This random essay was written a few months ago during a run through crunchy autumn leaves in Munich. I was inspired by an episode of Hair Now I had watched and composed the whole thing in my head as my breath fogged up and my feet pounded along the grey streets.
PS: This is not even the first post on body hair! Clearly this is a matter of the utmost import to me and the sole way I express my feminism. But anyway the other one from my 18 year old self is quite cute and can be perused here.
Dear eyebrows,
It’s not that I want to hate you.
“Be kind to your body,” said a yoga teacher at an overpriced class my friend talked me into in Christchurch. “You have to live in it for your whole life”. This struck me as profound somehow. My body is a good one. I like it a lot. Like every body—celestial, animal, fungal, human—I believe my body was made by a creator in a magical process of evolution and reproduction and DNA. Eyebrows and all.
But along with my belly—pale brown, slightly hairy, and rounder than I would like, thanks to internalised and ridiculous fatphobia—you are my least favourite feature. Thick, dark against my caramel face that changes each season, and and connected across the top of my nose.
It isn’t since the hazy years of my teenagerhood, when I found much to dislike about the only body I’ve got, that I have regularly threaded you. It’s been several years since I tried to bleach your middle part, along with my mustache. Yet I have this habit when I’m feeling anxious, and nobody’s watching. Running my fingers along the length of each eyebrow, I pull on the hairs. Each pinch yields several hairs, thick, slightly greasy, a centimetre or two long and capped by the whitish skin of the hair follicle. I go from the outside of each eyebrow into the monobrow. It’s not that I think it will make my eyebrows go away, but it’s somehow simultaneously gross and soothing.
Other days, I rub my index finger rhythmically along your hairs bridging the top of my nose. They feel lovely and fuzzy, like the feathers of a downy bird.
I let you grow the way you are meant to. You look just like my dad’s brows, though stand out more against my paler skin. Removing you feels wrong somehow. Is it possible to truly believe that beauty is from within, that Western beauty standards perpetuated by advertisements and social media are an unattainable myth, and still hate my eyebrows? I feel like a bit of a failure in feminism, or some sort of internalised racist against my body.
At the same time, I always find it perplexing when I see friends getting ready for some event where they want to look nice*. They fill in their eyebrows with pencil so they stand out. Most of my friends, it’s worth noting, have ethnic backgrounds of the European persuasion. And perfectly lovely, if fine and fair, brows. Watching this eyebrow-emphasising ritual reminds me how much I stand out. I remember some telling me they explained I was ‘the girl with the eyebrows’ when trying to explain which person I was in a crowded foom.
Yeah, Frida Kahlo. Yeah, Cara Delevigne, and being perfect the way I am.
A friend who I very much like complimented you this year; your expressiveness, particularly. How sad—for me, for you—to have to respond that I don’t really like you!
Here’s the thing. I want to love you, but I’m still getting there. But I let you grow the way you are, don’t try to change anything about you. For now that’s enough. We will be friends one day.
From Shar
*This may imply myself or my friends go to a lot of events where we spend time looking nice. It’s more occasional than it may seem.
Daylight Differentials 