For the last few days, I've been revisiting my relationship with my facial hair. Most days, when those pesky hairs start poking themselves through my pores, and growing into hard stubborn strands, it's me who gets the brushing of the coat, and not my kitty!
Like many women whose ethno-racial heritage have origins in that most ancient of subcontinents, I have struggled long and hard with coming to some acceptance of my body's unflattering locks. But more and more, as I come to understand the complexity of my own gender identities, I am kinda liking, even loving the weekly Amazonian forest overgrowth.
I mean, at some point in my life, I'm going to have to raise my hands in resignation, and say, "Ok, Chewbakkah, you win!" Incidentally, "Chewbakkah" was the name of my on-air name when I co-hosted a show on CiTR 101.9fm back in my UBC days. Oh yeah, I took the piss out of it all, but deep down - not that deep actually, maybe even a bit shallow - I just hated it all. I hated waking up to it every morning, and hesitating before looking at myself in the mirror, aghast to find that more had grown overnight!! The torture of it all!
So, I'd reach for the ol' tweezers and spend away a beautiful morning plucking the revolting beauty suckers out of their sockets, so I can once again feel like I'm any other normal-as-plaid girlie girl!
But it turns out, I got more in my genetic make-up than I bargained for. Then again, birth ain't a negotiation when you're slipping and sliding outta your mom's passageway! No choice! Just come out already, and deal with whatever package you've been given.
Ok, I think many of us gals could actually deal with our packages if society wasn't telling us ALL THE BLOODY TIME that something's just not right about our face, our arms, our eyebrows, our butts, our boobs, and all the cells of our personhood.
When are we going to realize that all those things are part of our womanhood, and not the other way around? Not ripping our skins out because we don't look like the airbrushed, hairless photos of models who are also going through their silent self-hatred of all things hairy, and some of 'em face even worse terrors that the beauty industry enforces.
This time around, I really wanted to just let it all grow, and be happy with it, to just love every single follicle that all comes together to create this most beautiful of beards and mustaches. I wanted to just leave my home, with courage, to face the morning commuters with joy and contentment as I stroked my stubbly chin.
But it didn't happen. I caved in. Applied those murderous wax strips to my already pock-marked face, and with a force equivalent to a knockdown by a heavyweight boxer, I pulled those damn strips off my chin, cheeks, jaws, neck, upper lip, lower lip, temples, 'tween the brows, and anywhere else I could, holding my breath in hopes that I'd see a sizeable area of now dead hair on the strips, and a clear, smooth region of near baby skin on soon-to-be acceptable visage! Oh, the sheer joy of it all!
Sadly, the strips never quite do their job. Or maybe I'm just not a master facial waxer. Maybe I need to just go to the salon and let the pros take care of it. Ha ha, the irony of it is that I won't let anyone else touch my face for fear that they might harm it during the waxing, because it has happened. I've been burned by the scorching sensation of hot wax. The next day, as the wound dried, friends would wonder if I had gotten myself into a bit of a temperamental bar fight. I kept my chin up, stayed silent as strong as an ox, and allowed them to make up their own stories. That's always fun. I get to have a bit of a reputation then, "Oh yeah, did you hear about Shaz? She's some tough bitch! Gettin' into all kinds of scraps and skittles."
Seriously, though, something's gotta give. One day, I'm going to wake up, and realize that those wax stips, for all the masked beauty they might potentially bring to this very sad of sad faces, did more harm to my sense of self than anything else.
I'm sure if I spoke to my therapist and recounted all those childhood run-ins with the cruel racist jokes my peers would make about me, hollering to the world that I was half-man, half-girl, she'd say my present relationship with my facial hair had a lot to do with all that. No kidding, Sherlock.
Even though my mighty hopes for conquering my facial hair woos did not materialize this week, I do have hope that the more comfortable I start feeling in my combo male-female spectrum physicality and identities, someday I'm going to walk right past the hair killers' aisle and love-a-dub-rub this happy, special body and soul that my mom and dad brought into existence with the genes of their ancestors and with the love they felt in their hearts at that magical pleasurable moment. Two of the dearest people in my life came together and asked the universe for yet another glorious gift: Me.
