'After my trip to Iran, I stopped straightening my hair each morning and waxing my eyebrows each month.'
Body Language is an essay series that speaks to the ongoing conversation about beauty standards around the world—an exploration of where we came from and where we’re headed.
As a first-generation American born to two Iranian immigrants raised in New York City, I grew up thinking about who I was in terms of who I was not. I did not have light skin, or bright eyes, or thin eyebrows. And I was not beautiful, at least, according to my peers. My classmates gawked at the hair above my lip, and the fuzz covering my arms and legs like a second skin. I was called names and mocked for my differences. After 9/11, that fascination turned hateful.
At 16, I traveled back to Tehran with my father for the summer where I’d accepted a job teaching music at an all-girls school. I was convinced I’d finally feel a sense of belonging. But upon my arrival, I was struck by the ways in which contemporary Iranian women had also begun to conform to the Western beauty standards I was hoping to escape. They dyed their hair honey blonde. They made up their faces to emulate eurocentric features.
I saw so much of myself in the women who lived amid this arid landscape. The people I met reminded me that the true spirit of Iran remains in the hospitality and the tradition of, a ritual custom of repeated and persistent offering. But even beyond these sweet traditions, I found that everywhere I looked, from town to village, I found my appearance mirrored back to me in ancient artworks.
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