On Monday, I went to the beauty parlour. Nothing new, just me and my two sisters and my aunt in front of a woman with highlighted hair and a kind smile offering to wax the hair off of our arms and legs and face. To cut the soft locks of my cousin, bright and silky as they shone with beauty. Meanwhile, I stared at the ceiling as I waited for this moment to pass in desperation, or in anticipation no one would notice the tangle of my short, stepped hair or the unoiled state of it or the way I just tied it at the top of my head to just dissolve myself into a book. Perhaps they’d not notice the way the acne bloomed on my face at the peak of May summers or the way I picked at the hairs at my chin. Or even my own vague fear that began when I entered the shop and stayed until I was at the turning towards home.
“I ached to be so beautiful. I hardly knew anything yet—”
— ‘Calling A Wolf A Wolf’, Kaveh Akbar.
I had asked, why do women have to go through so much pain to become beautiful, and was met with radio silence.
Every time I’d go to a beauty parlour, my own fear of the ladies over there would peak. In the mirrors, I would see not myself but just another mound of hair to cut, slice, comb straight; another limb to inflict pain on. A hand throwing my strewn, wild hairs on one side with a wince that told me ‘you need to put your head and hair straight’. Open underarms drenched in sweat and stink as the lady comments on the darkness, the dampness of my thirteen-year-old swimmer arms. The resident face-washer telling me how my face was ruined during one of her facials to my beautifully ugly fifteen-year-old cheeks. My mother’s face as she looked apologetic in her own reflection, I imagine her bending a million times in front of the ladies, who would tell her to ‘take care of her daughter’s hair’ and to ‘put effort where her daughter couldn’t’. Her strained smile as if they were telling her that she was a failure of a mother. And in a way, me as a failure of a woman alive.
“Every time people said I was pretty, I thought of everything ugly swarming beneath my clothes.” — ‘The Bell Jar’, Sylvia Plath.
Maybe I am a failure as a woman— a girl who can barely take care of herself like a small book read to tatters. There are days when the ghosts of the beauty parlour would follow me home and stand themselves everywhere. In the mirror as I looked at the scars and the scratched remnants of anxiety and uncouth hair paired with a white skirt. Lodged in the water as the washing goes as futile as the existence of my beauty. In my aunt’s words as she tells me I’m not taking care of myself as I should. Self-care is important, you know? So do a facial at home, comb your hair, use one shampoo and soap for yourself alone, do you see the forwards I send you? You don’t, do you? While all my mind can do is scream, scream, scream, in the din. My mother telling me to wash my hair, because no one will like you, right? Because no one would come near you and be your friend and you’ll be a loner for the rest of your college years, don’t you know? So wash your hair, keep it beautiful. Otherwise no one would love you, right?
“Oh I wanna look like you/ tell me tell me, you must be happy, right?/ if I disappear this way and they end up loving me for it I would gladly die right now / beautifully...” — ‘Bijin (美人)’, Chanmina.
That’s the penchant of a woman’s life, isn’t it? You aren’t beautiful, therefore you aren’t deemed worthy of love, isn’t it? I want to be so beautiful, so pretty that I can stop people at their footsteps, but I am ugly, aren’t I? I have no rights, nothing to be proud of, nothing to show to the world unless my skin is as clear as the morning horizons. My achievements, do they even mean anything? Our achievements, women, do they even mean anything? Because I get the feeling that every time I see myself in the mirror, or someone looks at my face, my own womanhood becomes reduced. I’m half a woman; I’m half a woman without that transcendental beauty everyone raves about.
I wish I was beautiful, because that’s what my identity depends upon.
“I don’t want beauty / I want identity.” — ‘The Passion According to G.H.’, Clarice Lispector.
As I read more on beauty while reading essays for ‘The Iliad’ (my favourite being Norman Austin’s ‘Helen Of The Iliad’) and Mieko Kawakami’s ‘Breasts And Eggs’, I realized how tied my beauty - or rather, the existence of it - is connected to my identity. Because no matter where I look, my beauty is economic: it is the moniker of how much people would want the other sides of me. My appearance is the sales pitch, the pitch of a research I want funding for, for becoming a human. And don’t mistake me, reader, I am not denouncing skincare and self-care for they are important for an individual to feel good about themselves. But to tell people that love of all forms would be denied to them if they don’t spend all their days putting moisturizer and clearing the acne that causes them shame — my pain lies there, reader. I want to love myself, the me I know that loves to read over putting night cream, and I will try to improve and love my skin and body more and more, as the days pass on. Until then, I might just still be in fear of the beauty parlour.
See you around, lovely reader. Thank you for reading!
What I’m Reading These Days!
This is a tiny corner I’m beginning inspired by the even lovelier Tara (from ‘Devotions’). I hope I can help in expanding the horizons of our ever-expanding TBRs!
Shoko’s Smile by Choi Eunyoung: The short stories were all so fascinating and really showered light on the relationships of women with each other and others. My favourite has to be ‘Hanji and Youngju’ along with ‘Xin Chao, Xin Chao’ and the second-last story (I deeply apologize reader, I’m just bad at remembering names). And as usual, it kept me on my toes thinking of everything and the idea of how women use spaces.
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata: This book has been sitting on my TBR (and by extension, my iPad) for almost a year and I don’t know why it even took so long but dare I say, I devoured it completely. The book left me laughing at places I never imagined, and made me angry and surprisingly amused by Shihara’s rants about ‘regressing to the Stone Age’. The novella deserves a standing ovation, and I cannot wait to get my hands on more of her books because this was awesome.
The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood: Well, I was peer-pressured into reading the book by my over-enthusiastic, ‘lover-of-romance’ cousin and this book felt like The Spanish Love Deception but with more spunk and personality. I loved the parts where Olive and Adam talked and bickered like real friends with both awkwardness and amused demeanours. It also introduced me to the world of academia and the challenges that people face in research. I was searching for a light, lovely read and honestly, I feel this was it!
Thank you once again, and see you next Thursday!
it's a sad reality, my heart hurts for you, no one deserves to feel this way.
i sweat a lot, and that's one of my "beauty" insecurities, if you'd like to call it that. i think all of us has one at least. most days, and i don't know if it helps, i try to remember that beauty, albeit meaningfull, isn't all to life. it can't be. and it exists both inside and out, as much as it might sound cheesy
i hope in the future the beauty parlor won't be such a scary place