“When they say casual dress and you show up to the party in fur, stunna shades, and Louis Vuitton shoes . . . that’s extra.” That’s what I love about the word extra. It's the perfect descriptor for people who are just doing the absolute most. Language is amorphous, it should ebb and flow with the culture, always meeting us where we are, extra included. Extra has undergone a subtle redefinition—of context, not meaning. Essentially, extra went from meaning “an unnecessary surplus” to “unnecessarily exaggerated and over-the-top.”
Even though this usage of extra isn’t new (see Urban Dictionary), its recent bump in popularity could be attributed, in part, to the fact that we, as a country, have traded normalcy for daily over-the-top shenanigans. This is a world in which satirical sketch comedy shows desperately struggle to find better material than that of real life happenings, where being a child molester is barely enough to keep you out of office, and where people place their right to assault weapons over the lives of children. Let’s face it, we officially live in Toontown, constantly questioning, “Is this even real life?” We needed something; a new way to re-contextualize our increasingly zany world. Enter extra, with belly laugh-inducing memes and gifs, boldly giving us a vocabulary to help fend off madness. It was redefined and updated, taking on more contextual real estate than ever. Extra became, well . . . extra. What I hate about extra: For Black and Brown people, its connotation went from good to bad. When I was a kid, I got to lick the extra batter from the mixing bowl once the brownies were in the oven. If I finished my homework early, I got extra TV time before bed. There was a time when extra meant reward. But now . . . look y’all, as a Black person in America, I’m just trying to live my best life. Oftentimes, that entails being extra. But we have to remember that even though we’re living in extra times, there are still socially enforced standards of “civilized” behavior at play. Because of this, my Blackness becomes inextricably linked with my extra-ness. Comedian KevOnStage’s exasperated defense of Black people dressing up for the opening weekend of Marvel’s Black Panther hits on something interesting: “Extra seasoning, extra sauce on the chicken nuggets . . . the way we dress, the way we are, the way we play music—we just a extra people.” Besides pointing out the double standards Black people are held to on the daily, he suggests that there’s pride in being who you are, not shame. Black people live life extra because we’re making up for lost time; for going for so long being impoverished and without. We live extra because we don’t know if we’re going to live to see tomorrow, so we’ve got to cram two and a half days of living into twenty-four hours. Living extra means seeing more clearly, hearing more crisply, feeling more deeply, and living more fully. To you, it might be extra. To me, it’s just enough. *Published by Thalia's Umbrella, 2018
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AuthorI'm no different from anybody else--just a passionate person with opinions about the world. This is my platform to express them. Archives
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