One
of those uncomfortable “trying to be more American” items I can happily add to
my list of Things I Will Teach My
Daughters is, “Shave armpit hair upon puberty.”
I
didn’t have a lot of non-immigrant Asian friends. The only one I did have could never understand my
family background and upbringing. In
sixth grade, she invited me to stay for dinner at her house as we finished up a
school project. I was shocked. It was unheard of to not eat with your own
family for dinner. We might not have
sung songs together as a family in the car on roadtrips or embraced in family
group hugs, but we did eat dinner together every single night at the table
without any distractions except each other.
I was intimidated at first, but I asked my mom anyway, chances are she’d
say yes since the school project would commence after dinner. Plus, she was impressed with my friend
because her dad was a surgeon general and they all spoke perfect English
without accents. We barely knew any
doctors though we knew many parents who expected their children to grow up and
become doctors, so this was a good and impressive relationship to have. My mom agreed.
When
it was time for dinner, I half expected us to gather around a large table, hold
hands, and bow our heads in grace like I had seen the white people do on
television. I was sorely disappointed
when I realized their family didn’t even eat dinner together at the table much. Her mom had prepared dinner and was upstairs
somewhere, her dad was still working, her sister was with a friend around the
house, and the two of us sat with our dinner and the TV on. The television! In our household, my mom had strict rules
about television watching. It was
prohibited from Monday through Friday morning.
Once school was out Friday, I was glued to the television until 11 PM. I’d record Saturday morning shows and cartoons
while I was at Chinese school, watch it in the afternoon, and continue my
television binging on Sunday. So here at
my friend’s home, watching television on a school night as we ate dinner was
unbelievable. I couldn’t flipping
believe it. What a life she had! Then she offered me dessert. In our family, dessert was normally some
fruit and we rarely had real sweets like American cookies or cake. We went out a lot for Thrifty ice cream,
especially since it was next door to a coin laundry we used a lot when I was
younger, but that was the extent of our dessert experience. It wasn’t anyone’s birthday, it wasn’t a dim
sum morning either (so many sweets like egg tarts and mango pudding at dim
sum!), so the idea of having dessert like the characters on television shows I
binged off of and lived vicariously through on the weekend, was absolutely
glorious.
It
was really fun to have an Americanized friend.
And if it weren’t for her, I might still be walking around with a lot, and I mean a LOT, of armpit hair.
We were in the sixth grade and during class one day, I raised my hand to answer a
question. I was wearing a black and beige knit tank top with black cotton shorts. It was one of my "cooler" and American outfits we had gotten at Ross, not some hand me down from Taiwan. My friend gave me a look, one I
thought meant you have the wrong answer
but I’d later learn at lunch that it was a look intended to say, What the freak is that under your arms?
At lunch, she had to explain it to me in detail, and I tried my best to feign indifference instead of ignorance as she asked me about my armpit hair. I think she knew I was clueless, but the little bit of pride I still had clung on to the fact that it just didn't matter to me, but perhaps it should. I was grateful for her advice, but also mortified. Had anyone else seen? It was as if everyone was suddenly whispering and pointing fingers at my hairy armpits. I grew smaller form the mere thought of it... I was absolutely mortified. Also.. I was mad. Why didn't I know?!
My
mom had no idea when I came home with the news. For the first time in my life, I was
embarrassed by my mother’s lack of knowledge and American pop culture. I resented the Chinese soap operas we watched
together and all the rice we ate every night.
How could she let me be the pit of everyone’s jokes? Why didn’t she know I was supposed to shave
my pits? What else was I completely
clueless about because my mother was an immigrant?!
To
make matters worse, she told me I couldn't shave. There
was nothing wrong with me, armpit hair was natural. She even showed me hers, and then said, "see, it's normal to leave it long." Is it Mom?! Is it?! I'm not sure! Until today, I didn't know any different. For a second, I thought maybe she was right, but I couldn't shake the lecture I had received at lunch, the over emphasis at how wrong it was to have armpit hair and how necessary it was for me to shave it immediately. They made it seem like it was a diseased thing I had to get antibiotics for asap. I might have only been 11 years old, but I sensed they may have been onto something. At the same time, I wanted my mom to be on board, I had to have her on board, there was this sinking feeling that if she wasn't in agreement with me, I would always be bothered.
I argued with her. In many ways, the difficult of being the immigrant child helped me develop a lot of the negotiation skills I still carry with me today. Silver lining, eh?
“Asians like us don’t needing to shave,” she told me. “We don’t having
lots of hair.”
My sad eleven year old puberty infested armpits claimed
otherwise. Though I had started applying Teen Spirit the summer before the sixth grade, thinking I was so American and using the brands just like I had seen in Seventeen magazine (years more mature than me!), I missed the memo on a clean armpit free of hair first.
I persisted. I begged. I reasoned. I told her I’d come home with straight A+s
instead of just As. I told her I’d start
tennis since she had been bugging me about it since Michael Chang became a thing. The violin I quit a few years ago? I’ll pick it back up! Anything to shave my armpit hair!
She didn't believe me and she couldn't be bribed, nor would she even listen to me. A few times, I paused, afraid she might raise her hand and grab the rubber slippers and lay one on my butt. I'd continue once I knew she wasn't about to hit me. The struggle was also within me. Part of me wanted to be the obedient good Chinese daughter that always received praise from the elders, but part of me just couldn't patiently obey anymore. I didn't want to be laughed at. I didn't want to be the fobby girl that didn't know any better. I wanted to be cool. I wanted to fit in. I wanted to be American!!
“What’s
next? Your legs too?” she asked me. “No, never,” I told her. “Good, because it’s forbidden and any good
Chinese daughter not shaving her legs!” she said very clearly with a tone of
doom if I ever chose to disobey her.
I
knew my mom would never concede to shaving my legs, but there was some hope
with the armpit. It would just take some
time.
There’s
this weird Chinese superstition that shaving a baby’s head at one month will
guarantee a full head of hair. All my
Chinese girl cousins had the same buzzed hair before we were one. That same logic was applied to the fact that
shaving my armpit or legs meant more hair would come back in its place. It took me a week of begging and refusing to wear tank tops to school, but I remember it felt like an eternity. She
finally relented and told me I would be allowed to shave my armpits, but only
if I conceded to using my dad’s shaving cream and razor with the caveat that if she ever found out I shaved my legs, she would hit me until I died (a phrase often used by Chinese parenting, not meant to be literal, it makes us all respond accordingly). #thestrugglewasreal
Tears
streamed down my face as I used my father’s Barbisal and blue hand held razor
for the first time. I remember staring
at the mirror, not quite sure how to do it and wishing I had someone to
ask. I told myself then and there, I’d
teach my daughter how to shave her armpit hair when the day came. This would never happen to my child. I would
always be supportive of her desire to shave armpit hair. Always.
It's a funny story when I look back at it now, but at the time, the emotions were a lot more raw and real. I know my mom still has some influence on me, especially since years later, I've still only shaved my legs about 20 times my entire life. To be honest, it's because the hair is so light and thin, nothing at all like my armpit which would endure surgery to remove a cyst, multiple ingrown hairs, and three even four follicles of hair in a pore. The doc who removed my cyst told me I should never shave my armpits (guess mommy dearest was right), but instead have it waxed or professionally removed by lasers. Yes.. it's that bad. Perhaps that's also why it was such a big deal when my friend saw my armpit full of hair back then. I suppose my other immigrant child friends never had any issue because their armpits always had light typical Asian hair, light and hard to see, much like the ones on my legs.
I often wonder why I never asked my likeminded immigrant child friends about their armpits. I think it's because I was too embarrassed. I asked my BFF once about how she knew to shave her pits and legs. She learned from the magazine ads in YM and Seventeen which seemed to convey it was necessary, and she also can't remember her mom shaving. In fact, she's pretty sure she never told her mom she was shaving, if she did, her mom probably would have forbidden her to do it. She's Korean though, so maybe it's an Asian immigrant child thing. Who knows.
No comments:
Post a Comment