hi from sonoma, wine country california, where i’ve escaped to with my anxious poodle, mr. darcy, to save his tiny heart from the 4th of july fireworks in oakland this week. i brought my laptop, three books, a striped dress, lavender shorts, a white tee, a knit sweater, sunblock, leather boots, marijuana, and not a single piece of jewelry due to apathy. and i’ve just taken a bath with a book.
the water was hot as i dipped my toes in, then my calves and my butt, and the rest of my body slid under the surface, my book held above. steam made my face damp and pain melted away. for the moment.
while in the water, i finished reading francisco by alison mills newman. i didn’t get it wet and i couldn’t put it down. her matter-of-fact voice pulled me in. alison is in her early twenties living in california, in the 70s, and she goes from scene to scene of her bohemian life as she falls for a man named francisco, a filmmaker, who’s interest in black liberation reflects her own.
i write you this letter in the style of alison, totally lowercase, all vulnerable and familiar, because i’m inspired by her young confident self in this autobiographical novel from 1974. tumblr wasn’t even invented until 2007; you must remember, any cool and authentic thing we love was done by a black woman first.
my favorite quote is when alison says, “i don't recognize the need to be in fashion. i don't need the white culture to approve my beauty, in order for me to feel some validity to my existence as a human bein, woman or black woman…i existed before the media pretended to discover me. black people existed before black people discovered themselves. my beauty existed before the white man commercialized it, or bought it, and it will exist long after the black man has woken up out this western nightmare.”
as I read the passage and soaked my sore muscles in the bath, a few memories popped in my mind like bubbles. i thought back to when I was in 6th grade, at eleven years old, we went to the first school dance of our lives. i asked around, and no boy wanted to dance with me. they wanted to dance with girls who had blonde hair. i remembered feeling so confused, standing on the dance floor in my silver dress. i’d never questioned my desirability before. then i immediately blamed my hair.
earlier that night, my mom dried my hair with a diffuser for the first time, to make my curls really pop all over. when she was done, i remembered feeling nervous about how curly my hair was, curlier than i’d ever seen it before. huge. i was already aware of what features were considered good, even though I didn’t comprehend why. i went to an almost all white middle school, and that night i felt like an outsider, looking at myself through a different set of eyes. being biracial and coming out the womb extremely light skinned with loose curls, the scenario was more nuanced than my eleven year old brain could understand yet. i was mystified. i remembered blaming myself but also my mom for not understanding how to present me best in this world, as though i came here from somewhere else, an alien. just look at the abercrombie and fitch supermodels getting all the attention! i was mad at her for thinking i looked good like this.
beauty standards are obvious to children, who seek out acceptance from the moment they’re born.
by the time i graduated high school, i didn’t need my beauty to be approved of by white culture, like i needed it to be when i was eleven. i stopped straightening my hair completely. i pitied the people who had to look at me twice to see I was beautiful, just as much as the people who thought i was beautiful only because i was close to white—a gross trend that would follow me into adulthood. the nuances became clearer.
to get here though, i had to go to another dance, but this time in high school, seventeen years old. i straightened my hair for the first time in a year, and wore lots of makeup. the boy i was dating at the time, his dad was a traditional british man expatriated to california. while we were taking photos in the kitchen, his dad walked in to look at us, his gaze landing on me. this was the first of many interactions to come, when certain white men had to look twice, and find some kind of connection to western beauty ideals that made them realize something for them. discovering beauty in me as if it didn’t exist before they noticed it. i’ll never forget the look on his dad’s face, even though i was still a naive teenager. he was shocked. and he told me he was shocked. he told me he didn’t know i had beauty until seeing me like this.
i’m lucky that in my mind at such a young age, like alison, i was thinking, this interaction has nothing to do with me. it isn’t always easy to separate oneself from the “western nightmare” we’ve grown up in.
today in the bath i felt like i was getting the relaxation my body deserved. being naked and alone, i didn’t have any ideas about my body, i was just existing. i looked through my own eyes. i liked the way my tummy was growing as i aged. i poked at the scars and the discoloration on my knees. i rubbed soap down into the fur between my thighs without judgment. i adjusted the shower cap on my head to preserve my luscious curls from the water as i dunked my neck below, feeling at ease. for the moment.
this was so so so beautiful
This was gorgeously written.