Colonize This!: Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism (30 page)

Being an Asian dyke is no easy feat. People look at me and see my skin, sometimes before they see my sex. While I only pass for white on the phone, I only pass for male in person. The local barber cuts my hair. I wear suits from the boys’ department. Comfort instigated these habits, but people read them as gender signifiers, so I am routinely addressed as “sir” in public buildings. I am mistaken for male far more readily than I am recognized as queer. As an Asian female, my desires are dismissed, trivialized and denied more than white women because I am fighting the fronts of both culture and gender.

The ability to pass as straight has protected many queers from boorish commentary as well as brutal attack, but it also deprives us of clear identification and of dignity as human beings who deserve full civil and social rights, regardless of who we find desirable. If queers remain in the closet, we deny our number and prevalence, reduce our visibility and thereby undermine our existence. To be honest, when I first met another queer Asian woman, the “gaydar” was in the shop. We are simply not visible in society, sometimes not even to each other.

Passing is a double-edged sword. It may allow you to evade harassment, but it also binds you to the expectations entrenched in society. By being out, I challenge cultural assumptions about dykes, just as I confront the white face of feminism by embracing the mantle of feminism. I refuse to pass, thereby challenging expectations that would negate my sense of self. Regardless of whether they were assigned or accidentally acquired, expectations create a comfort zone, a place where we won’t be challenged to think. The trick is creating your own definitions, or at least exercising some influence over which category you evoke—as every gangsta rapper and queer pride organizer knows. To define myself is to become visible and redefine the box—or throw it away altogether.

Creating our own definitions can take a lifetime. I became a feminist because of how others see me. I became an activist because I wanted to change how I was treated as a result of those gazes. Feminists come in every flavor; we are not just vanilla anymore, if we ever were. From women who reclaim “cunt” onstage to lesbian separatists living in rural communes, the tent holds scores of perspectives. I began describing myself as a feminist because it gave voice to my anger at the treatment of women in society. Simultaneously feminism speaks of my potential as a creative force, beyond biology. I reveled in a feminism that included the rage of Catherine MacKinnon as well as the joy of Susie Bright.

But as I made my way between goddess worshippers and corporate climbers, I realized no one looked like me. This is hardly a new experience. In fact, my comfort with not fitting in allowed me to feel completely at ease accepting the label “feminist” and all the controversy that comes with it. Being different does not scare me, because I have no choice. At least when I invoked feminism, my political positions were at the fore rather than obscured within the boxes in which people thought my body belonged. Feminism tempered the power of society to label me, or at least interjected my own terms into the debate. And yet, though I still care passionately about feminist issues, they often do not go far enough.

During the 2000 Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York, a number of women were stripped and assaulted. When women clutching their torn clothes approached police, they were told they “needed to calm down” before going to the station to file a report. After public uproar the police blamed their inaction on the city’s mood in light of recent police shootings of unarmed black men. The official gaze managed to oppress brown men while simultaneously disregarding women. Tapes of some of the attacks were aired in a belated attempt to identify the assailants. Although I was outraged as a woman, I also wondered whether the police really needed another excuse to harass men of color.

Women object to strange hands on their bodies for the same reason that teenagers become insolent when cops imagine they are criminal simply because of their skin color. The police, however, have the license of law enforcement and all too often punish enmity with violence or arrest. The constant suspicion of cops and the leering attention of the male gaze disregard our experience, reducing us to presumptions and stereotypes whether we are labeled prey or predator. The basic profile of those in power looks the same as it did twenty-five years ago, despite a few token appointments. Is it surprising that we are still trapped in the same boxes?

I chose not to attend the march NOW New York organized in response to the Puerto Rican Day assaults. I agreed that the attacks were atrocious and appalling but NOW’s message failed to address racial profiling, oversimplifying the situation. A simple “take back the day” march ignores the racial lines in the sand. The feminism that only sees through the lens of gender does not free those of us with brown skin or those of us who are poor. In my personal experience the hostility of security personnel is far more familiar than catcalls on the street. I recognize the rage of kids in detention because I have felt the very same indignation at the unfairness in both situations. Not only do we need role models, we also need recognition of our similarities as well as our unique challenges. We must expand feminism to consider all people’s facets if we hope to move beyond being perceived as a white movement.

I am not society’s fear but I am not yet a friend. The anger born of pain and the awareness of the history that flowed before me still motivate me. The bonds of passing and the entrenchment of expectations shape our shared landscape regardless of gender, color and class. I constantly struggle with what people are conditioned to see. The weight of brown skin, female features and memories of poverty intensify my fight. Feminism has historically empowered women to create their own definitions of femininity and what it means to be a woman. But what does feminism offer a woman in South Asia who considers becoming a mail-order bride her best option? Does feminism undermine or reinforce the depiction of men of color as dangerous predators? How does feminism address the availability of meaningful opportunities across classes, the social safety net or the fact that most of those detained or incarcerated are brown, male and poor? For feminism to speak to people of color, it must not only acknowledge the various manifestations of oppression but also draw attention to their interconnectedness.

 

I have chosen not to pass. To achieve any meaningful change, the way we look at each other and at the world must be transformed. I demand the right to live as a leftist feminist dyke who grew up poor but knows that she enjoys much greater fortunes than most of the people who share her ancestry. No box sufficiently contains any individual, but some of us—whether poor, brown, queer, female or all of the above—endure more corrosive distortion within our society.

My parents are Chinese but I do not exactly look it. I grew up poor but do not sound it. I am female but far removed from the cultural constructs of femininity. I am not what you see. The question remains: Can you learn to see me?

 

Thanks to Fran for your much appreicated encouragement and support, Steph and Nick for your patience and friendship, & my parents for the strength to be myself -/Doh jeh ngoh fu mo/
!

 

Sirena J. Riley

 

 

 

 

 

For those of you well versed in the study of body image, I don’t need to tell you that negative body image is an all too common phenomenon. The issue of young women’s and girls’ dissatisfaction with their bodies in the United States has slowly garnered national attention and has made its way into the public discourse. Unfortunately, the most visible discussions surrounding body image have focused on white women. As a result, we presume that women of color don’t have any issues when it comes to weight and move on. As a black woman, I would love to believe that as a whole we are completely secure with our bodies. But that would completely miss the racism, sexism and classism that affect the specific ways in which black women’s beauty ideals and experiences of body dissatisfaction are often different from those of white women.

To our credit, black women have often been praised for our positive relationships with our bodies. As a teenager, I remember watching a newsmagazine piece on a survey comparing black and white women’s body satisfaction. When asked to describe the “perfect woman,” white women said she’d be about five foot ten, less than 120 pounds, blond and so on. Black women described this ideal woman as intelligent, independent and self-confident, never mentioning her looks. After the survey results were revealed to the group of both black and white twentysomethings, the white women stood, embarrassed and humiliated that they could be so petty and shallow. They told stories of starving themselves before dates and even before sex. The black women were aghast! What the hell were these white women talking about? !

I was so proud. I went around telling everyone about the survey results. I couldn’t believe it. Black women being praised on national television! There they were telling the whole country that their black men loved the “extra meat on their bones.” Unfortunately, my pride also had a twinge of envy. In my own experience, I couldn’t quite identify with either the black women or the white women.

In my black middle-class suburban family, we were definitely expected to be smart. My family didn’t work so hard so that we could be cute and dumb. I’d expressed interest in medical school and I got nothing but support in my academics. Raised by a single mother, independence was basically in my blood. But in a neighborhood of successful, often bourgeois black families, it was obvious that the “perfect woman” was smart, pretty and certainly not overweight. As a child, no one loved the “extra meat” on my bones. I was eight years old when I first started exercising to Jane Fonda and the cadre of other leotard-clad fitness gurus. I knew how to grapevine and box step as well as I knew my multiplication tables. I now have a sister around that age, and when I look at her and realize how young that is, it breaks my heart that I was so concerned about weight back then.

Still, I consider myself lucky. I had an even temper. That made me no fun to tease, since I wouldn’t give the perpetrator any satisfaction by reacting. Plus, I had good friends who would be there to have my back. But despite this support, I was a very self-conscious middle-school girl. And that’s where I gained the most weight, sixty pounds in the course of three years. Because hindsight is twenty-twenty, it is easy to understand why I put on so much weight then. My mom got married when I was ten years old. The next year she had my first little sister, and then another sister was added when I turned fourteen. I love them, but that’s a lot of stress for a little kid. My single-parent, only-child home had turned into a pseudo-nuclear family almost overnight. My grades started slipping and the scale started climbing.

Enter my first year of high school. Being an overweight teenager, I don’t need to describe the hell that was gym class. To my relief, I only had to take one year of gym and then never had to do it again. Plus, in high school I had options. In addition to regular gym, there was an aerobic dance class and something called “physical training.” Now, considering that Jane Fonda and I were well acquainted, I wanted to take the aerobics class. But when I went to register, the class was full. I guess I wasn’t the only one who’d had it with the kickball scene. I was left with either regular gym or this physical training class. I decided that I’d played my last game of flag football and opted for the latter.

Physical training turned out to be running and lifting weights. And when I say weights, I mean real weights. None of those wimpy three-pound dumbbells. We were lifting heavy weights and learning professional weight-lifting moves. Well, it worked. By sophomore year I’d lost over forty pounds. The thing is, I didn’t even know it. Remember, I had only enrolled in the class to get out of regular gym. I’d thought it might have been nice to lose some weight, but that wasn’t what I was concentrating on. After all, I’d been doing exercise videos since I was a kid and I’d only managed to gain weight.

How did I not notice that I’d lost weight? Well, I was completely out of touch with my body. I didn’t want to live there. I don’t even think I really considered it a part of me. No one ever said anything good about it, so I just pretended it didn’t exist. I basically swept my body under the rug. All I was wearing back then were big baggy jeans and sweatshirts, so most of my clothes still fit despite the weight loss. People had been asking me for several months if I’d lost weight before I noticed. They were also asking me how I did it, as if I knew. While back-to-school shopping before my sophomore year, I decided to just see if I could fit into size 10 jeans. Not only did those fit me, I could even squeeze into a size 8.

Ironically, it wasn’t being overweight that really screwed up my body image and self-esteem, it was losing weight. All of a sudden I was pretty. No one had ever really told me that I was pretty before. So if I was pretty now, then I must have been ugly then. My perception of myself before my weight loss was forever warped. I ripped up pictures of myself from middle school. I never wanted to be fat again! Boys had never really been interested in me before, but now guys were coming out of the woodwork. Family I hadn’t seen in years just couldn’t believe it was me. Some even told me that they always knew I’d grow out of my “baby fat” to become a beautiful woman. At fifteen, this was my introduction to womanhood. I had dates now. I could go shopping and actually fit into cool clothes. I was planning for college and looking forward to my new life as a pretty, smart, successful, independent black superwoman.

For a few years I actually did eat and exercise at what I’d consider a comfortable rate. But after that year of intense exercising, it was impossible to completely maintain my significant weight loss. I just didn’t have the time, since it wasn’t built into my schedule anymore. I settled in at around a size 12, although at the time I still wanted to be a “perfect” size 8. This actually was the most confusing time for me. I kept telling everyone that I still wanted to lose twenty pounds. Even my family was divided on this one. My grandmother told me that I was fine the way I was now, that I shouldn’t gain any weight, but I didn’t need to lose any more. She didn’t want me to be fat but thought it was good that I was curvy. Meanwhile, my grandfather told me that if I lost twenty more pounds, he’d give me one thousand dollars to go shopping for new clothes. And my mom thought that my skirts were too short and my tops too low cut, even though as a child she prompted me to lose weight by saying that if I stayed fat, I wouldn’t be able to wear pretty clothes when I grew up. What the hell did these people want from me?

 

I wasn’t overeating and my self-esteem had improved but for all of the wrong reasons. I thought I was happier because I was thinner. In reality, I still hadn’t made peace with myself or my body. Over the years I gained the weight back, but not before dabbling in some well-known eating disorders. I had a stint with bulimia during my second semester of my first year away at college. But I never got to the clinical stage. I pretty much only did it when something bad happened, not on a daily basis. I didn’t binge on huge amounts of food. I’d eat two bowls of Lucky Charms and the next thing you know, I’d be sticking the spoon down my throat. This was not at all like the bulimics I saw on those after-school specials. They were eating sheets of cake, loaves of bread, sticks of butter, anything and everything they could get their hands on. That wasn’t me.

Then I started compulsively exercising. I mean I couldn’t think straight if I hadn’t been to the gym that morning. And even after I went to the gym, all I could think about was how great it was going to be to work out tomorrow. I was also planning my whole day around my food. It wasn’t necessarily that I was dieting, but I was always aware of when I was going to eat, how much and how long it would be until I ate again. I was completely obsessed.

Around my junior year in college, I finally realized that something was wrong. I just couldn’t take it anymore, so I started seeing a counselor on campus. At first I didn’t tell her about my encounters with bulimia, but any trained therapist could see right through me. One day she asked me point blank if I’d ever had an eating disorder, so I told her everything. I realized then that what I had been doing was considered disordered eating. I also realized that inherently I knew it wasn’t right, since this was the first time I had breathed a word about it to anyone. I had never even tried to articulate it. I decided not to exercise or worry about what I ate until I got through therapy.

Throughout my course of therapy, I was in three body image and eating disorder therapy groups with other young women on my campus. I was always the only black woman. The memory of that television news survey I had seen as a teen comparing body image issues for black and white women stayed with me over the years. Looking at the other women in my therapy groups, I had to wonder if I was an anomaly. I had read one or two stories in black women’s magazines about black women with eating disorders, but it was still treated like a phenomenon that was only newsworthy because of its rarity.

As a women’s studies major in college, body image was something we discussed almost ad nauseam. It was really cathartic because we embraced the personal as political and felt safe telling our stories to our sister feminists. Whenever body image was researched and discussed as a project, however, black women were barely a footnote. Again, many white feminists had failed to step out of their reality and see beyond their own experiences to understand the different ways in which women of color experience sexism and the unattainable beauty ideals that society sets for women.

Discussions of body image that bother to include black women recognize that there are different cultural aesthetics for black and white women. Black women scholars and activists have attacked the dominance of whiteness in the media and illuminated black women’s tumultuous history with hair and skin color. The ascension of black folks into the middle class has positioned them in a unique and often difficult position, trying to hold onto cultural ties while also trying to be a part of what the white bourgeois has created as the American Dream. This not only permeates into capitalist material goals, but body image as well, creating a distinctive increase in black women’s body dissatisfaction.

White women may dominate pop culture images of women, but black women aren’t completely absent. While self-deprecating racism is still a factor in the way black women view themselves, white women give themselves too much credit when they assume that black women still want to look like them. Unfortunately, black women have their own beauty ideals to perpetually fall short of. The representation of black women in Hollywood is sparse, but among the most famous loom such beauties as Halle Berry, Jada Pinkett Smith, Nia Long, Iman and Angela Bassett. In the music scene there are the young women of Destiny’s Child, Lauryn Hill and Janet Jackson. Then, of course, there is model Naomi Campbell and everyone’s favorite cover girl, Tyra Banks. Granted, these women don’t necessarily represent the waif look or heroin chic that plagues the pages of predominately white fashion and entertainment magazines, but come on. They are still a hard act to follow.

 

In addition to the pressure of unrealistic body images in the media, another force on women’s body image can be men’s perspectives. In this category black men’s affinity for big butts always comes up. Now, I’m not saying that this is a completely false idea—just about every black guy I know has a thing for the ass. I’ve heard both black guys and white guys say, “Damn, she’s got a big ass”—the former with gleeful anticipation and the latter with loathsome disgust. Of course, dwelling on what men find attractive begs the question, why the hell do we care so much what they think anyway, especially when not all women are romantically involved with men?

Indeed, many songs have been written paying homage, however objectifying, to the black behind. “Baby Got Back,” “Da Butt” and “Rumpshaker” are by now old standards. There’s a whole new crop of ass songs like “Shake Ya Ass,” “Wobble Wobble” and everyone’s favorite, “The Thong Song.” But did anyone actually notice what the girls in the accompanying videos look like? Most of those women are models, dancers and aspiring actresses whose full-time job it is to make sure they look unattainably beautiful. So what if they’re slightly curvier?

Now that rap music is all over MTV, the rock videos of the eighties and early nineties featuring white women in leather and lace have been replaced with black and Latino models in haute couture and designer thongs. Rappers of the “ghetto-fabulous” genre are selling platinum several times over. Everyday, their videos are requested on MTV’s teen-driven Total Request Live (TRL) by mostly white, suburban kids—the largest group of consumers of hip-hop culture. It is the latest mainstream forum for objectifying women of color, because almost all of the ghetto-fabulous black male rappers have the obligatory video girls parading around everywhere from luxury liner cruise ships to mansions in the Hamptons. If this doesn’t speak to the distinctive race/class twist that these images add to the body image discussion, I don’t know what does.