face. I was even more so back then. I was, what, 17, 18, like, ‘What! What do you want?!’ So I guess I could have come off as Scary. But I like my name.”

I am one of the people with whom this nickname leaves a bitter taste.

And, okay, I admit…I do like to sometimes sing one verse by The Spice Girls that Mel B.’s quote reminded me of,

“So tell me what you want what you really, really want…I’ll tell you what I want, what I really, really want…I wanna, I wanna, I wanna…”

I want the lazy journalist who came up with Mel B.’s name to do better.

I’m not someone who boils everything down to race, but in this instance, I can’t help but question if that journalist would have chosen “Scary” as Mel’s nickname if she were white.

And for the love of gawd, why is a 17 or 18-year-old young woman who might be bouncing off the walls with excitement asking what the photographers and media people want from her or them as a group seen as scary?!

It’s extremely hard for me to picture a similar outcome if the group were all guys, like the Rolling Stones, N-Sync, or One Direction.

Media is a powerful outlet, especially with the dawn and rise of social media which was non-existent when The Spice Girls first rose to fame.

I personally hate the idea that Mel B. (Mel C. is “Sporty Spice”) is associated with a name that is meant to provoke fear.

There is already enough unjustified fear from non-Black people when it comes to Black people, including those who are mixed.

My hair is not as thick as Mel B.’s but it is as curly and beautiful. I have had to learn to love it and embrace it as is after being told and shown that I needed to “tame” it, to tame me, from the time I was a child.

I love the people, women and men, in my life who are from cultures around the world and tell me like it is.

Those who speak to me honestly and directly.

I don’t like it when people are overbearing but I also don’t find it scary.

I have been called overbearing at times and watch this tendency in myself because I know how hard it can be for people to voice their true thoughts and feelings.

The truth and living an authentic life can be scary at times but worth it. Maybe that’s why Mel B. embraces her nickname as well.

I don’t think I’ll ever know.

However, each of us should know better than to judge someone as scary or not according to his or her skin color.

If that were the case, then I’d be terrified of many white people in the United States considering the fact that white supremacists are on the FBI’s list of top terrorist groups in America.

It’s hard to find an exact amount but this is information from six years ago:

California hosts the largest number of hate groups, with a total of 79. Florida comes in second with 63, and Texas follows close behind with 55.

There’s a website that helps track hate groups in every state in America. As of 2022 there were 1,225 hate groups being tracked.

Imagine the groups and people that no one knows about.

Now THAT is scary…to me.