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.