I saw a woman the other day who was so obviously brimming with positivity that the sun was leaking out of her pores. Beautiful skin, shiny hair, a smile that could make even Mel Gibson love Jews, she was pure radiance. I asked her secret.
“I am grateful for everything in my life,” she beamed.
Well, good for her.
Good for freakin’ her.
Since seeing the third world and meeting people who’ve never even heard of pizza (probably the biggest tragedy in poor countries), I’ve also been on a quest for gratitude. I wake up in the morning and listen to the birds and smile at all the things I’m lucky to have and know (friends, family, toast, a good brain, tea, pumpkin pie, a hot shower, etc.).
And then I look in the mirror.
I see stringy hair and boring. I know I’m not hideous. But it’s just how my brain works. When it comes to myself, I see the negative first. My mission for this year of being thirty is to fully and completely accept myself, mind and body. It’s so hard. Because part of being human is to be hard on ourselves. It’s how we get better.
We can deliver a heart-wrenching motivational speech that rivals that of MLK Jr. People will cry out from the audience. Old ladies will faint in their wheelchairs. The country will finally feel united. And we’ll get off stage and say, ‘It totally sucked. I messed up two words in the third paragraph.”
Our immediate focus is always on the negative. I can take anyone else’s situation and see the positive in it: You got pushed off a cliff by your fiance and broke your spine, but at least now you know he’s not right for you. But when it comes to myself, I’m too harsh. I’ll look in the mirror with gratitude, and my ego, Lawrence, will appear and tell me how my hair is too thin and my skin looks like that of a confused teenager. (Lawrence is a dick. You can read about him here). I’ve worked so hard this year to accept these two last parts of me. I’ve used affirmations. I’ve meditated. I’ve accepted my anxiety, my control issues, my man problems. But this whole hair and skin thing is a real pisser.
The tragedy of how unimportant my skin and hair are in the grand scheme of things is not lost on me. This is why it’s all so frustrating. There are people in the world who have never heard of PIZZA! There are Indians who are sleeping in train stations with flies all over their faces, and all they want is a pair of clean underwear and a sip of clear water. And here I am bitching that none of the expensive cleansers in my medicine cabinet has made me beautiful like promised. Gross. I want to punch myself. But that would just be anger towards myself for not accepting myself, and that would mean even less self-acceptance.
My friend Katie came over the other day, and we were talking about ourselves, like prima donna narcissists often do.
“I hate my hair. It’s too thin.” she said.
“I hate my hair. It’s too short.” I said.
“Your hair’s great,” I said.
“You hair’s great,” she said.
Then it donned on us. We’ve known each other for five years, and each time we see each other, the conversation is the same (after the very important social commentary about globalization and other such paramount themes). We’ve always hated our hair. Even after accepting so many other parts of our selves, we can’t get over our hair.
“Let’s finally do something about it,” I said.
“Extensions,” she said.
I am not one to get fake things. I had fake nails throughout high school. I have banished such fakeries. Yet we did research. We made appointments. We sat through pain. We now have hair.
We have hair! We have hair that’s long and silky. And we can look in the mirror and love it. But it’s fake! And it’s sewn into our scalps.
That’s right. We can only look in the mirror and love ourselves now that we have another person’s dead hair painfully sewn onto our heads. How odd is that? Humans are so strange.
After looking at all the options, we decided that weaves were the way to go. It took us an entire Saturday in a no-frills hair specialty spot with the worst logo ever. Seriously. Why make a ‘before’ picture your logo? That’s like making an empty plate the logo for a restaurant. Or some really sweaty man the logo for an air conditioning company. Not smart. BUT… We don’t judge a hair place by the logo, so we walked in for a day of fun. It was seriously fun.
You know those stereotypical black barber shops where all the men sit around and talk about life? This was the female version filled with women getting weaves while watching ‘The Best Man’ and commenting about Morris Chestnut’s private life and Hugh Jackman’s abs. I felt very welcomed into the weave community. And what a community it is. Holy mackerel. The women told me how to spot a weave, and man alive, so many women have weaves! I have been comparing my shitty hair to the luscious locks of plenty of women for so long and it was all for naught because so many are fakes.
What exactly is a weave, you ask? Well, besides a shortcut to self-acceptance, it’s a bunch of human hair that’s been dyed to match yours. D’Lisa, the weave specialist who only books appointments through text messages, finds the perfect spot on your head for the weave. She marks it with a Sharpie and then twists your own real hair into a tiny braid. Once that’s finished, she takes a thick, curved needle and sews the hair onto that braid. Like she’s making a quilt. Like your head is a big fucking Afghan blanket. And then it’s done. Then you have long hair that you can love for at least 6 weeks.
It sounds great. There’s just one tiny drawback: you have hair sewn into your scalp! It feels like I’m wearing a bathing cap made for a 3-month-old. Sometimes I want to rip it out of my head, but I saw her sew that shit in there and I know I’d be pulling out scalp skin and possibly exposing brain matter. So I suck it up and leave it in. Just so I can have long hair.
Just so I can have long hair!
One day I will get to the point where I don’t need this hair, the point where I can look at bare me in the mirror and love everything about what I see, including every single one of my real and short split ends. It will be a glorious day and sunlight will shine from my pores. And then Lawrence will come around and say, “Man, you have a lot of pimples.”
I’m not only the president, I’m also a client!