notes on being desired

inspired by @dronme. her writing is such a mirror for me.

As a young woman, I feel that I have been told that I have power when I have the ability to, essentially, turn on the men around me. It’s not my only power but it's one that comes with being a young woman. I’d have even more power when I couldn’t actually control it— if being desirable wasn’t a choice. We're told that it is easier for us at times, because with our looks we can get most men to do anything for us, using our desirability as a weapon, a tool of manipulation. 

As a young Black woman, the avenue to do this is extremely expensive, and consuming. It’s not “surefire”, men can be quite stuck in their ways if they prefer fair-skinned women with my features. As a young Black woman, I’ve found it hard to be natural in my beauty– and I’ve believed for too long that beauty is achieved and it comes with fanfare, bells, and whistles. As a young Black woman, men often decide quickly if they’re interested or not. Their interest, platonic, romantic, or sexual is often about my Blackness, one way or another. It’s straight to the point: this weapon that we supposedly once had has been seized and drawn upon our necks. Most men can get me to do anything when the patriarchy is almost always using my desirability, or lack thereof, as a weapon, a tool of violence. 

I’d never let a man know how ugly I felt until I met my partner. I’d shown others before, though there wasn’t mutual love involved. It’s as if a relationship was between two people on a row boat or a canoe, and there were no secrets on both ends to distribute the weight of vulnerabilities we carried with us. We’d topple. But in my relationship today, we are both heavy with transparency. I wasn’t eating enough before I met him. Today, I’m over twenty pounds bigger than I was back then. Part of it is that he’s doing his job and being a kind man to me. I don’t think he’s ever made an unprompted comment about exercise or food. Of course, I have antagonized him about his thoughts, and he’s let me know that he’s smitten with how I look. The other part is most likely written in my genes. Based on photos of my birth mother, Yaya, I am bred to be short, yes, but not particularly skinny.

Sometimes I wish my partner would stop worrying about me so much, thinking that I need a chaperone everywhere. I tell him, it’ll be fine, I used to ride the bus alone all the time. I used to walk to work alone all the time. I tell him, it’ll be fine, I’m not pretty anymore.

I used to work at an all-woman’s company, selling expensive baggy clothes to a specific type of woman. This woman was white, well-traveled, married, financially thriving, and sometimes retired. This is where I decided to start covering my hair and dressing in expensive baggy clothes. I began to forget what my body outline looked like and I didn’t notice it started to get bigger and bigger. Honing in on a certain persona in the workplace was not difficult, but here it didn’t feel as powerful. This is where I started to become a woman, fresh out of college. This is where I started feeling unpretty.

I write about the emergence into adulthood, an area of life that continues to breed complications. Especially because I believe adulthood and womanhood are two different things that some of us are expected to juggle at the same time. Don’t let me start on Blackwomanhood.  I'd like to think that all of the hard parts of being a girl start coming to a close when we emerge into the next phase, but what sense does that make? Not only do new parts come to life as adults, but for some of us, most of us, some glimpses of the “hard parts of being a girl” linger. They follow us and tempt us to not always be the bigger person. When I write about this, I often focus on the “expansion of woman”, a fable I’ve always believed aligns with the horror genre. Maybe a psychological thriller? A fucking satire? I don’t think of it as being solely about a woman’s weight, but it is what I picture first. How disappointing.

Some women in my life have taken on the responsibility of embracing the expansion. I’ve found it hard to embrace a time in my life that I'd rather people not look at me in all my powerlessness, for I’ve mostly given up on my desirability and I need many shields to just exist outside of my room. I haven’t played offense in years. I stare at my opponent, not fighting or fleeing, but freezing. Waiting for this phase to end.

“Why do you cover your hair?” asks a curious hijabi who works in the bakery of the market I work at. I say that I cover it because I don’t want people asking questions about it. My eyes widened, and I added “I don’t want white people asking questions about it.” She just looks at me. I fill the space some more by saying “And also my hair is not very long. It’s a cute little ‘fro. I wear it sometimes.” I want to say more but I do not. I fear that I sound like I’m full of shit, that it would be better to tell her that I would rather have people notice the headscarf than the bald spots on my head. I want to say: I’m a black girl who doesn’t have nice hair, and the headscarf is one of my many shields. I want to say: I am more than a girl who covers her hair, why does nobody ask about me? When I see her again, she asks me about my family. I told her that I could not talk for long, and my boyfriend was waiting outside in the car. She says “he can wait.” We smile at each other.

I work this job because I must, though I am providing for nobody but me, the small rent I pay to my parents, and my unhealthy spending habits. One of my biggest privileges is that I will probably not need to work full-time for several years even though I am an adult. I’m the only young black woman working as a cashier. There is an older black woman, but I think she was disappointed when she found out I wasn’t Habesha. We don’t talk super often and it confuses her that I am not in school and also not working full time.

I find so many ways to do very little physical labor at work and I say it is because I feel so tired from wearing all of my shields, both physical and metaphorical. I am. But, I don’t work as hard as I should. I would if I liked what I was doing, of course. That is another privilege of mine. I work with many white men who cannot hide their lack of interest in me but rely on my listening ears to unload their thoughts. They call me sassy and feisty. Even bratty. They don’t complain about it. I carry my lipgloss in my uniform pocket and apply it strategically. This is the lingering girl in me. It’s in moments like these where I wonder if my powers are just lying dormant, ready to be relearned when I’m done sitting in my sorrows. There is nobody I am interested in except for my partner, but have I become completely undesirable now? I sit in these moments and think how my powers could be stronger. I wish I was joking when my solutions that come to mind are “long hair, longer eyelashes, more time on the treadmill, pants that make your ass look bigger.” I cannot bear to fake my interest for too long, but I also cannot bear being undesired. I need to know, for lack of a better phrase, that I still got it. 

It feels obvious that I most often begin to feel this way when I’d like to appeal to others in spaces like the workplace, on social media, and out in public. It’s often around loved ones and close friends that I feel body-neutral and face-neutral. I’m not entirely sure it’s true that I feel more comfortable with fake eyelashes on at home. It’s only outside of my home. In my bed, I’d rather not feel the scratchy ends of synthetic braids against my back and shoulders. It’s only outside that I'd prefer the flowing curtain to hide behind. It’s not while I write poetry that I'd rather have a smaller waist and thighs, it’s when I’m dressing myself to leave and see others. 

Today I am in a space where I am learning the difference between times that I am holding the reins of my power, the times the patriarchy is holding the reins, and noticing the moments where it’s often happening at the same time. I’ve convinced myself that I will feel better when I look better because then I’ll be treated better. What an avenue to avoid self-development! 

Today I am in a space where the duality of a self-sabotaging woman and the woman who wants to succeed both live within me, and I’d like to take care of them both to even out this unfair fight. To name both the patriarchy and my anxiety as the monsters that lurk in the shadows of my life, and that neither is my fault, and only one of them is my responsibility to take care of. The other can be resisted, and not fully eradicated. That I am not giving up power by admitting that.