Even if I go in my backyard alone, I have to put stuff on my face. If I don’t put on sunscreen, I’ll look like a basketball by three P.M. The tradition of women covering themselves is obviously rooted in oppressive sexist lunacy, but these girls were making it work for them, perhaps reclaiming it in a powerful feminist way. Then again, maybe they were rationalizing something abusive. I don’t know which was actually happening, but regardless, it made me think: Being able to cover my face with something other than a handful of expensive chemicals did sound pretty nice.
Even though the girls threw a little shade my way, they seemed grateful that I was at least asking about their situation instead of digging my heels into my assumptions. At least I was a smart enough American to know I was a stupid American.
The girls retaliated with many questions of their own, which was also surprising to me. I’m not sure why, after ten minutes of talking to confident, opinionated women, I was still shocked by the fact that Middle Eastern women are confident and opinionated, but my brain was clearly very resistant to updating its paradigm. Maybe it was jet lag, maybe it was arrogance, maybe it was self-preservation rooted in the tribal need to malign the “other,” but my brain just could not trust that what they were saying was true. The girls asked if I ever felt obligated by the constant scrutiny that Western culture put on my body, my face, my appearance. I responded the only way I knew how: I lied and pretended the answer was no.
They saw through my bullshit immediately. As I said, the fabric over their eyes was very poorly made, so they could easily see that my face was full of doubt.
I guess I just wanted the answer to be no so badly. I wanted to be a feminist role model coming in from the utopian West to save the day with my shining example of bravery and self-acceptance. But to my surprise and chagrin, I wasn’t a good example. I was wearing Invisalign orthodontics over a set of teeth that had already had braces for two years, and clear ones at that. Even at twelve years old, when it was socially acceptable to have a row of chompers covered in cumbersome metal and colored rubber bands, I was so insecure that I begged for clear braces. And by clear I mean whatever color of the food I just ate was.
I saw no irony in accusing these girls of wearing something oppressive whilst I was strapped into a bra with metal wires rubbing against my ribs—ribs that were showing, since I was constantly dieting. I conveniently left out the constant exfoliating, teasing, dyeing, tanning, bronzing, eye shadowing, plucking, threading, shaving, steaming, cortisone-shot-ting, derma-roller-ing, pore shrinking, cuticle cutting, teeth whitening, dry shampooing, lip-liner-ing, eyelash-extension-ing, Spinning, squatting, juicing, and airbrushing photos.
After all, I was indeed wearing my own version of traditional obscuring garb, just Western-style. I had spent time and money getting my hair the right color and the right texture. I had spent years finding the lip stain that made me look like I wasn’t a corpse. Every morning I put foundation on my face to cover up my flaws and minimize my pores. I was spraying my face with self-tanner on a daily basis, and I got painful weekly facials to make my skin look younger. These girls were hitting a nerve. Suddenly, I had hijab envy.
I thought the hijab was designed to make women invisible. But these women were telling me they felt more confident in their individualism and their personalities because they weren’t constantly being scrutinized on their looks.
Brain explode.
Now, let me take a moment to say that I’m not trying to trivialize a garment that has been so degrading to so many women. I’m fully aware that these girls could have been completely delusional, been brainwashed to think such things, have had Stockholm syndrome, or have been lying to me or to themselves. They could also have been the only four girls in the Middle East who felt this way. I’m not an anthropologist or sociologist; at the end of the day I might just be an alarmist who sounds like a chauvinist.
The Middle Eastern girls I met may not have had schooling or equality, but they sure as hell had self-esteem. Could it be that although they were victims, taking your looks out of the equation could breed higher self-worth, even if you’re in an archaic culture that victimizes you? How could these girls be more confident and self-assured than I was? I mean, after all, I’m American, confidence is supposed to be my thing.
I want to blame the business I’m in for my self-consciousness and insecurity, but unfortunately I can’t. This physical obsession thing started way before I had ever done television. I shudder to think that my experience is probably fairly typical of most American girls: worrying about what to wear, how to tone up, how shimmery my eyes should be. My brain started doing something it hates doing: math. I put it together that I spent an hour a day on my appearance, times 365 days a year . . . 365 hours a year?
That’s more than fifteen days. A year.
If I live until I’m eighty, that’s 160-plus weeks of my life spent putting expensive creamy poison on my face.
I thought about all the other things I could do with that time. I could learn a language, travel the world, open a ranch for rescue animals, build a school in Africa—not that I could afford to do any of those things, but still. I was embarrassed at the amount of time I spent on my outer self, especially when my inner self was such a mess. I’m sure this is pretty standard behavior of anyone in their twenties, but with this new clarity, my priorities just felt wrong. It all felt like an institutionalized and expensive pressure and a distraction from life. In college I read The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf, which addressed a lot of these issues in a much more sophisticated way than I’m doing now, but I remember reading about how the obsession with physical perfection keeps women subjugated. I’m sure men’s obsession with their appearance does the same for them, but I’m not really an expert in that department because I have a no-bathroom-sharing rule when I’m dating someone. Anyway, the book blew my mind, but I didn’t have the self-awareness yet to think it applied to me. Now that I was in the Middle East, having an epiphany about my own preoccupation with appearance, I was finally ready to process it all. How could girls get ahead and accomplish their goals if their focus on physical appearance causes them to have seven less hours a week than men do? The whole thing made me sick.