STORY 10 — THE OPPOSITIONAL GAZE

Under the weight of Black Lives Matter in a PWI, Black beauty carries its own weight, its own history, its own quiet defiance. Under the teachings of hooks, Campt, Glissant, Moten, and Quashie, I learned to see the Black male body as sacred opacity: not spectacle, not display, but presence. COUTUREBOY folds this into every image: the right not to explain, the right to be desired without being devoured.