Fun fact: My mom is a PR person. Actually, she’s a veteran journalist-turned-PR person, with more than two decades in each field. She’s an expert who has worked with some of the most recognizable brands in the world. All that said, I am forever leery of my mom doing my PR, and am constantly editing her when she does.
Why? Because she’s my mom ... which means pretty much everything I do—including the most mediocre shit—is stellar in her love-goggled eyes. I am her proudest achievement, so she’s bound to inflate even my most meager accomplishments while conveniently glossing over my most humiliating failures.
Similarly, the mother of Angela White, better known as Blac Chyna, clearly loves her child to distraction, as she should. Following last week’s considerable controversy, sparked by Chyna’s decision to peddle skin whitening cream in Africa (at $250 a jar, no less), the aptly named “Tokyo Toni” took to Instagram on Monday to tell us “bitches” to take a “layer of dirt” off our faces before daring to criticize her daughter’s questionable business dealings. She then promptly lit up a blunt, so there.
Apparently, there’s some magic to being light-skinned that makes it entirely acceptable, and even expected, to sell skin-whitening products to black folks. But that, and all the incredibly vulgar language and imagery aside, what we really see here is a mother’s love. In Tokyo Toni’s eyes, Blac Chyna can do no wrong—and that just makes her a protective (if deeply color-struck) mother.
But don’t let Kris Kardashian’s success fool you, Chyna. If your mom is your PR strategy, you might want to rethink it.