I HATE EVERYTHING YOU LIKE ABOUT ME

I hate everything you like about me–reflections and questions about the fetishization and rejection of self

Grace Tyau

ii. first love

i. blissfully

I look in the mirror in the darkness. I cannot see myself.

iii. that which cannot be removed

I am proud of my heritage. I wear it like a mask. He tells me I am beautiful but I wish I could remove the mask so I could be sure. I am certainly not unloved. I have never been. So why does it feel so strange to be adored for what has felt like the first time? I look at the one I am in love with, who loves me too, and I should feel only happiness. But I instead feel a pit drop in my stomach when my mind begins to wander. I feel a creeping suspicion that we may be too different–not because we don’t agree on music or the future but we cannot agree on what makes me beautiful. It is unnatural that I now believe that my features (which I have felt my entire life are not to be desired) are desired. How is it I may be adored not just for my character, humor, and kindness? That I may be more? Or does it make me less? Perhaps it is the way my dark long straight hair falls like tears onto my shoulders. Or how the olive skin that surrounds my delicate wrists will forever hold the sunlight even in coldest winter. My eyes, almost black, certainly thin, yet artificially perfect, seem as if they have all the wisdom in the world, and he wants to look in them forever, and I should be grateful. I am beautiful. It is upsetting that it took me this long to realize it.

iv. wishing for whiteness to be all of me

If I am so proud, why is it that I feel upset at how I look in photos? Why a ping of shame when I talk about the origin of my last name? Why so uncomfortable when people simply acknowledge my non-whiteness? I am not hiding that part of myself, I never have, I wouldn’t be able to. It feels so wrong to be this confused.

vi. perhaps we should know each other deeper

At some point I became aware that I am remembered first for my skin tone and eye shape rather than my name. How can we be sure we are more than a stereotype? There is still much to figure out, so much left unsaid. It is difficult to exist as not only a teenager, but a teenage girl. And more than that, a teenage girl of color.

v. living in the legacy of supremacy

We are systemically fetishized in the media. I suppose it is not that I have been told my features are unlovable, but more that I have never felt they are mine to love. When I reject myself, I am not rejecting myself, but the complex history of my heritage. Those who came before me, women with features like mine who owned them, who weren’t ashamed. And the history of those who forced them to feel what I do now.

design by Rita Wang