What's Beauty?

Who knew that two countries could view beauty in completely different ways? Isn't it weird that what's considered beautiful in one culture is considered the essence of ugliness in another? Some of my students were admiring my mole a few months ago. It took them a while to agree it was a mole since it was brown instead of black, but once they did you would have thought it was a heart-shaped birthmark. A moment later they were pointing out each other's moles and complimenting them. Needless to say, I was shocked. Once I figured out what "mole" was in Urdu, I asked, "Are these beautiful in this country?"

            "Oh yes, especially if they are here," my student said, pointing right above her lip. It took a lot of self-control to keep a straight face.

            I'm pretty sure that uni-brows are also considered beautiful, although no one's told me that directly except our house helper; she says that uni-brows are nice as long as they aren’t harry. I know a Hindu girl who has a small v tattooed on her forehead to join her brows, and although tattoos are often used to disfigure beauty they're often used to decorate as well. In The Kite-Runner, a book that addresses a similar culture to the one I live in, the narrator praises his wife for her uni-brow that "looks like a bird in flight." In the same sentence the author praises her hooked nose. People call small noses mota, or fat, and although I've never heard of anybody liking their nose, all of my girl students with small noses complain about them. All kids who have naturally brown hair dye it black.

            My friend Mary tells me that I'm fat for my age. Considering how thin she is I don't take this as seriously as I'd like to; it's one of those moments when you just have to laugh to endure. Just to test her I asked her if one of our married friends was fat, knowing that the lady wasn't fat at all but wanting to know what her opinion was. Mary paused for a moment, then answered, "she's all right for her age. But you're younger."

            "Mary, I'm American. We're just built different than you."

            "What about American models?"

            It's difficult to explain that Hollywood is in America, not America in Hollywood.

            One of the things I get a lot is that I'm beautiful because I'm so ghora, or white. The whiter you are, the more beautiful you are regardless of any other traits you have. When we first moved here my language helper was a girl about my age, and I thought she was admirably beautiful—tall, dark, with thick black hair, a thin face, and large bright eyes. One day she complained to me that she was ugly.

            "What are you talking about?" I demanded, shocked that she would say such a thing.

            “I’m black,” she answered, and for the first time I noticed that she was exceptionally dark for a South Asian. It drives me crazy how these beautiful girls will put their hands on mine and say, “oh you’re so white, I’m so ugly,” but it gets worse than that.

            I was talking to two older girls a few weeks ago and we casually got into a conversation that all girls love to talk about: marriage.

            “Are you going to marry someone from this country?” Mulan asked.

            “Maybe—if it’s God’s will, and I love him.”

            The girls looked at each other. “You would even marry a Sheeti?”

            Sheeti is the derogative term for Kumrani; they’re a small people group that are the descendants of the Sindhi African slaves. Back in the day when this country had kings and queens, the royal family would take slaves from Africa just as our own ancestors did years ago. One of my closest friends is a Kumrani, and we often go to Kumrani functions with her. More than any other people group I know, they are full of energy, pride, beauty and intelligence. So when my students asked me their question the answer was easy.

            “Well, if it was God’s will, and I loved him, then of course I’d marry him.”

            The girls giggled. “But you’re so white, and he’d be so black!”

            These girls have never seen a Sheeti in their lives so I understand a little where they’re coming from, but it disturbed me that they so quickly discarded an entire race of people because of the color of their skin. But don’t we do that? It may not be skin color, but don’t we discard people because of the way they look? I know I do. I involuntarily ignore the person who doesn’t catch my eye, and am drawn to making friends with people who are good-looking.

            Who made me the judge of God’s handiwork? What right do I have to say one thing is beautiful and another is unattractive? When God says in Genesis that man is very good, he meant that. The point is to see the beauty a person has regardless of the affects of a sinful world. Every person has beauty, because God made man good.

            That goes for how I look at other people, and also how I look at myself. Sure I’m not a model—thank goodness—but God made me beautiful in my own way. We shouldn’t beat our heads against the wall because people think we’re unattractive, because really, who’s judgment is better, God’s or man’s?  Ten to one there’s someone somewhere in the world who thinks you’re beautiful. The grass is always greener on the other side—South Asians bleach their skin, white people get a tan, fat people go on a diet, thin people eat more, straight haired people own curlers and curly-haired people own straighteners. Really. We focus so much on the outside of people as if God could make a mistake.

            God can’t make a mistake. But we can. That’s why when Samuel went king-hunting and kept getting fixed on the strong handsome men, God put his priorities straight: “Man looks on the outside of a person, but God looks at the heart.” We can’t change how we look, but we can change our hearts and that’s what God wants us to focus on.

Two Husbands

A sign you lived overseas too long.

Thomas: "I'm going to marry you when I grow up Mom."
Mom: "No, I already have a husband."
Thomas: "So you can have two husbands!"
Mom: "No..."
Thomas: "Yeah, only men can have two wives."

South Asian Party

 (Mary holding baby Zoe in the car, all dressed up for the party and rather smushed in the back J)

Hannah's cousin had a "filling of the lap" ceremony and Mom, Aunt J. and I were invited along. I've never been to an American baby shower before so I couldn't really compare the two, but basically the idea behind a "filling of the lap" ceremony is this: the married girl gets to return to her family for the birth of her first child, and the her family comes and takes her home. People dance and give the new mother presents. It's really not that different than a wedding, except that the only guests are women. Usually weddings can be pretty depressing since the bride cries constantly and is probably not going to see her family again. But the "filling of the lap" party seems to idealize motherhood and womanhood something unique in South Asian Culture.

 Baby Zoe and her mother. Her face is so serene, kind of how I picture the Virgin Mary to look. I think Zoe's reaching out for her cousin.

 Hannah's hands, all dolled up for the party with henna and jewelry. I did her nails that afternoon, so we had matching fingernail polish. No, I didn't wear matching rings.

 Some girls were staring at me so I took advantage of their attention to get some pictures of them. I made them pose for me and got this really cute shot.

The essense of a party. There's so much in this picture that it's hard to put it all in words! The girl on the bed is the soon-to-be mother, and a grandmother is holding money over her head as a sign of blessing. The girl on the far right is a troup dancer and some of the ladies sitting on the floor are troop musicians.

And that obnoxious bright light in the corner is a cameraman. Everyone feels really awkward with him around.

Pick Up Sticks

My last day of teaching was on Wednesday. Yes, I had a difficult time giving it up but I knew I had to—after all, right now my time is already sucked out of me with teaching for three hours and studying for the rest of the day, and next semester I'm taking up two more classes. I'm sad in one way but relieved in another. It's my last semester before I graduate and I'd like to have more time bonding with my brother and my friends, but I'll miss that little school on the street corner. I'll miss my huge fifth grade class of eager and excited learners, and I'll miss my eighth grade class of five kids—four boys and a girl—that keep me busy despite their size. I've gotten plenty of experience and learned important lessons, but now I'll have to leave the work to the more qualified while I study on how to do it myself.

Anyways, on the last day of class I decided to just play games with them. With my eighth graders we did a cool game I learned two years ago, where the teacher writes a sentence and hands it off to the student. The student has to draw a picture of the sentence, while keeping both his picture and the sentence a secret; once he's finish he passes off the picture to the next student who writes a sentence of the picture, and on and on until each student has a chance. The goal is for the last sentence to be similar to the first sentence. Somehow the game didn't hit it off with them, partially because their English was poor and I had to be the middle man, and partially because of the dull moments between drawing and writing. When I asked if they wanted to play again, my question was answered with a resounding “No Miss.” So I told each student to pull out every pen they had (lucky one student had a pack of markers) and I taught them pick up sticks. They loved it!

I came back at break and the room was packed with students from all classes watching a group of six students playing the game. The girls stank at it curiously but the boys were pretty good. Amazing what you can do with a pack of pens.

Christmas in South Asia

Christmas, on the negative side, can be a very difficult time overseas. I want to step outside my gate and see Santa Clauses standing on the street corner ringing a bell; I want to go to the store and find cards and gifts and tinsel and Christmas songs playing. I want to see the lights of Christmas trees glittering in the windows of everyone's house.

            Instead, it seems like the middle of September. Slightly cold, but never cold enough for snow. If I mention Christmas to a friend they blink at me a moment and then say, "Oh December 25^th, correct?" No decorations. No songs. Even the Christian community, although they celebrate it, do not make as big a deal of as we do in the West. Now, more than any other time of year, our family wishes we were back in America. My Nana makes Christmas the most special day of the year by putting her entire heart, soul, and mind into it. It's hard to be a Grinch about Christmas at Nana's house. It's easy to be a Grinch about everything in South Asia in December.

            That's on the negative side. On the positive side, Christmas in South Asia has a novelty that makes it even more special than it is in the West. Have you ever explained Christmas to somebody? Every day I can tell one of my students, friends, or the other teachers at my school about what Christmas means and it never gets tiresome. Candy-canes, Christmas trees, customs, stories, gifts, colors—all of them carry a new meaning. It also helps me to question why we do the things we do. Why, for instance, do we have an evergreen tree? Why does Santa Clause live at the North Pole? How fun it is to teach Christmas songs to believers, and enjoy their appreciation of what we long ago discarded as cliché and over-rated. I went shopping with my friend Isabel a few days for Christmas and she loved it more than I did. Getting to share the excitement of Christmas with my friends give a whole new meaning to the holiday.

            My parents also make Christmas very special. On the first day of December we pulled out the suit-cases filled with decorations that we’ve carted around for the last three years and propped them up all around the house. Thomas likes to put the nativity scenes in a circle around baby Jesus, and although it annoys me, Mom loves it and he definitely has the idea down. We went to a plant store to buy a live tree like we do every year, and the variety of trees tempted us to try something different this year. Why get an evergreen when you can get a purple tree or a palm tree or something more eccentric? I voted on a big round cactus, but nobody seemed to see my point of view. In the end we got a small, somewhat pathetic evergreen and decorated it when we got home. Evergreens are never “ever green” with us. Both me and Mom have the opposite of a green thumb and have succeeded in killing almost every plant we’ve ever had, including several trees and cactuses. Outside we have three dying plants, what’s left of a once flourishing garden. We blame the cats.

            Right now Christmas music plays and I can see two nativity scenes from where I sit. I’m reminded that Christmas is not really the celebration behind it; Jesus’s birth is special in and of itself, and if our hearts are in the right place Christmas can be special no matter where we are in life.