On Beauty*

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*Let me first acknowledge that my title is inspired/stolen from Zadie Smith’s book of the same name. I tried a few others, but nothing seemed to fit quite as well. So, plagiarism thus acknowledged, I begin.

Growing up in the Middle East is growing up with large portions of honesty, and around a majority of people who tell it like it is. Certainly, it is also growing up with mogamlat (false compliments) left and right, but these are so easily recognizable that they are not even intended as lies, white or otherwise. They are a convention, similar to Egyptian shopkeepers urging one to take their merchandise for no money at all. No shopper in his or her right mind then makes off with the goods, surely? There would be a jail sentence, or more likely a street-beating, in that.

It is this brand of social nicety that all mogamlas fall under, a barely disguised and easily recognizable lie that is of little consequence, and little effect; nobody familiar with the culture could mistake a mogamla for anything more heartfelt. Obviously ya Tante Esmek-Eh you have not slimmed down. We all know you’re wearing the old post-pregnancy clothes you’d once been iron-willed enough to retire to the back of the dolab, collecting dread and dust therein, waiting for just this day. But we say them anyway, perhaps to fill the silences, or to introduce a daily dose of niceness given and received (perfunctory though it may be) into our days.

It is with this easy and learned discernment that I grew up in the Middle East. I knew very well the code that we spoke, although I’ve not really ever been one to engage in the giving of compliments I do not mean – I have always tended to choose silence instead.

Regardless of whether I partook in the dishing out, I have always been a mistress at detection. It is because of this that I knew I was ugly.

A little disclaimer here: for those of you who are strained and uncomfortable at the moment, and thinking of emailing me in true-friend interventionist form to say that I am beautiful – I do not believe myself to be ugly anymore. I speak now of the past. So calm yourselves; listen. What I hope for the below to do is to rid you (or at the very least make you question) this knee-jerk reaction.

I had an early childhood full of admiration from the adults in my life. I was generally well-behaved, high-achieving in school, and I was a cute, well-presented kid. My mother dressed me in cute little skirts, and put me in hair barrettes. My sisters were ever-vigilant about keeping all the tangles out of my hair, and the shine firmly in. I remember specifically being encouraged to act coy as a circus act for the adults in my life, who were so very consistently tickled by it.

This all changed almost overnight. Suddenly, I was awkward, physically imposing for my age (read: fat). My hair, so silky and smooth for the beginning portion of my life, was suddenly too kinky and curly and unruly to do anything about except give up and let it go where it wanted, and do what it wanted. It would hang, frizzy and uncontrollable in an ever-present and ineffectual ponytail – that unfortunate epitome of plainness employed by mothers all over the Middle East for hair that will not straighten. My eyebrows widened vertically, and seemed insistent on having no two hairs grow in the same direction. The occasional pimple would find the most prized and prominent piece of real estate on my face, and settle there for weeks, red, angry, filling to eventual bursting with liquid that seemed to have no business being produced by the human body. They called this stage of my life puberty.

After this there was very little demand for coy-me. I was treated differently; suddenly I was no longer expected to be cute-on-demand, as if with the early onset of adulthood I’d lost that capability, irrevocably and forever. I was a little more than eight years old.

With this transformation came my exposure to that particular brand of Arab honesty. My weight was a topic of public discussion at every family gathering, as was the upkeep of my hair, and other subjects regarding my physical presentation. This was not something that horrified or embarrassed me, nor was it discussed by others as if it should be a source of negative feeling – it was simply expected, in the same way that commentary on my grades or religious observances were expected. I grew up with an insensitivity about these issues, and could discuss them dispassionately and without rancor or sullenness. I was bad at being pretty in the same way that I was bad at geometry – it was an area that I was expected to want to improve at in the same way that I would be expected to want to ace any geometry exam administered at school. I was matter-of-factly overweight, not shamefully or humiliatingly so. It was an issue of practical consideration, not an issue of esteem or self-valuation – my marriage prospects were at risk, my health was at risk, and those were reasons to care (probably in that order).

I came to the US, and my looks (or lack thereof) immediately turned into dangerous territory. Innocuous comments I made that included any mention of my weight were met with uncomfortable silences, nervous laughter, or often with a strange and unbearable combination of the two. My commentary was judged to be indicative of low self-esteem, as if to acknowledge a physical reality based on averages was to be unnecessarily cruel to myself. As if to be blind about how I was perceived and interacted with by the world was the only avenue left through which I could feel good about myself.

This type of attitude meant that I quickly developed a significant level of anxiety about my physical appearance. Clearly, this was something shameful if I could not talk about it. This was something to be embarrassed about if one could not even verbally acknowledge it with friends. I packaged myself in baggy clothing, dressed down everywhere so that nobody would ever think that I was trying and failing at looking good – it seemed better to appear disdainful of even the attempt. I publicly scoffed at people who were superficial enough to care about their appearance, as I strained to fabricate a carelessness with it that belied the truth of how much I obsessed, and how carefully and deliberately I hid myself from the world.

This has all changed now, and I don’t know why. The point here is not to discuss my transformation from moth into butterfly, and in fact I think no transformation ever took place. My attitude towards my physical appearance simply evolved and I regained my matter-of-fact judgment of my physical presentation to the world that I’d learned in the Middle East, and that I had lost momentarily in America. I have not slimmed down, and have no miracle diet/pill/lifestyle-transformation to tout as the solution to temporary-if-you-want-it-to-be obesity.

The point is to ask why we find it necessary to pretend that beauty does not matter. My personal experience was that to pretend that that was the case, to never acknowledge where an individual moved away from conventional standards of beauty, made it harder to feel and act normal. I was much happier with my life when I knew that physical appearance was a sector of public performance in which I did not score very highly, and treat it simply as that – something that I could work on if I found it important enough, but not a fundamental detractor in any way.

Does my “analysis” above ignore certain realities? It ignores a myth, certainly –that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and that not every person is enamored of some type of standard (some more conventional than others) - that beauty is ultimately too subjective to talk about. While I am sure that there are people in the world whose tastes do not conform to any convention, they are an exception to a rule that most are better served by minding. There are averages, and most people tend to agree on levels of attractiveness above and below those averages. That is how movie stars and models are made.

So, those of you that are lip-glossed, manicured, well dressed and pressed, and spent some of your day today making yourself look good – you likely acknowledge a truth you will not speak. One must try, as one is judged. Those of you who spend just as much time looking particularly unconventional – you do the same, but you adhere to different standards of beauty, but a standard nevertheless. How honest we are about this capacity of others to judge us is all that changes from culture to culture. The Middle East seems to have a healthier attitude in this regard, and I find myself to be much happier having regained my politically incorrect view.

Here's to hairspray, concealer, and (hopefully one day) a diet pill that won't give you cancer.

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