Upon entering my first year of university, not knowing virtually anyone in a city five hours away from home, I found myself flooded with confusion about my own identity. Although I initially believed that I wouldn’t struggle with my Black identity due to the Black student body on campus, I quickly realized I was mistaken. The swarms of micro-aggressions during the initial weeks of school only made me feel smaller.
As a Black woman, it’s common for us to feel masculinized, pushing my desire to assimilate into others’ expectations. I got lash extensions regularly, not to upgrade my appearance, but to make myself more palatable and feminine to my non-Black peers.
By the second week of school, fearing how others might perceive me without my lashes, I booked a ticket home for a lash refill. Yes, it might sound stupid, but growing up around white people and continuing to be around them instilled a need to please them at all times. When I returned with my lashes, compliments followed, but one comment stood out. Sitting next to a white friend in an Intro to Sociology class, she asked if I got my lashes done. I told her yes, to which she responded: “They look good, you don’t look ratchet anymore.” I didn’t know how to respond, she was my friend at the time and no Black person was there to come to my defense. In the end, I laughed, questioning if conforming to white perceptions was my sole purpose, and whether I should remain silent or risk being labeled sensitive.
The irony struck me – the fear of being seen without a full set of lashes was reinforced by a comment containing the word “ratchet”. What does ratchet imply? Someone with no class? Now, I felt an insistent need to cover up, booking more lash extension appointments and hiding my natural hair in fear of the perception of others. My only function in school seemed to be fitting into the mould of what I believed my white friends wanted. I wanted to run away from the label “ratchet”.
I constantly compared myself to others, wondering if they also harboured this fear. It became a daily dilemma, a monster under my bed throughout the first semester. It wasn’t until I connected with a community of Black individuals that I realized there are numerous definitions of Blackness. A crucial lesson from that comment was that none of these definitions needed to conform to the palatability of white people. My identity is not defined by the preferences of white people. While I still wear lashes, I do so for my own happiness, a realization I overlooked from the start. Maybe I am ratchet, wearing my $15 Amazon lash clusters, but hey, I’m still cute!