super-white
So, I bought cover-up today for the first time in my life, because Chris gave me a hickey. Awesome. This also happened in the first 2 weeks or so that we were dating, and I had to a) go to Meredith's huge birthday party, and b) go to a job interview. Tomorrow I get to go work at York's fall convocation. Luckily, our irritatingly Muslim (as in, I am Muslim therefore I will lecture you on how you should not show people your shoulders because it's against my religion) coworker will not be there. I'm sure there's a law in there about hickeys somewhere, and I just don't want to hear about it.
Anyways, it's a great feeling, walking into a drugstore at 24 years old and asking a woman with too much makeup on what to buy because I wouldn't have a clue where to look. She took one look at me and said, "Oh, you're very fair," and walked over and pulled out a concealer stick (?) and it was a pretty good match. She said she picked it because it was the lightest shade in the store. Yes, thank you, I know. I'm white. Whiter than my boyfriend even though he has basically the same background as me, whiter than everyone else in the store.
Last year, when I went for my physical, there's this echo-cardiogram thing that they do, where they hook up all these electrodes to you and get a printout of your heartbeat. My nurse was Hispanic or something and when she pulled the blanket off me, she exclaimed, "You SO WHITE! No, like, you SO white! You tan? (laughs) No, no, you BURN. Wow, you so WHITE!" and I'm sitting there half-naked with some machine hooked up to me and saying, yes, yes I am in fact white, SO white, thank you for noticing.
Sometimes Chris and I joke that my being whiter than him makes me better than him, because jokes about racism are absurd and therefore funny. I figure that I'm whiter, but he's male, so we're about even. Of course, my red hair might indicate Neanderthal ancestry, so maybe he's still got one up on me.
posted by Heather Ann @ 12:07 PM
4 Comments:
Hi...I came across your site as I was doing a search for Waddington's "Advice to the Young" to include in a baby shower/scrapbook gift. So, thanks. I also noticed your mention of being a former evangelical...me, too. Then, I read this entry. Try being 30 years old (that was me) and buying any makeup for the first time. Feels nice though. Anyway, I just wanted to say I connected with your words and that they didn't just slip into the internet ether. I blog too and sometimes feel like a lone voice. Take care and be well.
Excuse me, I think I just may in fact be whiter than you. In Mexico, laying on the beautiful white sand, I was nicknamed 'Powder' because I melded into the sand. I found that slighly offensive, since Powder was a skinny bald guy. In Italy, I was asked if I was 'Nordic'(?). There is not even a colour white enough for me at Mac Cosmetics. Not to steal your thunder, but I think I may be whiter, and therefore better, than you!
Cat
Cat, we shall have a faceoff on Thursday! The possessor of true whiteness must be known!
Ya, you're straight up white. This summer, I told one of the kids that I was Objibway Native and they looked at me and said, "yeah that makes sense, since you don't look straight up white".
It was interesting being a neutral person when working with a predominatly black culture. We (as in my sister) were accepted, cause we werent' white, white...but we weren't totally accepted cause we weren't enough of a visible minority .
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