When I was thirteen, I stepped out on a middle school stage in whiteface. I had a background, probably non-speaking part, in our seventh-grade play, an adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby. I was no thespian, but more than anything I wanted to be part of the theater production.
Back then I had some fantasy of finally feeling like I belonged in my mostly white suburban school by way of playing make-believe. But showing up on opening night let me know in no subtle way that I still an other.
Like the rest of the kids in the production, I lined up to have my makeup done. All that was available were shades of nude, which meant pale pink or peach makeup. Stymied by my lack of choices and not yet able to speak up for myself, I let someone smear peach pancake makeup all over my face. That same face I took out on stage for all to see.
I didn’t save any photos from that time in my life.
Recently while doom scrolling, I came across the latest ‘nude’ controversy. Bachelor Nation star Tessa Tookes went shopping for a wedding dress after accepting a proposal on Bachelor in Paradise Canada. The so-called nude cups were free. Brown cups that matched her skin, $200 CAD.
Only after her white fiancé complained on social media did the shop see the error of their ways. This woman is twenty-eight, yet she was facing the same sorts of issues I had well before she was born. To paraphrase Tooke’s fiancé Kirchner, it’s free to be white.
Every time the issue arose in my life, it felt like being black came with the high cost of feeling like an alien in the nation of my birth.
I’ve always hated the moment when someone offered me a Band-Aid only to give me a peachy bandage. At every occasion, I’ve refused. I’d rather bleed out than walk around like I don’t understand the color wheel.
When my son begged for bandages as a mall kid, we went to the store and I searched high and low only settling when I got some animal print that was neutral enough not to scar him in the way I’d been. Yes, I know Band-Aid is finally making ‘Our Tone’ bandages. But 2021 feels like many, many years too late.
In an interview about the breast cups, Tookes talked about all of the slights of her youth from pink pancake makeup (girl, same) to the inability to find color-matching stockings. I was happy to see the demise of stockings. Not only because women were subject to self-destructing undergarments, but also because buying ones that matched my legs was near impossible. There were a few stores in Brooklyn or Manhattan where you might luck out. But in suburban Connecticut, where I lived as a teen, no chance. Tookes’ mother dyed her stockings with teabags. That’s ingenious. Never considered it. I just went bare-legged before it became socially acceptable.
From pink nude bras to so-called beige nude shoes, I’ve avoided it all. Even makeup, the last frontier, has finally caught up. But I’m hard-pressed to hand money over to companies that have only just realized my existence, or more likely my pocketbook. I’ve just gone bare. It served me from my teens until now, and I’m happy to go that way in the future.
Never again will I show my white face (or breasts or legs or scraped skin) to the world.
Aime Austin is the author of the Casey Cort and Nicole Long Series of legal thrillers. She is also the host of the podcast, A Time to Thrill. When she’s not writing crime fiction or interviewing brilliant creators for her podcast, she’s in a yoga pose, knitting, or reading. Aime splits her time between Los Angeles and Budapest. Before turning to writing, Aime practiced family and criminal law in Cleveland, Ohio.
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