girls – סלומה

Igbo women and girls and their hairstyles, 1900-1930.

The crested hairstyle ojongo was popular until the mid-20th century, it is a distinctive feature of Igbo arts depicting women. Women used ornaments like thread, feathers, shells, bone, wood, beads, Igbo currency, coins, or cloth; mud containing colourful ores, yellow and red camwood powder or paste and palm oil and charcoal were also used for style. Isi/Ishi owu, a threaded hairstyle (seen here worn by Chimamanda) is still popular among married women in rural areas.

A Kuwaiti girl, her lamb, an Iraqi T-55 and a burning oil well. 1991-the year.

When I am looking at my moonfaced girl,
my beautiful black-eyed thing,
and I smell her like smoke all around me
and the handsome rasp of her voice strokes my ears
and my rough-skinned hands are permitted
to settle in the soft curves of her hips
and trace the lines of her fine-wrought thighs
and she nudges her smooth nose
neckwards to smell my cologne;

this is when I know
I am the luckiest dyke in the world.

“Femme,” I.M.E.