HEELS

Whenever I peered up at my mom as a child, I was always in awe. Her long hair, heart-shaped lips and poised demeanor made me think she was a princess. I hope I can be like a princess, too, I thought.

But I didn’t have princess-y features like my mom. Instead, I had a boxy figure, broad shoulders, a wide nose, a hairy face, and hairy arms and legs. These features weren’t necessarily feminine, and my social environment made no delay to remind me so.

I cut my hair short in the first grade. My classmates said I looked like a boy, and this pained me. It was quite frustrating because I knew I couldn’t magically grow out the hair on my head to look like a girl again. At the same time, I was dreading how long and noticeable the hair above my lips, on my arms and on my legs was because of questions like “Why are you so hairy?” or “Why do you look like you have a mustache?”

I couldn’t understand why my classmates of ages 6 and 7 were so aware of my cosmetic features, most of which I didn’t even notice until they pointed them out.

By the time I turned 10, I finally processed that I had commenced my relationship with womanhood on the wrong foot. It was time to observe how all the girls and women around me dressed and dress the same. Makeup, jewelry, hair accessories, skirts, dresses and high heels were the common denominators, but I fixated on high heels because of all the movies and cartoons I watched. You’d see the drooling male character’s jaw drop and the camera then pan to a woman walking in high heels.

It seemed that the heels make the woman, so I begged my mom for some high heels. After a few sighs and eye rolls, she gave in and bought me my first pair: some black, one-inch tall heels from Payless.

I was ecstatic to finally become the woman I was meant to be. People would no longer see me as a child — even though I was — and they’d finally take me seriously! I stepped into a family party in my new heels, awaiting the oohs and aahs from my fashionable peers who were not much older than me. I was greeted by them wearing stilettos.

I had done it wrong again.

After that day, I begged my mom to exchange my pair of heels with taller ones. She refused, warning me that I would “snap my ankles” if I wore shoes like those. Infuriated, I whimpered: “You always make me dress like a kid.”

My mom laughed. “Because you are a kid.”

“But the other kids don’t dress like that!”

Without another word, my mom grabbed a random pair of high heels from her closet, dropped them on the ground and gestured to me to put them on.

I put them on, immediately feeling uneasy and uncomfortable.

“Walk,” she muttered.

I walked, which then turned into wobbling, which then turned into limping. I quickly accepted my disdain for high heels, and my mom smirked at my discomfort.

“You still want them?”

“No.”

Comfort, I quickly realized, was most important to me. It still is, only now I get why. Now, I still don’t own a pair of heels taller than one inch. I still have hairy arms (and hairy legs at times), but I’ve found my way with womanhood. I pay less attention to how I look and more to how I feel. Wearing what I want to wear, doing what I want to do and acting the way I want to act was all it took to become the woman I want to be.

My social environment taught me to be close-minded; I believed womanhood was like a small, small shoe box containing high heels. I believed it was about fitting into that one pair of high heels, and if you didn’t fit into them, you weren’t a woman. Being a true woman was never about having the “right” physical features, behaviors and societal roles. It is about finding comfort in the way you express yourself, like my mom did.

I was so used to looking up at my mom that I never remembered to look down and see that she wasn’t wearing heels either — she was a fan of wedges, actually. ZARIN ISMAIL