Beyond the Commons: Issue 3

CULTURE Stay woke.

My Body Hair By: Sarah Akaaboune I wanted to be white. A small nagging want that transformed into a consuming, cavernous yearn as I got older and the world more complicated. I had blueprints in my mind of the perfect version of me, a name like Kate or Elizabeth, that rolled right off the tongue, it’s letters bonded by privilege and generations of untainted bloodlines. Limp, blond hair, that lay flat against my scalp, rendered greasy after skipping one wash. Cornflower blue eyes and the special type of pale skin that blistered red after just 30 minutes in the sun. For years I tried in vain to assimilate to standards of beauty that did not apply to me, to a culture that did not want me. And ever so stubbornly, my genetic code did not allow for it, my heritage ingrained within the twists and spiraling proteins of my nucleic acids. Because being Muslim was hard enough in a world where knowledge of the Ten Commandments, stained glass mosaics of St. Peter, and Jesus on a gilded cross took precedence; but passing for White in the most fleeting of instances was even harder, there are times when the facade cracks, when the foundation slips off its axis and people begin to ask questions. Questions motivated by innocent curiosity, similar to that of a toddler newly discovering the workings of the universe, others motivated by a morbid fear or hate or ignorance.

Terrorist, ISIS, unamerican, white girls hate you, white boys will never love you, white moms are scared of you, hair straightener at 350 degrees to press away curls into stick straight strands, blue jeans, the Grand Canyon, apple pie and years of correcting the way my father rolled his r’s and snipped his t’s.

A fundamental rule of survival in the United States of America, the easiest way to secure some variation of Norman Rockwell’s American dream, the four bedroom house, the white picket fence, the emerald green lawns, a baseline salary of 80,000 dollars, a golden retriever named Max, and the unvaried calamity of suburban life, was that the lighter the skin, the easier the existence. Dutifully filling out tax