Looks

I had an Aryan friend once tell me, "Aren't you supposed to be hairless since you are Mongolian and all?". She had witnessed my hairy hands which I hadn't yet started to shave. I think that must've been the comment that triggered a life long obsession with hair removal. I'm saying life-long because even though I do it seasonally and very sporadically at that, I still do it. I know people in the west use the term "Asian" to describe anyone who has chinky eyes but in my country, we use the term "Mongolian". And the Mongolians in my country can have the features of someone who white people call the "brown" people. So if you think about it, I drew the short end of the stick since I am brown, short, hairy and have bad hair.

Let's get back to the hairy bit. When I was in school, I fell into that category of girls who were studious and didn't care about their looks. Also our school was very strict about girls doing adult things like doing their eyebrows. And my parents shunned school girls who wanted to be "taruni" before their time (taruni is a Nepali term that quite simply means adolescent but it has always been used in a derogatory fashion as if it is a bad thing to act someone's age; we also use that term to describe someone old who acts young - weird, I know). Anyways, so it was after I finished year 10 that I finally got around to threading my eyebrows. I didn't go to a beauty parlor yet because my cousin could do that job just fine. A few years later when the cousin moved to the UK, we went to a parlor to get our eyebrows done and it was then that we witnessed people threading their upper lips (well, not exactly their upper lips but the bit between upper lips and nose), their foreheads and even the whole face. I remember being perplexed and disgusted that women could be that hairy. I used to thank God that I wasn't that hairy. And then came that hairy comment. But it wasn't until I came to Australia that I started threading my upper lips as well. Before that, my upper lip hair had never bothered me. I knew they were there but I didn't think it was that bothersome so as to start having to get rid of them too. My flat mate who convinced to do it and who volunteered to do it herself coincidentally was the elder sister of the same friend who got me to start shaving my arms and legs. 

And so it went on for years. But inside my heart, I never really cared for how I looked. That was evident from how I would spend months without going to the parlor for my eyebrows or my "mustache". And then I also wouldn't religiously shave my body. I haven't bothered looking good for myself and there's a slim chance that I would start doing it for someone else. I have even stopped doing the one bit in the name of makeup in the form of eye liner. I don't really know what started this but I remember getting ready to go to work one day and realizing I looked okay* without the liner in my eyes, and that was that. It has been over a year since.

*when I say okay - I just mean okay, not better but okay and I've started to be cool with okay lately.

I see people who seem to look flawless and for a time in my life, I used to envy them. I used to envy them for having the best looking hair, the best looking skin, the best looking body and the best looking outfits (well, not all of them for everyone, but one or more of these). I have discovered since that it takes effort to do all those. Now I envy them for their willingness to put the mountainous efforts to get up in the morning, put on makeup, do their hair, organize their outfits, go to gym (in no particular order) and keep on doing it day in and day out. 

Let's talk about the hair bit now. The best thing I've done for my hair so far is just hack it off every now and then for a constant Bob cut. We grew up calling it "Thai cut" and recently a friend and I, we had a sudden realization (at a Thai restaurant) that it's called Thai cut since most Thai women have that haircut. I had "mushroom cut" and "boy's cut" my entire childhood since my mum couldn't be bothered with the mandatory double hair plaits. I started growing my hair as soon as I was out of school and kept on growing until the end of university. But one day, when a fight with the then boyfriend got too much, I decided that I would leave him as well as my old self behind. That meant a new look and new look could only mean I could get rid of my unruly tresses, which I gladly did. I have never grown my hair longer than shoulder length since. I know short hair doesn't necessarily mean low maintenance but it's lesser maintenance than long hair, that's for sure. I don't know how to curl my hair. I don't know how to curl anyone's hair for that matter. The only variation I can manage for my hair is do a half-tie which I do only because I can't stand it when my hair falls over my face. I tried a pixie once and I hated it for a while but I grew into it later. To go back to a pixie once more would require another breakup and I'm not heading in that direction for the moment.

I'll now move on to the most troublesome of my body parts, as is I believe for most other people, - skin. Yes it's hairy; yes, I have chicken skin; yes, my hands and feet are darker than other parts, and yes I bruise easily (although this has nothing to do with the skin but what's lying underneath) but these are not what trouble me. It's the acne. My troubles with acne began only towards the end of my teenage and it was quelled with hydration. It didn't return until years later. And when it did return, it returned with a vengeance and an intention to stay for life. The acne has particularly haunted my right cheek and my chin, leaving scars that, I fear, will last my life time. Any efforts I put in seems to be insignificant - I've tried every form of home remedy, I'm seeing a skin consultant and I've booked myself for a hormone count test as well. I have shitty skin but, thankfully, that hasn't been hindering with anything I do in my life. I've always been an introverted person and my skin has nothing to do with why I hesitate before I speak with people (but that's another story). One of the new year resolutions for this year for me is try and clear my skin, no matter the cost. I will prolly dedicate an entire blog to my journey to clear skin, if and when that happens. Pray for me, my reader.

I'm going to conclude my blog by whinging about the most whinged about thing in the world - the shape, the size (and while, I'm at it) the stature of my body (I don't mean to say that everybody whinges about my body, but you do know what I mean, my dear reader).  I think I've whinged about my body enough with enough people already that I feel it's time to stop doing that. There were years when I didn't have a proper full-time desk job which meant that my body was constantly in motion for me to ever worry about weight gain. My only concern at that time being - why don't I have abs? I now know that I didn't have abs then because I didn't really care about what I ate. Now that I have a full-time desk job, I don't get a lot of action going for me. As of now, I weigh almost 50 kilograms which is a first for me in forever. I don't mind weight gain as much as I care about the increasing size of my body. It might be imperceptible to many and some might even say - I have started to look "healthier". But short as I am already, I run a risk of looking round at this rate. So, to combat the risk, I have increased the number of minutes I put into working out. I have started going for runs in the morning and I have joined a yoga class for now (which I don't go to as often as I'd like).

Sometimes I wonder, with all these tragedies happening in the world, all the deaths, the threat of war, climate change and the imminent end of our world as we know it, what's the use. What will I do with a clear skin if I'm stressing about the animals that we shove off the face of the existence every day, how's a toned body going to help me fight lung cancer from all this air pollution, will it matter if I'm hairy or not, or if my hair is frizzy when we're faced with a series of catastrophic events.

You must be thinking, wow this escalated quickly. My bad. Anyways, impending doom or the lack thereof, I think human beings are programmed to fuss about their looks no matter the situation. We may not worry about every aspect of our looks head to toe, but we are vain creatures, and aren't you glad about that?