The Rasheed Wallace Stage

Here's a photo of my with the cornrows I got over the summer. I only had them for about two weeks before my hair started escaping from them and returning to its chaotic self.

There are several reasons for getting my hair done like this (such as my little sister wanted to get some done, but not alone, so we got them together). But there was a more fundamental reason, which is actually pretty ridiculous, which is of course why I'm posting about it here.

How many of you reading this have heard of Rasheed Wallace, the NBA player? Well, for several years there has been mild debate in my family over whether or not I look like Rasheed Wallace. It wasn't really that strange of a thing when it first started, since we all have a habit of calling people names based on people that they seem to look like (for example our brother Cyrus is a big movie star, since Jack calls him Mark Wahlberg and I think he's Heath Ledger).

The debate over whether or not I really looked like Rasheed Wallace would intensify based on whether or not my current hair style was similar to whatever hairstyle Rasheed Wallace was sporting. So during my fro days, I would get called Rasheed Wallace alot around the dinner table and over the phone.

The last time I had seen Rasheed Wallace in a basketball game, he'd had cornrows. So over the summer when the opporunity arose to get some, I decided to once and for all settle whether or not I looked like him.

(For those familiar with Lacan and his work on the image and identity, I am totally aware that this story is almost too perfect at illustrating how identity is fundamentally outside of us, and the forming of the ego is nothing but a traumatic circular movement around this splitness that never ends.)

It only took about forty five minutes, after which my stepdad snapped a couple shots of me such as the one above to show everyone else in the family.

So what was the verdict? I'm pretty sure the consensus was that I don't really look like Rasheed Wallace. Lao ti lalalu yu' yanggen parehu i linekkat-mami.

(Despensa yu', but part of the reason for posting this is just to check to see if the image load function works on my blog)