Being in my 30s hasn't been as horrific as they make them out to be. (By "they", I mean a bunch of us as late twenty-year olds talking about the dreaded thirties.) It's been eye-opening, to say the least.
For one, they made me realize that my hair genes have clearly come from the wrong side of the family - my dad's. When I was in my teens, every other person came up to me and told me how much they envy my curly, glossy mane. In return, I usually just gave them a quizzical expression and said, " Well, it's just there, thanks to my beautiful mother."It's true. I didn't really do anything for my curls back then. I shampooed them once a week, rubbed some coconut oil into my strands carelessly, tied them into a braid before going to school and that was my only interaction with them. I left them wild and loose on Sundays.
My hair now has lost most of its sheen, its voluminous locks. I'm struggling to make best of this aspect of my appearance. I have tried nearly ever trick in the book, sang hair elegies that start with "O curly locks, whither thou goest...", bathed them in gentle sunlight and water, doused them in wonder oils from around the world, even rubbed garlic on my hair.( For nearly two days after which, every time I entered a room, everyone went, "Hmm, who got hummus?")
Of course, as my obsession increased, so did my hair fall. So I decided to tune off from it for some time. Instead, I took unending, unadulterated, liberating joy in not doing my eyebrows. Slow hair growth meant my eyebrows took all the time in the world to grow back into unkempt, Kahlo-ish, power-brows — which I'd give anything to sport now.
But if you had seen me in my over-tweezed, fine strokes of brown arches before, you would know that not doing my eyebrows was a revolutionary step! There was a time in my work-life when I tweezed my eyebrows on a weekly/fortnightly basis. It reached a point of insanity when I took brow matters into my own hands and accidentally shaved a healthy chunk of it, only to be filled in with artistic pencil strokes and drops of castor oil for nearly two months after.
Why did I tweeze them to oblivion back then? Was I a brow-maniac? Why did I not feel tempted to tweeze out my husband's unibrow in his sleep then?( God knows I've thought about it.) I am not sure if it had to do with the beauty revolution around barely-there eyebrows in the early 2000s or if it was something someone said and I'm sure it pretty much rounds up to an eyebrow-repressed childhood that led to such aberrant behavior.
You'd think why do you have to be in on my inconsequential brow journey and how's that saving the world anyway? It may not change the world ( then there is Decembrow) but it did change me.
Monumentally. I haven't put my eyebrows anywhere near a tweezer/scissor for five months now. I also visited a salon and sat next to a girl with perfectly-groomed, lush eyebrows being quizzed by a cocky, fancy-pants "art stylist" with a sorry expression, "Tell me darling. On a scale of 1-10, how happy are you about your brows?" Right before he gave her a ten-minute sales talk on how he can get them to be like Carla Delevingne's in under five minutes. He took a pregnant pause - also to give me a quick, unapologetically brutal, side glance that sent chills down my spine. I sat there not knowing what to say with my blotchy, assymmetrical eyebrows but feeling like a million dollars nevertheless as my head went through a slow, glorious massage.
There are many labels that a woman's unkempt eyebrow carries in society - laziness, tomboyishness, long marriage, lack of hygiene, motherhood, workaholism, abnegation, homosexuality and the buzzword of late, feminism. Now I don't know which one of them I'd have you subscribed to in my case. I would like to call it an act of feminism, not one that would necessarily change lives of repressed women or social norms. Back then, I stared obscenely at brows of all shapes and sizes - in class, in ladies rooms, at weddings and passed them through the same judgmental magnifying glass that the art stylist passed mine. Now, I can't help wondering why I made that half-hour trip to the salon, waited in lines for the right stylist, obsessively looked into their pocket mirror till my brows were lean-mean identical twins.
And while we're on the subject of body hair, I also wonder why, we went through the torture chambers of waxing booths, sitting for nearly two hours letting out muffled ouchies; before we could let ourselves experience the joy of butterflies in our stomachs in anticipation for a big date.
All of which adds up to this. In my twenties, I looked at my face in little parts and segregations. I obsessed about perfecting each one of them. I looked at myself from every angle, not much as a whole. In my thirties, I'm learning to see myself straight in the eye. I'm learning to look into my eyes and find happiness, regrets, guilt, compassion, all the works and triggers of the left-brain beneath.
I'm learning to look at myself and question the point of my vanity-insanity.
So, attacking each of my obsessions moving from my head down, these bushy maidens have risen from my pre-teen era to be the wild biatches they were meant to be, looking a tad too intimadating when turned into a scowl, looking feverishly alive when turned up in a smile.
Whatever meaning these sneaky lines of varying widths may have carried for women through the years, for me, the way they are now, ungroomed and untamed, they represent a precursor to another age, another obsession, another version of me perhaps.
For one, they made me realize that my hair genes have clearly come from the wrong side of the family - my dad's. When I was in my teens, every other person came up to me and told me how much they envy my curly, glossy mane. In return, I usually just gave them a quizzical expression and said, " Well, it's just there, thanks to my beautiful mother."It's true. I didn't really do anything for my curls back then. I shampooed them once a week, rubbed some coconut oil into my strands carelessly, tied them into a braid before going to school and that was my only interaction with them. I left them wild and loose on Sundays.
My hair now has lost most of its sheen, its voluminous locks. I'm struggling to make best of this aspect of my appearance. I have tried nearly ever trick in the book, sang hair elegies that start with "O curly locks, whither thou goest...", bathed them in gentle sunlight and water, doused them in wonder oils from around the world, even rubbed garlic on my hair.( For nearly two days after which, every time I entered a room, everyone went, "Hmm, who got hummus?")
 |
| Image Source:Wikipedia |
But if you had seen me in my over-tweezed, fine strokes of brown arches before, you would know that not doing my eyebrows was a revolutionary step! There was a time in my work-life when I tweezed my eyebrows on a weekly/fortnightly basis. It reached a point of insanity when I took brow matters into my own hands and accidentally shaved a healthy chunk of it, only to be filled in with artistic pencil strokes and drops of castor oil for nearly two months after.
Why did I tweeze them to oblivion back then? Was I a brow-maniac? Why did I not feel tempted to tweeze out my husband's unibrow in his sleep then?( God knows I've thought about it.) I am not sure if it had to do with the beauty revolution around barely-there eyebrows in the early 2000s or if it was something someone said and I'm sure it pretty much rounds up to an eyebrow-repressed childhood that led to such aberrant behavior.
 |
| Faint Brows From Early 2000s |
Monumentally. I haven't put my eyebrows anywhere near a tweezer/scissor for five months now. I also visited a salon and sat next to a girl with perfectly-groomed, lush eyebrows being quizzed by a cocky, fancy-pants "art stylist" with a sorry expression, "Tell me darling. On a scale of 1-10, how happy are you about your brows?" Right before he gave her a ten-minute sales talk on how he can get them to be like Carla Delevingne's in under five minutes. He took a pregnant pause - also to give me a quick, unapologetically brutal, side glance that sent chills down my spine. I sat there not knowing what to say with my blotchy, assymmetrical eyebrows but feeling like a million dollars nevertheless as my head went through a slow, glorious massage.
There are many labels that a woman's unkempt eyebrow carries in society - laziness, tomboyishness, long marriage, lack of hygiene, motherhood, workaholism, abnegation, homosexuality and the buzzword of late, feminism. Now I don't know which one of them I'd have you subscribed to in my case. I would like to call it an act of feminism, not one that would necessarily change lives of repressed women or social norms. Back then, I stared obscenely at brows of all shapes and sizes - in class, in ladies rooms, at weddings and passed them through the same judgmental magnifying glass that the art stylist passed mine. Now, I can't help wondering why I made that half-hour trip to the salon, waited in lines for the right stylist, obsessively looked into their pocket mirror till my brows were lean-mean identical twins.
And while we're on the subject of body hair, I also wonder why, we went through the torture chambers of waxing booths, sitting for nearly two hours letting out muffled ouchies; before we could let ourselves experience the joy of butterflies in our stomachs in anticipation for a big date.
All of which adds up to this. In my twenties, I looked at my face in little parts and segregations. I obsessed about perfecting each one of them. I looked at myself from every angle, not much as a whole. In my thirties, I'm learning to see myself straight in the eye. I'm learning to look into my eyes and find happiness, regrets, guilt, compassion, all the works and triggers of the left-brain beneath.
I'm learning to look at myself and question the point of my vanity-insanity.
So, attacking each of my obsessions moving from my head down, these bushy maidens have risen from my pre-teen era to be the wild biatches they were meant to be, looking a tad too intimadating when turned into a scowl, looking feverishly alive when turned up in a smile.
Whatever meaning these sneaky lines of varying widths may have carried for women through the years, for me, the way they are now, ungroomed and untamed, they represent a precursor to another age, another obsession, another version of me perhaps.
No comments:
Post a Comment