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| Shubhi with feathers in hair on my right, Ayesha below, Aaiza on my left (This was the photo that incriminated our foreheads) |
“No thanks Shubhs, I don’t have that much time. I’ll just pluck them later.” I stood up and laughed at the red mustache that seemed to be glowing from the irritated skin above my lip. “Ha! See why I didn’t want to do this in school?”
“Don’t worry,” she declared in her thick Indian drawl, “that will go away in a bit.” As we walked into her living room to get my things, she sized me up briefly. “You know Tina, you have such an amazing body but you really must do something about those boobs. Wear a push-up bra.”
“I KNOW Shubhs! But I can’t get implants because I don’t have enough skin up there. See when I do this?” I said, lifting them a little and pressing them together, “even then, you can see there’s a gap here. I mean, thankfully, my boobs are big enough where I feel I have something and I’m overall pretty tiny but I don’t think implants would be a good idea.”
Shubhi furrowed her brow, taking what I had said into serious consideration. “Show me Tina.” On command, I lifted up my shirt and unsnapped my bra, flashing her and her roommate Ayesha, who, like Shubhi was another PhD candidate in the English Department. They both laughed before Shubhi conceded, “No honey, don’t get implants but you should definitely wear a push-up bra, you will look so much better! They will just lift you and give you some cleavage.”
“Oh I do sometimes. But don’t worry Shubs, one day, I will wear one especially for you.”
Satisfied, she nodded and gave me a big hug and before I left said, “Oh don’t forget, let me know whenever you want me to Brazilian wax your pussy!”
Shubhi is my amazing Indian friend who I met last semester. She’s been here for less than a year and we met through a mutual friend at a birthday party where we talked about the tattoo on my wrist, Amartya Sen, global development issues and sharing a brief background in entertainment. ( I used to cast and she used to be on television in India.) Shubhi is hyper- ahem, I mean hetero-sexual and recently married to the very fortunate, gorgeous and humorous Rajiv. I call her my hot Indian friend and we both share the unique camaraderie of being over-educated women who are interested in the world and love to read but are, unforgivably, superficial. If I really need to know how I look on a certain day, I just ask Shubhi.
“Tina” she says in her perfunctory, yet flirtatious voice, “we really MUST get bangs together. Look at how high our foreheads are in these pictures? (see above) Something must be done.”
In my defense though, I wasn’t ALWAYS this superficial. I mean, yes, I have been, always, somewhat vain, but flagrantly superficial didn’t get the green light until I had lived in Venezuela, Colombia and Brazil. Those three countries comprise the overly done, sexed-up, surgery and made-up women trifecta. Overgenerally, Latin women want to look good, almost from birth seemingly. I remember the make-up kits that used to be in the classrooms in Brazil for the two-year old girls to play with in order to develop their fine motor skills. Having graduated from U.B. during the waning era of self-assured, self-declared, Western feminism, I used to go on my culturally-infused diatribes in those countries to anyone who would listen about how terrible it was that they were all complicit in inculcating their women with the most base forms of objectification and misogyny at such a young age. But of course, that was before I found myself becoming victim to it. When I lived in Colombia, I
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| Me and my Brazilian waxist and confidant, Nalva during 2007 visit |
I have not gotten to the point where I think a woman’s total self-worth should reside solely upon her physical appearance and still believe that breast implants in some instances can be philosophically on par with female genital mutilation. But I do find it fascinating how things that were once crazy or unheard of can become so normal. Especially when you've travelled a lot or lived in different places. Sometimes, because I lived in five countries, I lose my sense of categories and forget that something that might have been socially acceptable in one place is totally unheard of in another. My reality is all encompassing, and includes not just Shubhi in her apartment offering to “wax my pussy” or the typical American law student fighting his/her way to be the next depressed alcoholic at some major law firm but also includes my ex-co-workers in Brazil; the elementary school teachers all gunning for their breast implants and the cleaning ladies’ sons and daughters who live in the Brazilian favelas.
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| Me with the Brazilian Elementary School Teachers |
I forget that not everyone might get what I'm saying at times. Sometimes I am lucky though, and there are intersections. For example, Americans have heard of Brazilian waxes, (and ironically, I think I have the reality T.V. hookers to thank for that) so I can talk about it with girlfriends and there is some understanding and even empathy at times. (The first rip is always the most painful!) But sometimes, even when I try to be mindful of where I am, I slip, and evidence of my more divergent realities reveal themselves. Those moments always put me in a brief state of schizophrenia and sometimes it’s difficult to return.
For example, in a brief that I wrote for my Research and Writing class recently, I used the word “social cleansing” in reference to what had happened to the Jews in the Holocaust. I was told that this term was too “emotive” and that I might receive a negative reaction from a judge. This surprised me greatly for two reasons. One, the anti-septic approach to language was shocking because well, we were talking about the Holocaust. It’s not like the Jews had conveniently vaporized or just disappeared. And two, what in the world is wrong with social cleansing? Haven’t we just accepted it as a fact in our daily reality?
In Colombia, in a barrio about one hour South of my home, the paramilitaries would kill any social undesirable and leave their body in a river that eventually floated up against the banks of the local elementary school. Paramilitaries are also primarily responsible for some of the worst atrocities in the Colombian countryside. One of their more infamous activities is cutting people up into little pieces or cutting off villagers heads and playing soccer with them so that villagers flee their homes. This way the paramilitaries can appropriate lands so legitimate and illegitimate commodities can be sold and consumed by us in the first world. The U.S. and a consistent Colombian popular majority openly supported Alvaro Uribe Velez, the Colombian president between 2002-2010 who had more nexuses to paramilitaries than any other president in recent history. So wouldn’t this imply that this is all contextual? That there isn’t anything wrong with it? Like my Brazilian waxes, it’s painful, serves a legitimate function and people support it. It may not be “okay,” but it’s normal.
In Brazil, (the land of the waxed pussies), social cleansing is even “worse” because there is no globally recognized civil war. Just huge discrepancies in rich and poor set against a backdrop of some of the most depraved street crimes. Grenades are thrown on public busses, people are set on fire and torched for their handbags, and in Rio, whole highways can be shut down by bandits meaning that every single car that is caught in that moment is robbed. Rio is also known for the “bala perdida” or lost bullets where little children die sitting in schools holding pencils in their hands when caught in the crossfire of shootouts between military police and drug dealers in the favelas (Brazilian slums). Poor people are murdered all the time because their penal system is overwhelmed and logistically, there is little room for an efficient due process. Better kill the petty thieves who will never have access to rehabilitation than let them clog up the penal system where people are underpaid and under-resourced or worse yet, let that person loose and risk another Louis Vuitton bag be stolen. And of course, no one comes out and says “yes, I am for murder” but what they are not against is safety and the casual disappearance of potential thieves.
So, because I had lived in Colombia and Brazil, I had forgotten about the impact that the words “social cleansing” might have in Buffalo, NY. I explained this to my professor in a meeting and he let me keep the phrase in the brief. And then I forgot about it. But two days ago, after Contracts, I went to the Lockwood library to “study” which always turns into reading the news and virtually anything non-law related. Randomly, I was going through my news sources when I came upon Jornal Nacional, or the Brazilian national online news. On the front page of the news, the headline was of a woman who recently witnessed a social cleansing and had called it in and denounced it. The woman had been visiting her father’s grave in a cemetery when a police car pulled into the cemetary. She saw the police come out of the car and shoot, point-blank, a man suspected of a robbery. She called the Brazilian 911 and denounced it. In the article was a video that captured the whole conversation that went something like this:
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| Me at my Brazilian co-worker Martha's house. With her kids. |
Woman: “I can see the squad car but I can’t see the number on it. Is this really the time of day to be doing this? They say this is normal to do this here but it isn’t normal for me to see that…”
(This is followed by the policemen actually approaching the lady.)
Woman: “I hope they don’t kill me too! Look! The squad car’s number is [number]”
The policemen then get out of the car and get close to the lady, she is not intimidated but in a hysterical voice, you hear her saying: “Excuse me sir, weren’t you the one in that squad car there? The gentleman that made the shot? That shot that guy inside there where we were? …”
Policeman: “No, no, I was helping him.”
The woman went on, “HELPING? SIR, LOOK STRAIGHT AT ME.”
Policeman: “Calm down lady, you don’t know what that guy did.”
Woman: “I know. I know very well. You’re saying I don’t know what that guy did and that’s a lie. It’s a lie sir. It’s a lie, I don’t want to talk to you. You will pay for what you did. You have your conscience.”
******
The article then goes on to explain how the policeman later defended himself by saying that the guy he had shot had been a suspected robber in an organized crime syndicate. As resolution, these policemen, one who had been a policeman for 18 years, were now apprehended and the lady who made the call was in the witness protection program. A total feel-good article praising the bravery of this woman but ignoring the basic fact that the class in which the military police are created for and protects is the class that reads the Brazilian News online. Furthermore, this lady is now in a witness protection program in fears of police retaliation, being protected by, who else but the police. And if you listen to the call, you don’t have to understand Portuguese to hear the desperation in her voice, the indignation, not over the fact that this goes on, but that she had actually seen it.
It’s been hard not to feel like this woman since I read that article on Tuesday. I hate it when my worlds collide and it feels like a train wreck.
It’s been hard not to feel like this woman since I read that article on Tuesday. I hate it when my worlds collide and it feels like a train wreck.
But here I am. Yesterday at Shubhi’s was an attempt to get back to beautiful things. Make-up, hairless faces, how to make my boobs look strategically bigger with cleavage. Beautiful international friends who can talk about worldly things, literature and sex all in one conversation. Laughter. Forget law school Tina, forget the seriousness of everything. Love your life, love yourself, love everyone around you. Figure out ways everyday you can be of service and let others know love. Be the beauty you want to see in the world, even if it means getting your mustache threaded by your hot Indian friends on occasion. You are alive and there is beauty all around you. Love freely and forget everything else you have seen and been through and let this love be the most normal thing in your world.
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| Corcovado, Rio de Janeiro |
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