I don’t know who was responsible for the invention or rather, clever rose-colored re-packaging, but the lady’s razor and I have had severe bouts of culture clash. A subject of constant debate and taboos in my household, and a forbidden regime that seemed so part of being lady-like, in the West at least, I’m not really sure what laws disallowed the use of shaving tools for girls in my family.
The very practice of shaving, other than my dad’s morning routine, became a point of discussion for the first time in 5th grade gym class.
“Gross, how can she wear shorts…she has patches all over!”
“OMG, I ran out of shaving cream this morning so it’s sweatpants over stuble”.
The practice was foreign in so many ways, and masculine and improper in all others. So it was locker-room talk that taught me much about grooming during the trying years of puberty, albeit in harsher language.
While my dark-hair and dark-skin could definitely not be spared by hair removing devices, taking a razor to the leg was bad; worst case scenario; a no-no. In my house, old wives tales and myths were abound about the long and lornful path of girls who resorted to razors. While ladies in the East take pride, even obsession with being hair-free and proper, burning hot wax, a couple of strips from discarded jeans, and a few hours in solitude always always always take precedence over the evil shaving kit. My mother insisted on a routine of waxing-despite puberty’s unforgiving toll for bushy haired, olive toned adolescents and despite the fact that my inexperienced and pain sensitive self could only tolerate the first aggravating rip-from-the-root for ten nanoseconds. It wasn’t just convenience that pulled me towards my first razor; it was rebellion. I remember digging into my sister’s secret stash, stuffed perfectly under the bathroom sink. I tried the first run on my arm. So smooth, so soft, so easy! I was sold, what could be so bad about this? Especially when there was no pain! Shaving was finally my domain, after listening to an entire semester’s earful of how I really can’t be seen near the basketball courts without shaving in the morning. Little did I know that these 11 year old girls were training themselves for a long and hard dependency. My skin’s reaction to the razor was visible, and that first rebellious run of the razor was only setting me up for a cycle of: stubble and shave, shave and stubble.
Now in my twenties, I can appreciate the age-old art (yes, I can now call the arduous process of waxing an art) of “natural” hair removal. Even if ripping a layer of dermis and root seems as unnatural as ever, waxing is on the gourmet assortment of salon treatments. It’s an expensive habit, but at least it only breeds a dependency that is less frequent in dosage…. Waxing ladies here will scold me with any indication of razor usage. They curse the technology for reversing my progress in hair removal and let me know that impatient and “cheap” girls opt out for such outcomes. They are usually immigrants who bring real knowledge and technique. Meanwhile, in Pakistan while you are expected to be hairless all over your body, the use of a razor is utterly vulgar and reserved for men only. Some of my female co-workers and I complained about the razor’s inescapable grip over a woman’s routine. When I proposed the idea of waxing, it was brushed of as simultaneously bourgeouis and primitive: not for fine hair and fine skin.
Each side creates their own etiquette for grooming, and perceptions about the other’s unrefined habits. We have techniques and ideals passed down from ages before. I believe it was advertisements in the 50’s that liberated women from the use of water and soap with the introduction of shaving cream. Similarly, recipes for wax concoctions run in every Eastern family I can think of. Neither side willingly wants to cross over to the other, losing their trajectory of what’s proper and right. I’ve criss-crossed from both techniques, adapting as I see fit. The shaving dilemma was one of the first tests to my mother’s expectations as she saw me assimilate into questionable, and foreign cultural traits and abandon tried and trusted ones . I never really picked a side, and the option of opting out completely was nonexistent: How could it be when your are expected to keep appearances in an environment of adopted cultures but rigid beliefs.
Inspired by May’s last post on the question of “I”, I needed to bring out the other “I” that is a persistent theme in questions of my “I”dentity: Improvisation.
We’ve all met How-To people. The type that carry around “How-To” manuals on just about every topic from cleaning to figuring out your ninth moon in Venus….. OK, maybe we’ll stick to the more practical of the manuals that are out there. I, on the other hand, have felt–or been made to feel– foolish for my insistence on improv in most situations. I grew up with a family that improvised at every key turning point, but was made to feel inadequate when Canadian raised kids seemed to have everything so… orderly, so set, so….pedantic. The how-to manuals, if there ever were any in my household, never got read. There’s a reason my mother always said we were like gypsies. You may be envisioning skirt wearing, tambourine strumming people, but I mean to convey the slightly nomadic, make-do, make-shift improvisational side of the Roma. Oh, and we sometimes wore big skirts.
I wrote this passage some time ago and I come back to it often as I see that the grandest improvisateurs I know are always immigrants. Rarely reliant on manuals, directions, courses, or packaged kits, because such inventions are over packaged frills for straight-edge and settled people, not fluid, transcendental, adapting newbies(ish). “We are still building our house on sticky foundation, so we bring our roots with us…or we make use of what we find”. Though admittedly, sometimes it is just simpler and more cost efficient to…keep it simple. Still, how easy it was to relate to Toula`s angst about her dad`s quirky fixation with cure-all Windex in My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
From broken chairs holding open garage doors, to hoarding steel pressure cookers from the Friday Bazaars of Punjab, there`s little room for quick acquisition and bring to heart: waste not want not. History is detailed in the make-shift and resourceful nature of adapting into new places, and I see this in the first generation I`ve been surrounded by, sometimes stiflingly so.
Of course, there is some idealism in the new emigres way of life as they try to adapt. Improvisation is perhaps just a test of time. It seems upward mobility opens up a new world to disposable, quick-fixes. The ways of the old-country, as you learn to make-do with less reliable new world materials that quickly figure into your rush rush life of free ways and instant coffee days, begin to fade, become foreign and slightly repugnant. Status signifies the perfectly assembled toolbox as you begin to order and regulate trivial challenges into methodical and manageable pockets. You are no longer your own builder, in most respects. You’ve managed to learn enough lingo to pawn it off with ease. Improvisation and invention become fading traits, especially in second, third, and fourth generations.
Maybe Improv, and it`s fading relevance make for a good debate on integration, adaptation, or that hot topic of immigrant-youth radicalization. But that`s open for discussion.
