As a child, I used to wear pants on my head. I mean that quite literally. When I was daydreaming and playing pretend, I’d wrap the waistband around my head and secure it with a belt before continuing with my play. The pant legs acted as strands of hair. I threw them back and forth over my shoulder, twisted the legs into a braid, and then undid it all to let my “tresses” fall behind me.
When I got older, my brother consistently reminded me of this game I played. I promptly reminded him that he used to join me. The retort that followed was one that cried innocence and not knowing any better, as I wasn’t young and didn’t know better either. Despite his innocuous teasing, the recollection stirred something in me. Initially, I labeled this feeling as embarrassment. The childhood game was weird and confusing. But all children do weird things. In fact, many children have engaged in even weirder behaviors. Unfortunately, this didn’t stop that sense of embarrassment or expose what I’d really been feeling.
Until I watched Whoopi Goldberg.
The day wasn’t memorable. My family was at home, relaxing in our living room, when my brother decided to remind me, once more, that I put pants on my head. I rolled my eyes, and that thing in me came up again. This time with a healthy dose of irritation. Before we got into our usual song and dance, my mother chimed in. She said Goldberg had done the same thing.
My embarrassment melted and gelled into shock. Then, curiosity. A few Google searches later revealed that she was right. Instead of pants, Goldberg put a white shirt on her head during a show she performed on Broadway in the mid-1980s. She imitated a six, soon-to-be seven, year old Black girl, letting white teeth poke through her wide smile as she showed off her “long, luxurious blonde hair.” With movement that was exaggerated and youthful, the comedian swung her head back and forth, celebrating the way the shirt brushed against her back and over her shoulder. Her eyes twinkled when her “hair” fell over her gaze. She stated she’d get blonde hair and blue eyes, and just like the people she saw on TV, she’d be successful.
After watching Goldberg, my embarrassment revealed her actual name: exposure.
How I started putting pants on my head is blurry. There was nothing specific that I saw, experienced, or witnessed that inspired me to play this way. There wasn’t a circle of girlfriends I played with that were doing the same thing. If there was, I didn’t know about it. To me, I was just being a girl and playing girly games. To some extent, the subtlety of whatever influenced me is as terrifying, if not more, than the influence itself. My only regret was that I was not aware of Goldberg’s piece when I was younger. Given my age, I wouldn’t have understood it, and Goldberg’s sentiment resonated a bit differently from mine.
She dreamed of success. I wished for beauty.
Whether it is subjective, in the eye of the beholder, skin deep, or whatever cliche quote you want to insert here, I’ve never felt beautiful. The kind of beauty that is so obvious and embodied that it becomes a second skin. Instead of using items from my closet, I found other tools to cosplay beauty and get as close to the line as I could. For years, I worked to develop a skill set that would allow me to perfect my costume. I’ve purchased products that would erase anything on my face that strayed too far from perfect. My eyelids were dusted in colors my body didn’t naturally produce. I doused myself in scents that were sweet and manufactured. With a little practice, I shaped my smile into something enticing and shaped my sense of humor into something that could woo most crowds.
My performance earned me a gentle tap on my shoulder or a soft palm on my arm. I’d be met with a small smile and then a confession that someone thought I was gorgeous. Skin tingling, I responded with the smile I worked so hard on and thanked them for their kind words.
My gratitude was genuine, but I doubted the affirmations were. With each word of praise, a whisper residing in the back of my head would appear and discount everything I was told. A voice that grew louder when I returned home to rip off my apparel, wipe the mask from my face, and put on clothes that didn’t cinch every part of my body. The compliments, the affirmations, and the validation were never for me. They were for the role I played, the suit I ironed when I needed to go out in public.
It’s still flattering, the recognition. It reminds me of a performer who has done such a good job of portraying their character that viewers believe the overlap between the character and the performer is just a circle. They’re prone to forget that the character is fictitious and the performer is a person. It doesn’t help that the audience can’t see what goes on behind the scenes, just as no one sees the effort it took to reach my final product.
But that’s all it is, a final product. It is not who I am, and it doesn’t make me beautiful. Beauty is not something that can be wiped away with a recalled Neutrogena makeup towelette and micellar water. It’s not something that was stripped from my body, letting my belly jut out into its natural form once free from its confines. It’s not practiced or rehearsed or strategized or fleeting. My true form wouldn’t—doesn’t—stimulate the same response.
My real shell is made of dark skin that’s uneven in its darkness and wicked hair that’s been defying gravity since humans learned gravity could be defied. My vessel is full of laughs that shake mountains with their depth and size. My chest is pages of unfiltered opinions that whiplash from full lips. Underneath the ensemble is a secret playlist of white boys with long, unkempt hair screaming into microphones with a screeching electric guitar next to them. They dance erratically in dark, dingy spaces that resemble medieval dungeons. My brows are untamed, and one eye struggles to focus. Unmedicated anxiety drips through my veins with her best friend, galloping with her best friend Depression, behind her. Or this pair might be small kids standing on top of one another in a trench coat labeled ADHD. I’m not sure and won’t be finding out soon because I’m too afraid of doctors.
Where is the beauty in that?
I might get a pass on a few of the characteristics, but collectively, they’re a concoction too complicated to be admired. So, I put on the uniform knowing that my acne scars would lead to disillusionment and thick, dimpled thighs passed on from the women before me would invoke disappointment. At this point in my life, I’ve grown accustomed to putting on the disguise. It’s second nature. However, the familiarity does nothing to soothe my fatigue.
Chasing beauty is already like trying to run a marathon hip-deep in quicksand while breathing through a straw. It is climbing a hill that has no top. Wanting beauty is ten times more difficult. The best solution so far is to discard the concept altogether. Just shred it up and toss the pieces in the nearest trash bin, as if rejection inherently means freedom or that resistance alone is enough to disintegrate societal constraints. Even if I were to turn my head the other direction while crossing my arms over my chest as my bottom lip pokes out, would I be rejecting beauty to break a cycle? Or am I masking the grief for something I don’t feel I’ll ever have?
Like many others, I shout from the rooftops that beauty standards are Eurocentric, unfair, arbitrary, and harmful. Alongside my hoarse voice is guilt sitting heavy and tall in my chest. The gap between my head and my heart remains larger than I would like for it to be. My desire to be beautiful remains intact, and it’s possible it might never go away.
But at least I’ve stopped putting pants on my head.
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