Hair And The Length Of My Self-worth

Society sets impossible beauty standards that women sometimes can never unlearn. 

It has been implanted in our thoughts,
That girls have long hair on their heads,
And are frog-like hairless everywhere else

And the hairiest of the lot like me and you
Have been waxing diligently since eighteen or before
With slogans like-
“We shall brave the pain!”
“We shall be girls yet!” proclaimed.

When someone is plucking my upper lip-
Like they are pricking each of my thousand follicles with a needle:
Or dripping hot wax on me and ripping it off,
Like they would RIP off feathers from a dead chicken,

I focus on telling myself-
How one day I shall have to face labor pain;
And then this shall then be nothing in comparison-
(I forget through it all that that I am done-
Had those two kids and c-sections!)

With the beauty parlors laid to rest
By lock-downs and threat of viruses,
I dig up my neighbor’s grandmother’s remedy-
For this nationwide ailment we face,
Turmeric paste that naturally leaves me yellowed everywhere,
And when it’s results are not quick enough,
A tryst with chemical pastes, that makes
The hair that once was a jungle, grow thicker, grow faster,
And then some disasters with blades and cold wax:

That is left halfway.

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Uff!

I bow to those who have managed to knife their tattoos,
Part the shadows to see that hair where(ever) it grows is natural

But, wait!
For all my rants and foot-stomping
At these tribalistic modern beliefs:

I know I shall feel ‘clean’
Only when I have taken off all this hair off-a-me
For I lost the plot, to the brainwashing lot,
Long before I was born with woman parts,

When it was implanted in my thoughts
That girls have long hair on their heads
And are frog-like hairless everywhere else.

First published here.

Image source: Pexels

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