Facebook Profiles: Sherri Warren and Donna Mekeda Bradley
Observation number one: too many American-style women do not like to be regarded or considered in groups. This is often an immature beauty phenomenon but too many women would rather consider themselves extremely unique. What is worse (for me) is to dare involve educated western women in anything having to do with physical appearance. But I have a quick one for that one: no matter how educated I appear to be---I as a male fully expect to have my physical appearance evaluated by women---no matter how old and ugly I get. I free myself, then, from the sexist "double standard" accusation.
So it became an interesting exercise for me to preserve two Facebook profile photos that strike me the most. Now that this exercise is real to me, I will not go through my hundreds of Facebook friends looking for interesting photos. I want to keep this as natural and casual as possible: I simply remember two faces---Sherri Warren and Donna Makeda Bradley
Sherri Warren
Before I became aware of the artist, Sherri Warren, living in Oregon, I thought of Oregon only as the state where many white male IT programmers semi-retire through telecommuting. At least twice in my IT career I sat in a Los Angeles office building in a meeting with some people huddled around a speakerphone listening to some white guy in Oregon. Sherri Changes all that.
When I see this image of Sherri, the first thing that comes is the opportunity to recreate and improve upon the relationship Miles Davis had with Cicely Tyson. Cicely saved Miles from death by heroin---and there is a whole new generation of sisters who have vowed (mostly subconsciously and during childhood) never to be a one-way-nurturing thang like that again...
Donna Mekeda Bradley
Another artist, Donna Mekeda Bradley, has this presence that reminds me of divine beings appearing in child-like form but are thousands of years old. [This image](http://kintespace.com/bitmaps/blog_donna_mekeda_bradley_profile.jpg) definitely captures that look of innocence *and* experience.