Vanity Slaves

It's been a long time, forgive me...

 So Kendrick Lamar is one of my favorite up and coming artists and one song that I really like (and there are a lot) from the eponymous "The Kendrick Lamar EP,"which is free from his website, is called Vanity Slaves.
 

 What he's trying to argue in the song is that the reason those in the inner city and in particular black people tend to "floss" is because they are trying to compensate for for the hundreds of years when they had nothing to their name under slavery.

 "Blame it on the 400 years we never saw/ the reason why the next 400 years we gotta floss...Slaves" 

Well I'll leave it up to you to decided if you're convinced of that or not but what I really want to touch upon is the general idea of overcompensation that he brings up. How as humans when we lack something for an extended period of time we have the tendency to overcompensate when that one thing that we once lacked is now presented to us. Think about when we don't eat for a long time and then get super hungry, how many times have you grubbed until you felt your stomach couldn't hold another morsel of food.

How many times have you not had something and then when you finally got it you couldn't stop using it or couldn't stop getting more of whatever it was. My mother and uncle claim that they never had proper shoes as kids and never had more than one to their name and now give that as reason as to why they are constantly buying shoes. They each have over 100 shoes in their collection and it is definitely still growing. Overcompensation perhaps?

 There are also times when we seem to feel inadequate in one facet of our lives or something we feel vulnerable about and overcompensate for it in another area. Maybe that one love that we were sure about didn't work out and thus we feel we now have to prove to the world how great we are and how much we don't need anybody causing us to take on an identity that never really was us in the first place. What about the example that Kendrick Lamar gives? Vanity Slaves. Sometimes we are trying to overcompensate for something in our lives by turning to material objects and things that make us "look good" and "feel good." But the real questions is ARE we good.

The thing about overcompensation is that we often become slaves to it which in turn makes us think that our perception is reality. Just because something makes you feel good and makes you look good doesn't mean you are good. It doesn't mean that all is well. If we could only free ourselves from the chains of overcompensation that bind us maybe we would realize all we ever needed was what we already had.

 ...

 I wrote a poem/whatever you want to call it on a topic similar to this awhile back like in December. It was supposed to be about a girl who was overcompensating for a certain something that would be mentioned at the end of the poem but of course nothing ever goes as planned so here it is, maybe i'll finish it one of these days. And just as a heads up, I got the idea to write this after seeing a certain person's closet, just seeing its enormity and why they felt they had to have so much stuff. They will probably never read this so I guess it's ok that I post it here.

 "This Girl"

 This girl's best pal's are Louie, Gucci, Chanel, and Fendi
she's down to spend her penny to be considered trendy
she used to love to watch Barney the Dinosaur as a tot
but now she loves to walk into the stores like Barney's New York a lot
searching the racks for the what the mag's say is HOT
they say that the top with the leather skin is in, so you know what she bought
she needs to hear the words of the Reverend but she just rather shop
rather revel in the all the things that shes got
from the wristlets to the watches
to the fact that designer shoe boxes fill her closet
and to be honest, she's the opposite of modest
compulsive shopping's a disease and This Girl has caught it
she's coughing, she weezes, then sneezes
she feels all she needs is a little paper to buy her that fake fur
not knowing it's Jesus who's going to save her
but should she really take the blame for buying that Range Rover?
because every time she sits behind the wheel her mind convinces her there is no pain to feel
but that's a lie because the rings on her finger and the chains on her neck
merely reflect the chains that linger on that thing in her chest
she's a wreck
and the remedy for her issues...is shoes
retail therapy masks the pain of all things that she's been through
and if she could she would just to make herself feel good
buy everything that glow's gold on the globe and could be sold
but tell me girl for how much did you sell your soul?