Category Archive

I do own one - a flat iron, I mean. I’ve had one for a while, but then when I first cut off most of my hair, the instrument was placed in the garage. Then over Thanksgiving, I went to the garage with the particular desire to find it. And now it is sitting on my dresser. And it’s kept my hair straight for the last two weeks.

If you have read my previous posts on hair, or if you know me at all, this would appear to be a warning sign of some kind - of a loss of politics, maybe some kind of experiment. After all, I’ve never spent much time on my hair; the main reason I’ve chosen to leave it long is so I can throw it back into a ponytail on the way to class (I really dislike when women who are sitting next to me pick at their untied, unwashed hair in class - then it sheds on my desk and I want to scream, “Take a shower!”).

I brought back the flat iron nearly a month after the sweater came along. The sweater, as my friends will clarify as they read this, is not actually a sweater. It’s this blue zip-up hoodie that I brought back with me after a quick trip to visit my parents in October. It came from my mother’s closet - she had bought it but it wasn’t really something she was wearing often and I initially put it on because home is a bit chilly and because I love when clothes smell like that familiar mom smell.

I wear it all the time, ever since I got back to this place. I’ve developed a reasonable collection of sweaters and jackets, it isn’t that. I’m actually someone - clothes that make me feel put together. But then the sweater came along and nothing feels as safe and warm. And you know what else? It doesn’t make me feel frumpy or tired or ugly. It makes me feel comfortable. I really love this sweater. I want to wear it to bed and I want it to perpetually remain clean so that I don’t ever have to wash it.

The question then is, when will I be able to go out again in something other than this sweater and not think about it sitting in all its warmth and comfort on my couch? Issues with body image - do they ever go away? It isn’t just weight issues. It’s that feeling of wanting to put my hands on my body when I’m looking in the mirror and hope that they rub away the things I cringe to look at. It’s when I want to cut off my hair over the bathroom sink because it worries me that the long hair is making me too weak (read: too feminine). It’s when I’m standing in front of the closet thinking how ridiculous it sounds to not want to go outside because I just feel ugly in everything.

(When am I going to start to love, really love, my bumps and scars and shape?)

Back to the flat iron - I’ve been straightening my hair because when you’re struggling to get work done, struggling to get out of bed, to not cry in class, to hear people talk at you day in and day out without asking ask how you are doing, you just want to glance in the mirror and say, “Hey, at least one part of me isn’t sub-par.”

Does it make me feel ugly and unkempt to walk outside with my big irregularly curly wavy natural hair? It really doesn’t. I don’t necessarily feel prettier with straight hair. I just feel like with straight hair, I can get away with wearing the same frumpy sweater everyday; I can get away with having the perpetual scowl on my face.

It has been a long and difficult semester. And I am constantly conflicted by desires to graduate and leave and the fear of not knowing what comes after that. And it has been a challenging time because I feel very shattered, in some way. I’ve spent a great deal with wonderful friends who are loving and supportive and I hear about what’s going on in their lives, and I think to myself, “I have no idea what to say to you because that’s simply not where I’m at right now. Right now I’m in a place where I have to deal with things on my own and I have to figure out my insecurities about myself and my body and future”

This is where I should be talking about the island metaphor, but it is too important and I am working on a separate post for it altogether. But trust me, it is good.

I don’t know how I feel about writing a post on body image, but I’ll keep it personal and refrain from speaking of it generally. My whole life I’ve always been described as “skinny”, “really thin” - who “eats like a bird”, who is asked about my eating habits and health. Doctors have referred to my body in one particular way: “slightly above average in height and slightly below average in weight”.

Let me sidebar here and say a couple of things. Talking about my body, about thinness, about health — those are all privileges that I have - things I can think about pretty frequently, even amidst other issues. I spent a little too much time looking at Indian Barbie dolls and got too disappointed when I was unable to find an abundance of body image or disordered eating sites for women of color, let alone South Asian women. This post isn’t about fixing that, of course. It’s just…here.

I’ve gained some weight in the last 4 months. More and more I find myself studying or sitting in class and habitually poking my waist. I can go minutes at a time before I realize why my other hand isn’t free to do anything else. It isn’t that I never talked or thought about weight before - I grew up with my mother’s stories about constantly being heckled by everyone in her family because she was a “chubby tomboy” - how was she going to find a husband, how was she going to settle down, what would she look like at the wedding. I watch her struggling to pursue a healthy body versus a seemingly healthy image. My mother is an amazing woman. But that is entirely another post.

I went shopping today and I thought of this binary that is being created in mainstream body image discourse for women (white women actually because who the hell is talking about women of color - yeah that’s right. no one.) - either it’s what I’m used to seeing on television or in movies: really thin really white women or ambiguously ethnic but still fair women and the occasional thin black woman who is super feminine, etc. etc. And then on the other hand there’s this “love your body for what it is”-Dove campaignesque-clothes for all sizes attempt to counteridentify.

So I stopped in the size of the store that I am used to stopping in and suddenly realized - I hate this. I hate shopping by number and feeling like I’m somehow “losing” if the jeans I try on don’t fit. I just want comfortable jeans made for long legs that don’t let my full ass hang out of the top of them! So I did. Ok, no it wasn’t the most accomplished thing I’ve done, no it wasn’t world peace. But dammit, I put on those jeans that were 3 sizes larger than what I’d been wearing 4 months ago and I felt great - I could breathe I could start going from victim to system blame and tell myself that I’m ok. And just because no one is validating this brown skin and this large butt and these small breasts and these thick thighs and thin ankles and awkward shaped nose, nothing is going to keep me from feeling inadequate anymore. And that. felt. awesome.

I’ve only written one postcard to postsecret, despite my many secrets. And it said: I got over you because I was tired of feeling ugly.

Finally I can start feeling good about myself without being driven by someone else.

So I bought 2 pairs of jeans that accommodated this working-class pocket and decided that even though it isn’t a new year, it doesn’t mean I can’t resolve to take care of myself, and remember that self-affirmation is so much a part of feeling loved.

Someone recently remarked that in his college days (circa 1990) at the one women’s studies class he had taken, what he wished most was not that the “man-haters” of the class would speak less or be a little less angry, but “would bathe…or at least shave”.

I took it as a kind of divine sign to finally sit down and write this post, which probably would have been written differently prior to the conversation above.

First a bit of context. I grew up in Texas, and went to a suburban middle school filled with very white Christian blondes who all sought to be the next pageant winner or at least find Mr. Right as soon as possible. The girls in my year took physical education, which involved changing into a uniform of thigh length shorts and a large shirt that popular girls would make tight by rolling a knot in the back. We had one talk before middle school P.E. began and it was to remind girls of a phrase that would rise from it’s dusty-pre-teen-grave and be reiterated in high school textbooks and infomercials: personal hygiene. I was educated about personal hygiene in three ways:

1. Young women wear bras. It is part of staying clean and healthy.

2. Young women wear deodorant.

3. Young women shave their legs and underarms. Everyday.

The everyday bit was never explicit but it became the habit expected of all hygenic girls in gym - All I can really say about it is that was the way it was.
I stopped shaving everyday in high school (I had moved to San Francisco at this time) and only began shaving “when necessary” (parties, events, skirts, dresses). And then when the stream of problematic boyfriends started, well then that became an additional necessary situation. Every one would praise me when I “finally got around to shaving”.
Now, shaving is something I do (and I say this with hesitancy and considerable fear of casting aside my feminist identity) “when I feel like it” (eg. it’s been a month and I need something to make me feel accomplished) or for family situations (my father associates shaving for women with shaving for men - it’s what you do. For personal hygiene.). Except my underarms. Those I do as soon as it becomes fairly apparent.

I struggle with this to some extent, yes. Yes, it’s a choice that stems from a sexist institution, yes a real choice might give way to some kind of women’s liberation that I have yet to experience. To that, there are only a few things I can add to complicate such a solution/logic.

First, I’m a South Asian American women’s studies major. That’s enough to send my extended family into cardiac arrest as it is. My parents stand by this diligently but it is a very real factor in my life that isn’t going to go away - and though I grit my teeth when I lie and say I am also an English major (that I chose women’s studies as a stand-out major for graduate schools), and take the constant stabs at being a “man-hater”, “one of those feminists”, etc., shaving is one thing they can’t say anything about. It stops being proof at Americanization or reckless youth or the result of the blasphemous liberal arts education. It’s normal - so it isn’t talked about.

And this isn’t just in the case of my family. Because family (aside from my parents who are pretty consistently supportive of all feminist related actions, or at least generally keep questions to themselves) is an institution that I can battle tactfully (I like to think of it as an art). This campus is quite another story. Besides being marginalized as a woman, a woman of color, a working class woman of color, a South Asian working class woman of color, a liberal SAWCWOC…I am a women’s studies/english joint major. And I’m loud. And I’m intimidating to many. I get asked about what I’m going to “do after I graduate” more here than I do at home. Where is the safe space? To some extent, it comes in the ability to blend in feminine personal hygiene. And I’m not proud to admit that, I’m not. But there it is. To think about it any further is privileging an issue over more important ones, such as my racial and ethic identity, my battle with culture, marriage, the elitist nature of transnational feminism, even the hair that grows out of my head. Until those larger conversations become more moderated in my head, I can begin to identify what a “my choice” really is. And I hope that changes one day. I really do.

Until next time.

Thank you Dora, for this post - (courtesy of Shrub.com) I too, never wanted to be a white girl. I just wanted to be exactly like a white girl.
And yes. We need to keep talking about this…

I have more to say but it will have to wait.

Due to time constraints, this will be an entry that will most likely be revealed in parts. Now that this disclaimer has been put out there, I have no regrets about starting and ending wherever I please.
I shall start at the beginning.
I never cared about hair before - and by that I mean, not to the point of being able to empathize with other women of color about their hair. Hair to me has always been about expression, and style, and femininity, but it has never been, until recently, about my identity as a South Asian American woman.

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