Who Told Me I Was Ugly???

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 5^th 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 6^th 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 9^th 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.