Ode to White Girls

I've always been hard to peg, appearance-wise. My middle-toned skin, my curls, the shape of my nose and lips... all of it seems to just confuse people, and especially so when I was little. A strange need to categorize me as a child prompted the abrupt question "what are you?" I don't know if my circles have changed as I've gotten older, or if people's preoccupation with race has subsided, or if it is just not as easy to question an adult about herself as it is a child, but I rarely get this question anymore.

Naturally, as a child, I think I would have preferred to be less ambiguous, but as I get older I've grown much more comfortable with the way that I look. And, as it turns out, the way I look is also extremely useful for someone who likes to travel a lot. Suddenly, everyone looking at me quizzically because I was different turned into everyone ignoring me because I looked the same. This has been true in almost every country I've visited outside of East Asia. Peru - check. Brazil - check. Portugal - check. Palestine - check!

And even if I don't quite look like the natives of whatever country I happen to be in, I have another trick up my sleeve-- I am brown. And in the colonial legacies left in so many countries, I am just not interesting. My color hasn't been fetishized. Nobody is buying skin cream to look like me. While I certainly haven't gone completely unnoticed, and I have had uncomfortable (sometimes disgusting) moments of sexual harassment, I am for the most part let be.

Of course it's hard to notice the absence of something. I didn't become aware of the privilege of my anonymity, my undesirability, until I ventured out with my fairer friends. The catcalls got worse. The staring became unbearable. The turning heads. The honking cars. It made me cringe.

So this is my ode to the white girls of Ramallah. I don't know if I could endure what you do on a daily basis. I know you don your sunglasses and your earphones and look steely eyed ahead of you. And you stick it out cuz you're tough. Tougher than I am, hiding behind my nondescript looks. :)