One in Five

In ballet class, I was an outcast. The teachers glanced down with disdain at my baby feet, which didn’t match the nude of the slippers. The other, paler girls separated from me like I was the star of the dance circle (I wasn’t). I remember standing in a row before the mirrors; us toddlers were uniform in height, posture (backs straight!), and outfits. But there remained a brown blemish where I stood, a little shorter than the others, a little bolder. Despite my fiery personality, I still felt like a mistake; I wanted to mitigate my presence. I thought of shrinking down beneath the mirror’s line of sight or returning to my mother’s calming arms. But the way Mom looked through the window, always seated in the center chair so that she could have the best view, made me stare down that blemish in the mirror. Because how could I avert my eyes when my mother looked at the blemish with such love?

My mom and I after my first (and last) ballet performance. I probably wanted a cupcake in this photo.

After every lesson, my mother would hold my hand as we walked across the parking lot to a cupcake store–her method of cheering me up after a long day of exile. 

“Mommy, why don’t they like me?” I don’t remember asking, but the words sat heavy on my tongue. She hesitated, flashing her eyes down; she wanted to see whether I was upset or puzzled.

“Maybe they’re just shy, Priyamol. You need to get them out of their shells.” The door to the bakery jingled as I sighed. “But Mommy, I’ve tried.” I recounted all my expressions of love. The attempted hugs, the swatted-away kisses, the failed ice breakers (“What’s your favorite color? Mine’s purple.”). Even at that age, I realized that it was not hesitance that exiled me, but an outward rejection of my efforts. But on what basis did they reject me? 

It took me a few more classes to connect the dots. It was line-up time again; we stood in our row. The girls took turns jumping forward, leaping and spinning, but I was last in line this time. I took the liberty of spacing out and stared at my mother, my pretty mother. Hair so shiny, lips so red, skin so… white. So, so pale, almost like the moon. In about a year’s time, the police would ticket her; they’d write her up as Caucasian. We looked almost nothing alike, save for our eyes and teeth. Color rushed into my cheeks. There it was, the truth staring me in the face. I really was the mistake, the blemish. Neither her nor my sister were this dark; only my father and brother were. Was I a boy? Had I really been this confused for so long? But if I were a boy, how come I felt so drawn to ballet, pink, and flowers; how come I thought of Michael from school as more than a friend? (I wasn’t aware that concepts like femininity and sexuality were not constrained to the two sexes at four years old. I know better now.) 

The face of someone who’s had her cupcake.

This ill-fated ballet course was the beginning of my color-consciousness and, by extension, the questioning of my own femininity. I went through phases of hyperfemininity and attempted masculinity; neither felt right, because I engaged in both phases attempting to justify my existence as a brown girl. I was either so feminine that my skin color couldn’t raise questions, or I was trying to be masculine so that I could fit somewhere–I was never particularly small or thin, so no one questioned this. But neither extreme felt right, and now, settled in a calm femininity, I wish someone would’ve told me this: Femininity is not about how good you look in pink, or how tiny you are, or how well your skin tone blends to your ballet slippers. Femininity is whatever we decide it is–what women, as a collective group, accept, represent, and perpetuate. It is not a mold we must fit ourselves to–it is something we create. It is a fluid concept. What is now considered feminine doesn’t have to be constrained by the standards of generations past. We’re in a new era, a new generation that is less limited than ever–let’s do something with the freedom we’ve been granted, and make some major changes to the concept of femininity. I hope that we can remake this term so that little brown girls like me don’t ever have to question whether they “fit the mold”, but rather can consider whether femininity feels best for them. 

All love,

Priya Antony | One in Five

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Priyanka Antony, 16-18, John Burroughs School