As I continue to chip away at some
of the false boundaries between “self” and “other,” I often bump up against
some hard-stops.
Some wired-in
misconceptions that are REEEEEEALLLY difficult to try and (1) un-tangle, and (2)
re-wire.
I guess that’s why they thought
lobotomies might be good thing.
Great
idea…poor execution.
My point is, since posting the photos of myself without hair and feeling fairly good about it, I have
been trying to get at just when it was that I lost the sense of self, and thus
the sense of my own beauty, both inner AND outer. When now as I flip though old photo albums for new material, i come across photos where I had earlier mentally blasted myself for the way I looked, I look at now and a sad beauty stares back at me. Along with a puzzling question:
Just exactly when did I decide that I was
really, truly “ugly?”
And this is important!
Because even though I have always been a bit lost and misguided, as if I
were just kind of plopped down on this straaaange blue planet - taken from my mother, placed
into homes with stranger-people, folks I KNEW were not my
kin…miraculously, I seemed to have (mal) adjusted to all of that. After all, children are resilient and I can
remember the kind, sometime longing stares of strangers at the angelic beauty
of a bi-racial child. It truly is a
sight to behold.
So I had a sense of my own self, my own beauty and
attractiveness at a very young age. But -
somewhere along the way, I claimed the idea of ugly. And now, as I continue to feel more (inner) freedom, a freedom that demands my (inner) child be granted 100%
discretion to play “dress-up” with all of the “outer” parts of how we define beauty - body shape, clothing, expression, and I am thinking to myself long
and hard these days…”Just where along the
line did I get the idea that I was ugly???”
And I do believe I
pinpointed it the other day: the move from Boulder to Lakewood.
Observe photos pre
LilyWhite Lakewood, CO:
I mean, I am obviously
feeling myself here:
And here…
And check me out here, with my busted fro, still gettin' down to the get-down:
And even though I was
one of the very few brown children in my 5th grade class at
Flatirons Elementary School in Boulder Colorado, there was enough ethnic
difference not to feel so much “otherness.”
And, as you can see here, I was still very, very certain of my own
ability to attract, with my million-dollar smile and square-do.
And those are REAL
MOUNTAINS behind us there – our elementary school was at the bottom of the
Flatirons mountain range in Boulder.
But then – in the
summer heading into my 6th grade year, we moved to Lakewood Colorado,
a lily-white suburb of Denver, Colorado known for its – homogeneity and general intolerance, I suppose. We moved there because my father was trying
to escape a 1 hour-per-way commute. I
understand. Commuting is hell. But for me, availability of reflections of
myself, of looking into the faces of others and seeing my own beauty, those
days were gone.
And my parents bought
out of their price range, too. They were
tired, weary, hungry, and the “staging” on this particular home was irresistible. My folks fell into a “money pit” in an area
called “The Glens” in Lakewood, Colorado.
Immediately, I decided that my afro was
unacceptable and must be hidden:
 |
Me during our 7th grade camping trip
|
To my left in the
photo is Tiger Lily. She and I and a
couple other girls were so close we created our own language and made fun of
others around who couldn’t understand us.
Her brother and she were re-named Ram Shannon and Tiger Lily early in
their youth, in place of their birth names, Gerbox and Gerbonnie. True story.
This is my 9th
grade school photo. I had started
tamping my hair down on the regular, braids, bun, whatever. Notice also the feeble attempt at bangs. We
have a special name for what you see here: “fro-bangs.”
And then by the time
high school came around, I gave up altogether, cut most of it off, peroxided
the front in rebellion, blow-dried my bangs to a worn frazzle, and gradually
got used to the idea that there was just something wrong with my hair. Oh, and obviously something wrong with me:
Off to college I went,
and it wasn’t long before I realized my curls held currency and so I started
growing my locs:
And if you are
wondering if this is half a picture, indeed it is, my friends. I ripped out the other half – she was a
bitch. Her skin, not much darker than
mine, she teased me mercilessly and cruelly about my
brown-on-the-outside-white-on-the-inside demeanor, from the clothes I wore, to
the way I talked, to the men I chose.
And then I straightened
it. And started wearing
rrreaaaalyyy ddararrrkk lipstick.
But – not for
long! After going platinum for the first
time post-baby in 2003, I have kept my locs close cropped. Way-low maintenance, and - I am
a bizzy momma.
And the other day,
when I was snapping selfies for the blog, with my nearly bald head, I was
feeling myself, something that is returning to me in waves: sometimes I can really feel myself, other
times, I am lost at sea. But only for now, not for long.
And, thankfully, what
strikes me as beauty these days is far broader and more encompassing than what I used to define as beauty.
At the end of the day,
all I am saying is this: as i grow out of adolescense and into my angsty teen years (i have heard the first 40 years of childhood are the hardest), i am finding that my insides are beginning to match my outsides. And on those occasions when I catch a glimpse of
myself in the mirror and it does not accurately reflect back to me my inner beauty, I look
away.