I used to have a joke about my face, how I would look into the mirror and scream because my face was shifting and I didn’t know what race I would be that day. It was when I was unable to address directly my own pain of having such a mixed face. And now, I think back on what I was attempting, where it came from, and what I was truly wanting to joke about and say.
When I think of my childhood I think about stories I was told. Stories of how miraculously after wishing for straight hair, one of my aunts got cancer, after her treatment her coarse hair grew out straight.
“GOD listens, be careful what you wish for” said my mother.
I was told stories of my beautiful brown skinned aunt pinching her nose everyday to make it thinner, told in a humorous way of course, and then would secretly do it in my room after being taught how. I would pinch my nose to look less black and put my hand on my jaw and push it back to look less Peruvian. I would spend hours looking at my nose from different angles embarrassed at my indigenous features, stressed at the thought of my roots growing out from the relaxer my mother had just done on me. I’d lift the tip of my nose up and my eyebrows thinking “I’d look perfect like this”, looking like a fucked up elf, never fully excepting the way I look. Whenever I’d look at my face I’d be in such pain seeing no trace of whiteness, I would never be loved I thought. I would always be seen this way.
To cope, I started making fun of myself with my Dominican white best friend and her white family. My white friend would pull a little patch of hair on my lower back and say “you look like a monkey”. I laughed and started shaving that area from then on. Her brother would pull up a photo of an indigenous malnourished person on the internet and say “haha that’s you” and I’d sit there with a clenched jaw as they laughed at me. Her mom would send me the shit emoji and I would say “that’s me!” Thinking I got ahead on the joke, and everyone agreed and giggled and took ownership of the ways in which I would allow them to hurt me. No one ever stopping to ask what this was about? No one ever stopped to say
“you are not a little monkey or a malnourished indigenous person without teeth, you are a very beautiful child”
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