3 Razor Burn: Sexed Socialization and Whiteness, Marlow Saucier
When I was in the fourth grade, I was given an electric razor for my birthday. I looked around at the smiling faces of my family, proud of my first step into a womanhood I never aspired to, and asked what it was for. I was nine years old, my WASP heritage mixing with my
French and Italian, dark brown, thick, and curly hair all over my mammalian body defying the standards for little girls everywhere. I was told to go upstairs, then and there, and “do it,” after being told that once I did, there was no going back. Go sit alone in the bathroom with this foreign object and strip your body apart for the pleasure of others, be complacent in the sexualization of your pre-pubescent body, don’t you want to be so soft and tender, like a woman should be? I broke down; once I did it I could never go back, I didn’t mind my hair, I was nine, a child not capable nor wanting the luxury of autonomy, the reductionism of sexualizing my childlike body, too womanly now to bathe with my brother. I thought we were too big to fit into the bathtub together. I came down without the razor and was inspected by my family, my father asking “did you do it yet?”. My mother answered, “obviously not, look at her furry legs.”
When I was in second grade, having been pulled into place for picture day, hair pulled back from my face and curling around my small and fragile ears, cupping my peach fuzz earlobes like a caress. I stood there in my six year old body and was told I had “gorilla arms.” My French-Italian grandmother had a special mirror with 10x magnification, to inspect each individual hair, to pore over each pore, and fuss over her discolored skin from years of sun exposure and tanning lotion. She had plucked out the majority of her eyebrows at some point in the nineties, and as she grew older and her hair became less regenerative, her eyebrows became a brown brow pencil splayed upward in ever surprising strokes, horrified at the misuse of her body. She illuminated the process of electrolysis, hair bleaching, waxing, and plucking to me from an early age, creating the solidarity of things that “women like us just have to do.” I was given Nair for my mustache when it began to turn brown in middle school, and then a special rose gold facial razor when Nair reacted badly to my skin and left it red for a week.
My English mother was always jealous of my thick and curly hair, but made sure I knew she never envied the dark hair on my upper thighs that embarrassed her when we would go on trips to the beach. I was not allowed to wear crop tops, or short shorts, or earrings that were too long on my face, not makeup or high heels or things that were “too mature” for me, I was expected to stay baby smooth and malleable at all times. When I began to pick at my face no one could understand why, I was marring my natural beauty after all. Any blemish, spot or pimple became the enemy, an outlet for my confusions about which parts of my body were to love, which were to hate, which were to show off, which were to be ashamed of. I remember sitting in class in the fourth grade, a box of tissues left on my desk for my often bleeding face, and my teacher never noticed red smudges on my paper. I was belittled for the lack of respect for my baby soft skin, when all I wanted to do was peel it off, to rupture this body I had become a prisoner inside. My skin became scarred and I became aware of my enlarged pores from the constant picking, generational shame running through my fingers, eyes locked on the new 10x magnifying mirror I had received for my birthday.
My picking turned to my cuticles, trying to turn away from my face. All of the skin on my body seems too hard now, calloused over from years of change. Still, they bleed, still I struggle with my picking disorder, an OCD behavior caused by repressed anxiety and body issues. I haven’t cut myself in almost three years, but my scars will always be there, reminding me of the body I am trapped inside, the pain of being perceived, a reminder that I was never good at the art of deception. Socialization as a woman has taught me that there is a special kind of hating yourself that you must do in female society, one that is hidden away under layers of confidence, overwatted smiles, whitening toothpastes, diet shakes, and unwritten question marks at the end of all your sentences. I was first exposed to bulimia when I was in fifth grade, the same year that we were separated by girl and boy groups into separate homerooms for a class they had left out of the weekly plan. I was singled out in front of more than 40 other 10 year old girls and told that my spaghetti strap looked all too similar to a bra strap, all too similar to reminding the boys just across that classroom door that I have hormones inside of me swelling my nipples into breast buds, and that soon I would need a lesson on how not to get raped. Men, and pedophiles, like their women young and hairless, virgin fresh and innocent, submissive and obedient, and even more when dressed in schoolgirl outfits. Girls don’t go to school, even in the educated and liberal Northeast, to read books; we are there to be appraised, but never to distract the boys from their studies. We are there to learn how to smile behind our hands, how to slut shame other women, how to pose for the nude photographs we aren’t supposed to send, the same one that all of society secretly wants to see. And when we try to take back ownership of our bodies, especially sexually, we are not those sexy schoolgirls any longer. We are sluts, cows, dykes, bossy, nasty, overhanded, and the topic of locker room talk. And when the cows get skinnier, more desirable, they become a good time.
No one sees the behind closed door binges, constant weigh ins, BMI fixation. The society of “should” of “mainstream” and “popular.” We just want to be loved, to be seen instead of rated, to be held when we cry and not expected to pay them back for their ounce of emotional labor, an expectation for women and femmes everywhere. Emotional labor is an unpaid job that has been given to any “female”, in the context of family, school, society, and most other public, private, and even professional realms. Emotional intelligence is neither taught nor expected from men on a societal level, and it usually ends up landing on their female partner to teach them how to unlearn toxic masculine traits that have been societally programmed based on their assumed gender. I had once convinced my brother to say “woman up” instead of “man up,” but he stopped saying that a long time ago, as well as letting Grammy paint his nails with clear polish so they would shine. He only put on one of my dresses once, and my father’s reaction was enough to teach him that was no longer acceptable. I worry a lot about him, how he is being raised, what he is being taught is desirable and okay as a cis, straight white boy, eagerly awaiting the world at his fingertips as a fully realized white man.
I knew enough to give him the sex/consent talk early, back when he still listened to anyone. I knew my parents wouldn’t do it; when I was six my dad left for a while and my mom told me that sex is when a man penetrates a woman with his penis. Nothing more. I told her I would never want that, and she laughed, telling me that want comes with age. I have, to this day, never wanted a penis inside of me. I told her I don’t want to carry children, I have always wanted to adopt. She says that birth is nothing to fear, and that I am more than strong enough. I appreciate the rare compliment, but not the insinuation that pregnancy is what makes you a suitable parent if you have a vagina.
My middle school, in the oh-so educated Massachusetts, had one day of optional sex ed at the end of eighth grade, consisting of an amalgamation of slut shaming and STI fear mongering, despite having multiple pregnant seventh graders. My sexual education mostly came through overdone lesbian pornography at too young of an age, the combination of hypersexuality and curiosity about the things I thought about; if they were possible, if they were pleasurable, won out over my protestant based New England cultural prudishness. I knew that my brother needed to know how to touch someone with love more than lust, with respect more than urgency, and I knew society would not be the one to teach him that. However good a child may be, goodness cannot protect you from the seepage of sexed socialization. Everything is fine until you feel the way it has torn away at your morals and your body, ever hungry.
My brother has grown up in my shadow, and that has created an air of emasculation for him around trying new things, and failing. The only thing he ever accomplished before me, and to do better than I could, was riding a bike. I had never been interested in bike riding, I would much rather stay inside on the porch, reading, or outside in the sun, reading. I remember the day he learned to ride a bike, as I was woken from the story in my hands and abruptly reminded that my younger brother was surpassing my childhood standards. I learned to ride a bike the same day, when he was 7 and I was 10. Now, he is fearless on his bike, taking flying leaps off of dirt jumps and falling so hard he broke three helmets over the course of this summer alone. This has transferred into his snowboarding as well, something he ventured to do alone, as the rest of my English family, as well as my French-Italian father, skis. Jackson always had a longer leash, more independence. Some may say this is because he is the second child, but it makes me start to wonder the difference between raising a male and “female” child when he is allowed to sit there with us for hours being on his computer, and I am chastised for not helping out in the kitchen when I am busy with homework. When he gets to take a nap after Thanksgiving dinner and I am scrubbing gravy off of his plate. When my mother stands there calmly as he yells at her, punches pillows and screams that he hates her, when I would have been backhanded for straying too close to disrespect.
I don’t know how to conclude a story that is still unraveling. My brother is more indoctrinated into toxic masculine culture with each passing day, as I sit here at college with the he/they pronouns burning a hole into me. I asked him how he would feel if I started using he/him, and he said it would be weird, because I am his older sister. Later, on the phone, he said I was the man, but I’m not a man, I’m both. This is growth from the boy who stayed silent when I came out to him over four years ago, whom my parents asked not to call me by my chosen name, because that is an adult or family decision to be made. The rift between my mother and grandmother has only grown since Grammy’s adoption of my name and my mother’s resistance, and I remember a time when their goals were so similar in the warnings of womanhood, although their methods were different. My father doesn’t believe that rape culture exists in America, and I only recently got him on board with cultural appropriation. My whiteness veils me and protects me, this I know, but it truly blinds my family. It hurts me to see the self limiting, elitist, and biased views they have refused to grow out of, afraid that their protection will turn on them, or perhaps they will have to face things they are not ready to admit.
Over lunch with a friend, I described how my grandmother always used to make Halloween costumes for my mom when she was young. When I was in third grade, my mom told me that she had saved her “Indian” costume for her daughter to wear one day. She could not understand my distress, my intense desire to be a vampire that year. I would rather be blood sucking, scary and feared than a member of a long line of historical erasures of both culture and genocide, but the only thing that convinced her was that I had lost both of my front teeth and I wanted to showcase my “fangs”. The next Halloween I was too big for her costume, but she still has it hanging in my closet. My friend told me that they didn’t believe people like my family truly exist, that it was just over dramatized for internet memes. I asked them how much different I would be if I was complacent. We sat there in silence.
As someone who plans to major in Environmental Studies, I think about how our culture of Euro-centric beauty standards, of toxic masculinity, homophobia and transphobia seeps into our water, air, land, and becomes a part of us. We shave and pluck, press and redline certain bodies into dangerous areas of our collective planet. Yet I know that we can embrace our interconnection with each other and with the environment, become a better steward of the Earth for our collaborative future by connecting with those parts of ourselves that we are told to be most embarrassed by, and asking why we must separate ourselves from our nature. The perpetuation of dominant narratives within my own life has only made me more aware of what needs to be changed, what needs to be said and done, and what needs to be dismantled, including within myself.
