Heard in Barbershop II

[Wilson Gray]

The "fade" hairstyle is much too outdated. It never really caught on,
in the first place, despite the best efforts of Kid of the rap-comedy
duo, Kid & Play.

Racial terms, OTOH, tend never to go out of use, especially when you
have a great, neutral, rhyming pair like "fade" and "shade."

-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain



On Sun, Mar 22, 2009 at 4:34 PM, Benjamin Zimmer
<bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
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> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: Heard in Barbershop II
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Sun, Mar 22, 2009 at 3:35 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> The token white barber working at the black Barbershop, asked whether
>> he thinks he's the Eminem of barbering, replies,
>>
>> Hell, yeah! That's why they call me "The Real Slim Fady"!
>>
>> As most people know, M&M had a hit album that was entitled, "The Real
>> Slim Shady."
>>
>> In BE slang, blacks are called "shades" and white people are called
>> "fades." Hence, by punningly calling himself "Slim Shady," M&M claimss
>> that he's as good at rapping as any black rapper.
>>
>> Then, the white barber, by calling himself "The Real Slim Fady," puns
>> on M&M's pun, claimiing that, though he's white, he's as good at
>> cutting Negroid hair as any black barber.
>
> See, I would've guessed it was just a reference to "fade" in the
> hairstyle sense, as in "hi-top fade".
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>
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