MaxWell Magazine’s People Of The Moment

Today’s edition of MaxWell Magazine’s Person of the Moment highlights two unlucky candidates.  I was catching up on MTV’s Making His Band and the episode lead to thoughts of self-image and peer-pressure. The last few episodes focused on the keyboardist Lynette, an unconventional dark-skinned beauty, who has a crush on J-Free. Lynette shares a room with the larger than life transsexual Jaila. J-Free has a thing for Lynette but doesn’t want to admit it, in an attempt to protect his rep.  When Jaila confronts him, he attacks her sexuality and she wins the match by attacking his manhood.  Tensions build, feelings are hurts and hundreds of stereotypes are magnified because of self-image and peer-pressure. Our society is visual and has vanity issues, so its no surprise Lynette has low self-esteem or that J-Free feels she’s not worthy because she’s not a supermodel.  What I can’t understand is why the other guys in the house played right into the situation.  They all laughed at Lynette when she tried to expose her love affair with J-Free and dogged Jaila because SHE was different.  It bugles my mind how black folks can ever be discriminatory or unsupportive when people seem different.

It’s sad how someone as peaceful and genuine as Lynette could take a verbal punch from a “man” with no retort. By the shows end there was a shining moment; Sean “P Diddy” Combs.  A man not generally known for his humility and tolerance showed what it means to be a leader.  I loved how he not only looked passed the oddity that is Jalia and accepted her clear talent.  He befriended her, put her mind at ease by sticking to his values and focusing on her gift.  Too often we are a society of followers and I proud of Jalia and Diddy for bucking the grain and becoming MaxWell Magazine’s People of the Moment.