Nadia Hakim - Follicles of Youth

 

 

I was removing the hair from my legs multiple times a week, obsessively tweezing my eyebrows, wishing for colored contacts and wanting to dye my hair, because genetics had started slipping streaks of silver. This list of things I wanted to change about myself was just continually growing, all the time. At this particular moment in my list, I wasn't days away from starting the eighth grade. So, 11 years old, not even 12. I took a look at this list, and I prioritized that list and then compared it to what would be met with the least amount of resistance from my parents. So, I decided to hyper focus on the hair above my upper lip. 

 

My parents, they did everything they were supposed to. They told me I was beautiful, they were sincere about it and they reassured me that the things I was picking apart about myself, no one was noticing, especially when it came to my body hair. This is probably true, because my father is from quite possibly the hairiest country in the world, which is Iran. [audience laughter] And then, my mother is from quite possibly the least hairy country, the most hairless country in the world, which is the Philippines. So, with that spectrum, they would be able to identify hairy. [audience laughter] I was determined. 

 

One day, my mom comes home and she has a special hair removal cream just for the face. 

And I grab it, I rip apart the box, I toss the instructions. My hairless mother looks at me and she says, “How long do you usually leave the cream on your legs?” And I said, “10 minutes.” She said, “Okay. Well, how long do you think you should leave it on your face?” Me and my infinite wisdom as a self-obsessed 11-year-old, I said, “15 minutes.” [audience laughter] 

 

So, we slather it on, we set the timer at the kitchen. About 12 minutes in, I'm like, “Mommy, my skin's tingling.” And she said, “Well, does it hurt?” And I said, “No, it actually feels like when you put VapoRub on my chest.” She said, “Well, it's probably getting into the follicles. You're okay.” [audience laughter] So, I tough out the last three minutes. We start removing it, and she can barely touch my skin with the wash rag without my eyes just welling up with tears. We remove all of it. And we had successfully removed all of the hair. We had also successfully removed layers of my skin. We had successfully given me a chemical burn. 

 

So, my skin was so raw and pink. I thought, it can't get any worse than this. I'm going to go to sleep, I'm going to wake up in the morning, everything will be right as rain.” So, I went to sleep, woke up in the morning and it was worse, because it had scabbed over. It was this deep purple brown scab in a perfect rectangle. It strongly resembled a fascist dictator's mustache. [audience laughter] You know the one. I begged my parents, mortified, I was like, “You cannot let me go to school like this. I have to skip the first days of school.” 

 

But my parents are immigrants. We never miss school, right? So, they sent me to school. I thought of clever ways to cover my mouth and walking with my head pointed down. I made it through the first week of eighth grade just fine. I made it through the eighth grade just fine, so did all of my insecurities. And that list just continued to grow and I continued ticking things off. As I got into high school and college, the women around me, I was hearing about their list, what was on their list and what they would change about their bodies. If anyone ever mentioned how they needed to wax something or tweeze something, I would tell them the chemical burn story [audience laughter] to lighten the mood. 

 

There was one time, this was in college, after classes, I was at work and I was working at a swanky gym. I go in and I start tidying up the women's locker room. There's this gorgeous woman. She's standing in front of the mirror around the sinks. She is pinching her thighs and poking at her stomach and leaning over the sink and angling her face and pulling at her skin. We make eye contact in the mirror as I'm wiping down the sink. And she said, “I know I look crazy, but I'm about to go to this laser hair removal appointment. I'm thinking I should talk to them about a nip, a tuck, Botox fillers, something like that. I'm going to be in there for a minute might as well.” 

 

And so, I tell her the chemical burn story, right, again to lighten the mood. She looks at me, stunned. “Are you kidding me? And you've never had to worry about hair there ever again? [audience laughter] What a blessing. What a cost-efficient blessing. [audience laughter] I wish I would have had enough sense, or my mother would have had enough sense to give me a chemical burn when I was young.” 

 

I had heard variations of this response every time I told this story. I always thought, how bizarre is it that people are wishing they had gotten a chemical burn? Even more bizarre that they wish their parents had inflicted it upon them. [audience laughter] But for some reason, when this woman said it, it sent me into a spiral. It sent me into a spiral, because usually when I run into this woman, she's walking her kids to the child care center. And two of them are little girls. 

 

I could just see their big, beautiful, bright faces as we’re having this conversation. And I just thought, enough, enough. Why is it that women are held to such ridiculous standards from when we're so little, all the way until when the day we die, we're supposed to be injecting and coloring and dying and tweezing and all these things and filling like, no, enough, enough. So, I tossed my list and I stopped fussing over my eyebrows and I let the salt and pepper grow in. I stopped dyeing my hair. When I look in the mirror, I see a free woman, and I see a beautiful woman, and that is the blessing.