Beauty

Wow, I have to say that the most enjoyable internet read I've had in a while is the Politics of Hair Carnival. I really knew almost nothing about black hair before going through the carnival. You see, I was born in a 100% white community, and lived in that sort of isolation until I was 13. My three grandfathers were overtly racist, using nothing but the n-word when talking about a black person (which was more often than you'd think, even though, again, they didn't know any black people.) I was taught from a very early age that racism is wrong, and that you shouldn't dislike someone just because of the color of their skin. The n-word was incredibly abrasive even to my sister and I, and we were relieved a tiny bit when my grandfathers graduated to the word "colored." At any rate, I think we often take it for granted that there are so many isolated pockets of white people around the country, which is why white normativeness reigns supreme. After all, since I'd met a total of 2 black people during my childhood, only saw black people like the Cosbys on television, and was told that racism was only a matter of hating someone only because of their skin color, how was I to assume that black people were culturally and physiologically different? Therefore, the whole "good hair" and "lighter skin is better" phenomena were total news to me.

The post that resonated with me most was With My Nappy Headed Ass's:

I had been raised in the tradition of black women who "care" about their looks, that this was a necessity. It was considered a downright tragedy if you ever left the house with your hair or yourself looking less than 100% beautiful.

Lately I've been thinking about the women in my own family. I have a family of four: my dad, my mom, my sister and me. My sister inherited the genes from my mom's side of the family: usually shorter (although my sister is not), a little big-boned, HUGE boobs, etc., whereas I got the genes from my dad's side: usually taller (again, I'm not really tall, just average), small boobs, thin, etc. I'm around 120lbs with an A cup, while they are around 150 or 160lbs with DD cups. Perhaps it's this physical difference that started driving the wedge between my my mom and sister and I about "caring" about our looks.

Around when I was 12-15, we had a subscription to Seventeen magazine, which was really my sister's, and which I would read after she was finished. At that time, I tried to dress "cool," but since I didn't have my own income, I relied on my mom to buy me stuff, and she would of course never shell out $60 for a pair of Jnco jeans, so I never was cool. I probably used some lip gloss, foundation, mascara, etc, but never wore all that much makeup because I wasn't good at putting it on and I was horrified that I might screw it up. Whenever I would read the on-hand issue of Seventeen, I would go into the bathroom afterwards and gather all the makeup, and raid my closet trying to come up with something cool. I would also feel terrible about myself, think I was too fat and ugly. It wasn't until I realized that there was a correlation between fashion magazines and hating myself that I stopped reading them. My sister just kept plugging away at "looking good" while I stopped wearing makeup and doing my hair all together.

Before my last year of high school, as an experiment, I bought nothing but dress clothes: skirts, slacks, sweaters, oxford shirts, knee socks and the like. I wore dress clothes to school every day of the year, simply to see what people would have to say. My mom liked it because I had always worn jeans, but I don't think she realized how little "looking good" entered into the equation. I mean, I did look good, and even in my Velma-esque outfits, I never got made fun of, not once, but again, that was part of the experiment. After I got out of high school, I cut my plain, straight brown hair, grew it back, cut it again, grew it again, cut it again, cut it shorter and shorter and shorter until finally I just didn't feel like fucking with it anymore and asked to have a boy's haircut.

My mom keeps her hair kind of short, because it's the middle-aged-lady kind of short haircut, while my sister keeps hers long enough that she can "do things with it." Now that I have short hair, I'm very disinclined to grow it back out. I'm also disinclined to wear makeup, something that my mom and sister don't dream of. If they're not going to wear makeup, it's because they know they're not going anywhere farther than the mailbox that day. I don't know how many times my mom dragged me up the street to the grocery store to get a gallon of milk while she hid in the car because "she just got off work" and she doesn't look good. May I ask who you are going to see in the dairy aisle of a bum-fuck-nowhere Food Lion? Oprah? The queen of some (non-existent) local social circle? Last time I checked, Food Lion was filled with many other people who just got off work.

My sister is not as timid as my mom about stuff like that, but she's more of a stickler for "dressing up." It's true that, as kids, she loved wearing dresses and I hated them, and it is true that every once in a while, I wear a skirt or something, but my sister (who is training as an opera singer right now, btw) plays dress-up whenever she's not at work it seems. We went shopping a few weeks ago at the aforementioned dreaded indoor mall, where she told me that she goes to Anne Taylor once a week. This was a huge surprise for me. Every time I see her, she's got some new clothes and jewelry, which makes me think that she blows about $300 or so a month on clothes, where I probably spend $500 a year on them.

I'm not saying that I don't care about my looks. However, I like the way I look. I guess I should mention now that both my mom and my sister are beautiful women. They should like the way they look all the time, but they only do so after putting on makeup and pretty clothes. I like the way I look, meaning I like the way I really look. Without makeup, in jeans and a t-shirt, before, during and after work, any day of the week. I have been told by other people that what makes me appealing, aside from my baseline not-ugliness, is that I look alive, alert, attentive, curious, like I actually give a crap about life. I don't think I could ever look in a mirror and ascertain that for myself, so I'll have to accept their judgment.

To me, the saddest thing about my mom and sister is their hatred of their own bodies. Like I said a couple of posts down, my mom was more visibly disturbed at finding that I use washable pads than at finding out that her son-in-law is 4 years older than her. I talked to my sister about it, who totally agreed with her. "When I throw away a pad, I don't want to think about it anymore. The last thing I would want to do is wash it." !!! Oh my god, people! This is your own body! This is something that happens to 52% of the human population on a monthly basis! I mean, if I were my mom and I'd given birth to two kids out of my vagina, I'd treat it with a little more respect than something that needs to be hidden. Not that I'm saying we should hang pictures of our vaginas on our walls, but acting like soaking a pad and running it through the washing machine is like the equivalent of throwing shit on the walls is ridiculous. I'm glad that With My Nappy Headed Ass has decided to break the cycle of "caring" about her looks, aka, caring about what is considered beautiful by a bunch of people who have nothing to do with her and could not give a shit about her. I also feel similar to how Blackamazon feels whenever I see a woman my age with short hair or no makeup:

A sister with curls or dreds or naps or bald or a twa ( I remember that one) sees me on the street and there seems to be some sort of unspoken understanding for themost part . That no matter what we do to it we are doings omething amazing by stepping away from the amonium

Fuck normalized beauty.