"Some weekends growing up, while other girls would finally make time to idly paint their nails or sit..."

“Some weekends growing up, while other girls would finally make time to idly paint their nails or sit with a pore-purifying face mask on, I would sit on my parents’ couch with clothespins, up to three at a time, clipped to my nose, waiting. It was my “treatment”; after ten or 15 minutes spent repositioning the clothespins when one spot became too tender, I would emerge feeling like the painful wooden prongs digging into my skin had done…something. The placebo effect was wonderful for me. I would attempt to measure my progress and delude myself into thinking that the logic in this was as sound as braces for bucked teeth. (I needed those, too.)



For the most part, I attempted to partake in the rituals of girlhood like there was nothing different between me and the white girls who lined the bathroom between classes, smearing on far too much eyeliner. But sticking clothespins on my face wasn’t something we could all talk about, laugh about, or share techniques for. It was a beauty ritual that I did alone, underscoring difference and the allure of eliminating it. This came with a pang similar to the one I would get when a friend would put her glaringly white arm up to mine and marvel at the progress of her voluntary tan. (“I’m almost your color!”) All girls “become flesh,” Simone De Beauvoir writes in The Second Sex, but then there are some who are never let to forget that this flesh is brown.”

- I Feel Bad About My Nose