Adiba Nelson

Adiba Nelson

Bio

Adiba Nelson currently resides in Tucson, AZ with her fiancee, 6 year old daughter, and 2 teenage stepsons-to-be. When she is not advocating for disability rights, performing burlesque, or writing her monthly style column, she is busy managing social media for her local Easter Seals affiliate. She is also the author of the children's book Meet ClaraBelle Blue, and is currently working on the follow up book, ClaraBelle's Big Discovery. You can find Adiba at http://thefullnelson.net/

Adiba Nelson Articles

Image credit: Youtube screenshot

Beyoncé Kills At The Superbowl, White People Complain

She unleashed a whole new level of #blackgirlmagic that I did not even realize I needed. And honey, if I didn't realize I needed it, well then hell, you know the world just wasn’t ready.

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I watch, fearfully, sadly, and angrily as evidence of everything she said my father did to her slowly reveals itself to me.

'It's All In Your Head': Intimate Partner Violence And Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy

My father was an abusive man, plain and simple.

That wasn’t all he was, but to my mother, that's who he was. He was a controlling individual who perhaps took the scripture, “Wives, submit to your husbands” a tad bit too literally — and when my mom didn’t submit, she paid the price. Often with a blow to the head.

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Eau de...Black Woman. Yep.

Eau De...Black Woman?

Apparently, we Black women have a smell. And it’s been bottled and labeled and is being offered up for consumption by Sunflower Cosmetics. Yep. You read that right. There is a legitimate company out there who is selling a perfume called “Black Women.” If my girlfriend hadn’t posted a picture of it in a local shop, I would have called her a damn liar.

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With the exception of Jennifer Hudson winning an Oscar for her amazing turn as the glamorous yet jilted Effie in Dreamgirls, every single Oscar that a minority actress has won has been for portraying a negative or otherwise stereotypical role.

#OscarsSoWhite: When Art Doesn't Imitate Life

If 93% of the Academy is White, but as of 2014, only 62% of Americans were White, and art is supposed to imitate life...

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My Life by Mary J. Blige was the Lemonade of the mid-to-late 90s. Image: Uptown/MCA Records.

Before Lemonade There Was My Life

[CN: mention of suicide] How did we get through love before Lemonade? We examined our lives through Mary’s shamelessly honest storytelling on My Life.

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Pictured: real women.

Ain't I A Real Woman?

It’s insane the number of ways people want to pigeonhole, categorize, and ultimately TEAR DOWN women. What’s even worse is that we, as women, buy into it. We run around in T-shirts that say “Real Women Do XYZ” or “Real Women ARE XYZ.” We post these memes and quotes and think they’re funny, but what are we really doing?

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LIAR, LIAR: Sandra Bland's Death Investigation Keeps Getting More Infuriating

Give me a minute please. I’m a little busy trying to decide if I should throw something, burn something, take my eyes out and dip them in bleach after reading that shit, have a woosa moment, or just. fucking. drink.

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Black and badass.

3 Reasons I Love Being A Black Woman

Black women have endured the unfathomable. We’ve watched our leaders be assassinated, and our hopes go with them. We’ve watched the nation’s leaders be assassinated, and watched our hopes float away with them too. We’ve buried our 5-year-old daughters after they were bombed to death in church, our 12-year-old sons who were playing in the park, and our 29-year-old daughters who were stopped for simple traffic violations.

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Image: Behind Blondie Park

Dear Pantene, Girls Without Dads Are Just As Strong

Where did you even get that statistic from? Did you make it up?

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She's Sitting Pretty

"I now had my seat of power, my throne, if you will. That’s why I customized my chair to look like a throne. And that’s why I liked it in my act: because I was truly in love with it and all that it represented for me. It was no longer a trap or a cage. It was freedom. It was power. It was sexy. And it was mine."

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