An Ode to Make-up during a Pandemic

With age, I've learned to appreciate my appearance and to appreciate the beauty in everyone I see. I think that's just a normal part of growing up and unlearning the unhealthy messages that I wouldn't want to perpetuate. 

I credit part of that to being an educator and seeing how the most wonderful kids see themselves poorly and how false that narrative is. I also credit that to a world that, luckily, is evolving. 

 And, mostly, I recognize that people don't like others because of appearance. It's a simple concept really but it's true. People who are conventionally beautiful struggle in relationships too, whether that is due to chemistry or their unkindness and vice versa. People who are conventionally not what society thinks of as beautiful often have the most wonderful relationships. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter.

 So I'm often pretty chill about it and I don't expect reactions to my appearance from others. 

But, I've been wearing heels and red lips since I was a kid. For me, it brings a little zest and joy to the ordinary. It's fun to take a picture in bright colors. It's fun to have a pink cheek. It's fun to blow your hair out because life is so busy yet mundane often. It's nice to perk up in a little purple jumpsuit. In this really unsteady moment, there is a lot of things to miss but one of them for me is the joy of that art, of that transformation.

 I grew up in Maine so people were very bland with their clothing and Boston is very similar in that sense where people shy away from expressing themselves so it was always nice to feel like the brave one. It's always nice to grow out my nails, really long and sharp and paint them either bright pink or silver and feel like an absolute queen. In the summer, they would never break and people were astonished which was super funny to see.

 Sometimes I put on a nude lip and slight blush but I don't wear make-up now because there's nowhere to go. I don't wear my little skirts or my 5 inch shoes because America is closed down with this pandemic.  I don't contour or make my face look like what it's not supposed to but I think of dressing up, wearing a little make-up and going outside a little like I think of exercise, not every day, not all the time but when I do it on occasion, I feel a little new and no one knows but me. It's a nice thing I do for me.

It's a new world. I love the way my body changes. I love my bare face. I'm starting to grow white hair and have very faint lines around my mouth. And all of that is ok and is part of the natural and wonderful human experience.

I hope soon the world opens up again and people can go outside with a little color on their faces and a little joy in their hearts.

Codeswitching or DNA?

 I'm very comfortable around white people, even the rich ones. 

I grew up in Maine, went to Colby College, then the University of New England where I was the only grad student of color, then Harvard. Some call it code-switching but I don't think it's code-switching.

I think it's just a part of some of us. 

Part of my identity is that I flirt with younger white guys at gyms. This has always been the case. They get a tickle out of it and so do I, even though both parties know that the interest isn't really there. 

It's always been the case too that older white men and older white women tend to take me on as their mentee. Sometimes I run away from that dynamic but I do know that it's always there. 

It may be time for some of us to admit that our upbringing gives us a "leg up" when it comes to communicating with and being comfortable around the majority. It's not simply about class or race but about the culture which we understand, and to an extent, incorporated into our childhoods and our beings. 

 When Roxane Gay and Nicole Byer talk, and they say that Black people say that they sound white, I get what Black folks may be saying. 

 When the community of Black, Latinx, Asian, and Native students graduated from the Harvard Ed School in 2017, many left immediately or within a year because they found the culture of Boston to be extremely racist, with white supremacy wafting through the air. I totally got that. My first year here after school was hard but I recognize that I didn't have as difficult a time as my friends did. 

I was able to move through circles because I had already been acculturated and I knew what to expect. That is the one thing those of us who went to "integrated schools", as lonely as they may be, knew and knew well.

 I create my own community as most Black people and people of color who come of age do and of course that community consists of primarily Black people, Black culture, and people of color because I have that capital as an adult. The moment I entered affinity groups at Colby and the moment I moved to D.C., I knew that I would do that because my sense of myself and my people were missing in the Maine upbringing, but, nonetheless, it was deliberate choice.

I could be surrounded by white folks easily because that very Maine upbringing set me up to work in world still run primarily by white folks. I don't come off as threatening... often.

A student I used to work with sat on the bus with me one day and talked to me about race. And we experience some of the same things. We were biracial women of color. But she also recognized the way I spoke, the way I moved in different environments, and she mentioned to me that I was "pretty," which I think was actually code for non-threatening since we both looked the same, same skin tone, same hair, but our mannerisms were somewhat different. 

And that is something we don't talk about. We pretend that we're all the same. We tell stories about never living up to the ideal of the skinny white women we saw on T.V. when the other side of the coin is that we also understand everything about the skinny white women we see on T.V. and in our neighborhoods. 

We pretend that numbers and percentages of people of color at colleges are workplaces are all that matter but the reality is, there are fewer Black and Brown students from segregated or minority neighborhoods at these institutions. 

Maybe the people accepted into colleges and workplaces are not merely code-switching but that is just a piece of their (my) DNA because it's what they've been exposed to already. That's perhaps why white people are comfortable around them. It's easy for me and it's easy for them.

Not every Black person is the same. I understand a little bit how the game is played. I understand a little bit what I can say and how I can push and what I'm allowed to show with my face because I'm already in the door and I'm already not that threatening. It would be disingenuous, I think, to not acknowledge that.

And I think we need to acknowledge too that AOC and Kamala Harris have codeswitch privilege and pretty privilege too. They're light-skinned, they're thin, and they're conventionally beautiful. We don't give someone like Stacy Abrams or anyone else on the squad the same leverage.

That doesn't save women of color who understand white people from all oppression. We'll still get all types of racist things thrown at us and we'll still get belittled and sometimes called a bitch but let's not equivocate.

What Racial Ambiguity Means to Me

In academia, people often speak in very conceptual terms that are not welcoming to folks who don’t use that common language. It stifles conversations or ends it completely before it has a chance to begin.

I think about being multiracial often because of my own identity. I think about it in terms of how I’ve benefited and been harmed because of that very specific identity.

I think about making more space for biracial folks while centering Black folks in an anti-black society and how all of that ought to co-exist in the world when the biracial person is also Black.

I think about who I have access to in the dating field and how I come off professionally.

I think about the term racially ambiguous and the privilege within the term itself. It means one doesn’t look Black-Black. It means there is some other race entwined in there that enhances the beauty, as though the beauty needed to be enhanced.

The National Geographic issue where everyone is racially ambiguous in the near future reinforces that idea that being simply Black is not what we want our future to look like. That idea is wildly harmful.

The idea too that biracial people are harmed by Black people who don’t accept them as part of the Black community is also outdated and somewhat ridiculous. Anti-blackness is systemic so the outcasting of biracial children if it does happen, often comes from family members in their non-Black lineage.

What one tells themselves and what their communities actually says can be different. The Asian stereotypes of quiet and quaint were not made up by Asians but by white folks. Both my mom and grandmother are outspoken and opinionated so I can’t point the blame at them when men or bosses expect me to be more docile than I am. It’s not a narrative the Asian-American community created.

Similarly, when Black people with light skin or biracial folks say “I’m not accepted by the Black community.” or “I never felt part of the Black community,” it strikes me as placing blame on folks who are likely just fine with who they are and are not likely harming you. Those internal feelings likely come from the fact that white culture says that you’re more proximal to whiteness and therefore somehow different from dark-skinned folks, but not that different since you're still othered. We have to reanalyze that thought.

The internal struggle of thinking you’re not fully this or that is a valid and often painful one to reconcile but that doesn’t mean that some of it isn’t a projection of blame onto folks more marginal than you.

Feelings and experiences about different identities are real and if we always play oppression Olympics, those feelings can be silenced and put aside if we only have enough brain space to talk about the most oppressed of people. While attempting not to do in a manner that gaslights and “all lives matter” race in this moment, I still aim to highlight and make space for multiracial identity in a country that is obsessed with labels and boxes, and hence obsessed with erasure.

Biracial people outside of the Black/ White dichotomy also exists and we deal with an entirely different dynamic. Depending on what races make up an individual, the experiences are entirely unique but it’s particularly murky in biracial people who are not part white. Non-white biracial people navigate how to uplift different cultures while not being understood by greater society as conventionally what one ought to be like or look like. Further, those who are mixed with Asian and Latino roots often still deal with xenophobia and the contempt for immigrants even as they navigate their own belonging. And (lastly), they have to navigate how the desirability politics and values from the different parts of their identity can not only co-exist but have a conversation with each other in their body. Their body being the place of both otherness and privilege, a place of colonization and power. It’s a lot that we don’t talk about.

As I write this, I recognize that I’m throwing around words like desirability politics, otherness,  and racial ambiguity to talk about a concept that is actually just visceral. We get highlighted when and if we tell our stories. Our stories bring up questions and if there are no stories, we don’t exist in the cultural imagination except in a way that continues to be defined for us by things outside of us. That isn’t right.

That’s where the fetishization and the tendency towards exoticism comes in. I am racially ambiguous because of our education system and the stories Americans see and hear or more accurately, the stories they don't see and don't hear. I exist outside of the norm. But I am not racially ambiguous. I know what I am. Vietnamese and Black and the fact that I am both, just like millions of other multi-racial individuals, deserves space for dialogue, accountability, and mere existence. 

 Anyways, I am working on a multiracial project and I am speaking it into existence. 

Giving Grace

People are encapsulated in one another's memories and stories as moments in time.
When someone does you wrong, the story you tell is of that. When someone makes you feel special, that too, is a story you tell.
And depending on how people exit your life, you tell their story to match that exit. They're frozen.

I've been thinking a little bit about kids from my high school, and how those kids linger in my mind as spoiled or fake or privileged 17 year-olds. They provided a setting where I, as a main character in my own story, wrote and solidified them that way. So now when I think back of Deering High School and of Maine, it is my fact that I went to school with humans who had many blindspots regardless, of course, of who these people are now.

And on one hand, it doesn't matter, because it's my story and it's something we all do. Our stories have protagonists and antagonists and supporting characters. On the other hand, I've been ruminating about grace and growth.

It doesn't matter to the people I drew in my mind as playing a certain character because they're no longer part of my life so it wouldn't be doing it for them but it would be about collectively reframing the narrative as a country and a culture to make room for growth and complexities in human beings.

Those bad guys who messed around in college and partied too much may have a family who they love now but if in my story I tell them as those bad guys in college than my narration about men adds to the narrative of people who are either stuck in their immaturity or repeats perhaps, the narrative that there isn't anything other than this narrative.

And stories are cultural and emotional facts.

On one hand, this is just a post about the stereotypes we exacerbate because of our personal experiences, right? But conversely, this is post is also selfish because we all want to be seen as complex and thoughtful individuals who grow.

...not just that 17 year old rapper who used derogatory language and is now forever a misogynist or that white kid was trying so hard to fit in with kids of color that it came off as disingenuous/ cultural appropriation or that shy kid at college who didn't have an opinion about anything important... many of us don't want to be stuck there in quicksand.

BUT

People have some autonomy to rewrite their stories in their own lives and in the lives of other people as well. What it takes is the reevaluation of values and admissions of misdeeds and lots of fuck ups and conversations. The issue lies not within the journey but to whether the individual is willing to take that journey. Is the individual having conversations about violence against the LGBTQ community or examining their misogyny or classism because it may not necessarily change the narratives about them in the stories already written but it changes their role in other people's stories which changes the overall human story. And if they remain connected to the people from old, it also reveals examples of growth, so long as we, the receivers, allow room for grace in our hearts.

I often giggle at the people who have wronged me in some way who want to re-enter my life after either neglect or the colorful language that had been used against me but instead of calling them thirsty or stupid, my hope is that whatever new or positive energy they have suddenly found for me, be utilized in caring connections with others so that their stories can lean more positive. I am not saying human beings should re-enter the lives of those they harmed. Different people have different opinions on that but I don't believe it myself. In my view, they can become anew to others and forgiven in not only the hearts but also the critical minds of those they harmed.

One of my practices for this very fragile year where human beings are losing their lives, their dignity, and their livelihoods is to say, "this person was X to me or this town was X to me, but that is not the whole of who they are and I imagine and hope that this place or this person is better and kinder as a whole person." Our fragile, very individualistic world needs that.

It's tough to do but I try as a person who seeks grace as well.

Dates

May 3, 2020

10:13 p.m.

Three nights ago, I had a dream about him and I wonder if that has to do with the sticking point of compatibility. The dream was very vivid. We were driving through a well-lit bridge at 2 a.m.-- bright lights, like a music video. We arrived at his place and... I think we made love. I don't remember that point so clearly. Usually, after we make love, I leave or he leaves, depending on whose house-- and it was a lovely house, not apartment in the dream.

But he asked me to stay with him.
And in the morning he was dead, the place burned down, and there was a murder mystery that ensued!

Had I done it? Had someone else? Had fate? What happened after that beautiful night that was all I wanted in real life? Was it symbolic?

A few nights later I watched the teen drama "Never Had I Ever" on Netflix where the lead actress was being driven home through a well-lit freeway. The actress was looking to hold the actor's hand-- wondering if she could or should. That angst, that excitement, that energy of 2 people in a car, I've been there.

Doing all you can but knowing you don't have access to a person's value of you or their innermost thoughts. I've taken these car rides starting with bad, run-down cars with a hot 19 year-old, to a fancy yet old car in Rwanda... dudes drive TOO FAST....... to a more sensible car in the Field's Corner area of Dorchester, I was in it after just one night, he was brave!

And lastly, a Mercedez with a bike rack on top.
Each time, they always feel like ... "is he gonna hold my hand? Will I have butterflies? Can I wipe off this annoying smile? Is he gonna kiss me? Will he drive just a little too fast and we live on the edge a little bit?" Every time!

I must have cried after that series for an hour at 4:30 a.m. because those moments are the moments that define so much and I don't realize it, or realize when they'll come back until quarantine.

Sometimes those cries and those dreams are really healthy, a moment of release and reflection, and a moment to reconcile with what a person can and can't control but knowing the moments before that were building blocks and part of that journey was beautiful. The butterflies can to be felt so vividly in a dream that I felt awake! And the destination... well, we haven't gotten there yet.

Nuance

Peace comes when you give something your all.
You don't think it's going to come
but it comes.

"How do we mend when we're worlds apart?
Ooh, carry on
Ooh, from the start
Somehow, we fell in love, then fell right out of touch
And ooh, that was hard
But ooh, here we are"  -Anderson .Paak "Make it Better"


There's this thought out there that I find kind of ridiculous. The thought of "new-age half-assing" I call it. The thought that, "hey, I can't give my all because that's vulnerable! Why should I be vulnerable if other people aren't vulnerable? Why should I be genuine and true if other people aren't?"

That is... no way to live. The heart is strong and it rebounds if one gives it a chance to. It's better than being afraid to beat and staying flat.

We're going through shared trauma in the world right now. There is a lot of fear. A lot of suffering. A lot of love that we wish we could share with one another NOW.  Now that it's harder to. The isolation that many folks must feel in addition to being sick or not having enough money is overwhelming. I believe whole-heartedly that human dignity comes from the light and humanity we give to each other.
---
So why half-ass that? Are we all moody teenagers? Do we need to split the bill evenly 7 ways? It doesn't make sense.
--

What makes sense is the fear from pain that comes from something you value not working out, of course. And there's no way to avoid that. It's like having your heart shatter. It's like your eyes are an endless fountain of sappy, unstoppable tears. It's like the same conversations with your friends over and over again.

It's like a losing fight. It's like putting the beauty of what once was onto a ventilator and hoping and wishing and holding the hand of that connection just to see it slip away.  And it sucks because there's no nuance in the humiliation and loss. None.

And then, for me, peace comes.

Peace comes because I didn't leave anything on the line. Peace comes because I never played games or pretended like I didn't care. Peace comes because I put my hours in. Peace comes because I stripped myself down. Peace comes because I said what I needed to say.

And so I can sleep in peace at night because I know that while I can't control anything else or anyone else, I can control me. And when I've lost enough battles of unrequited this and that, I realize that my foundation is unshatterable and I realize that my perspective is longer and wider.

At 17, I was too privileged to date who I dated and we were on different paths.

At 21, probably for the first time, I realized I was beautiful.

At 25, I was fighting wholeheartedly and I needed my fighting spirit to be valued and not ducked.

At 29, someone else's projection of pain and insecurity was not going to get in the way of my joy.

And at 31, really 32, I realized that I lose A LOT because I get in the arena and the euphoria of joy and pure human connection made it worth it.

Or maybe it is years after the fact that I realize those things about a My at those ages. Each time I cried and then I danced.

But I'm not this confident, slightly cocky, woman that I am, if I wasn't a woman who got into the arena and lay her heart bare for those she felt worth it. And even as they may be not worth it today, they were worth it at a point, because we as humans are beautiful, stunning and worthy.

If there is anything to be learned today, in the midst of this worldly chaos, it's the profound truth that people can die alone and you have to give people their flowers when they're here and tell people things that you feel, regardless of whether they're at the place in their lives where they're capable of hearing it.

I want to love like this kid always.
--

"I wanna talk about my days as a youth to you
Exposing you to all my demons and the reasons I'm this way
I would like to paint a picture, but it'll take more than a day
It would take more than some years to get all over all my fears
Preventing me from letting you see all of me perfectly clear
The same wall that's stopping me
From letting go and shedding tears
From the lack of having father, and the passing of my peers
While I'm too scared to expose myself
It turns out, you know me better than I know myself
Better than I know myself, well how about that?

She gets him, you get me
She hugs him, you kiss me
You tell me, you miss me
And I believe you, I believe you
She gets him, you get me
She hugs him, you kiss me
You tell me, you miss me
And I believe you, I believe you" -J. Cole "She's Mine" 

 J. Cole "She's Mine"

Grandmas

I think it's human nature to want what you don't have.

My folks got together when they were teenagers. It was sweet and into their 50s, it remains so. They're older, heavier, went through some hard times and challenges but, they remain a strong unit. Family photos hang everywhere. Blown up everywhere, living room, kitchen, bedrooms and picture albums.

I think often of generational cycles. I ask myself why my maternal grandma got back with my grandpa when he left, was unreliable, a cheater, and now their resting places are by each other. I don't quite understand that. As a teenager, I took one look at him and said..."no." I didn't appreciate the hug and made sure to never do it again. As for paternal grandmama, she's a matriarch, a G, the foundation, despite all of her partners flying away like dust. She's strong. I'm strong. I dress like her, have many of her personality traits and mannerisms, may one day have twins like her. I certainly hold my liquor like her...hennesey, and am sexy and sexual like her. If I reach my 80s like her, I'd still be getting my nails and my make-up done too. And in my 50s/60s, I'll be dating a white sugar daddy who buys my grandkids gifts.

Like her, I'm the year of the dragon. Generational cycles.

And she's so luminous and awesome so I don't know why I fear so much of one day being a matriarch like her. I wonder often if she felt the same way in her 20s and 30s too because like me she loves very hard and she forgives very easy. She still speaks about my dad's dad in the most romantic way. The way they combed each other's hair and spent time together in the midst of war. It's sweet. I'm like that still. Seeing the good side of people is the way to go.

But it seems hard, too because of course, she holds down the fort on her own. She has wide shoulders but the necessity of have wide shoulders is something that shouldn't be a necessity. I have wide shoulders. And maybe that's why I'm scared because she's so awesome that she doesn't need anyone but still, she damn well deserved them. She's strong and badass without them, but that doesn't mean she wasn't with them...

She has her children, her grandchildren, her great-grandchildren. It is all good and all beautiful and simply different than what my parents, and uncles, and aunts have. I have to tell myself that because regardless, it is all ok, life doesn't always twist the way you want it and love doesn't always work out. And sometimes people love who they shouldn't, like on the other side of my family, and being together doesn't mean very much. That's not great either... the mere title isn't great. It's the work. I have to remind myself of that because I have a little bit of that too.

The anxiety is there, full blown, but it's a little silly because if I were 1/2 as awesome as my grandma, I'd be overjoyed.