What’s Under the Surface
Physical differences shouldn’t define anyone
“I notice how people look at me, you know. Me wearing a hijab is the first thing they see in me. But when they see you, they see you for yourself. They get to know you before even asking about your religion. But when they see me, this is the first thing they see. Through their eyes, this is who I am.”
This is what my Iranian friend, Ayda, who has been living in Spain for a few months only, told me the other day regarding her experience in this country.
In one of my last articles, I tried to emphasize the fact that diversity and inclusivity are finally, little by little, making their way into beauty standards. Yet there is also something insensitive with how these new beauty standards are handled, as many of the models finally breaking the rules of socially imposed beauty standards are still, undeniably, being defined by their difference.
As my friend Ayda said, “through their eyes, this is who I am: a Muslim woman”. What is on the surface is what is first seen, and until here, it does make sense. Yet it shouldn’t influence how some people are perceived more than it does for people without a visible difference—and I hate to use that term for this, difference.
There is so much more under the surface that many tend to forget, and most times without even realizing it.
“My Skin Doesn’t Define Me”
Said Winnie Harlow, a Canadian model with vitiligo, a skin condition where some parts of the skin lose their pigment. As she added,
“People have an idea of who I am or what I should stand for, solely based on how I look, or what they’ve heard about me and that’s not necessarily who I am”
I am currently doing a secondment at a hospital as part of my Ph.D., to learn more about the medical aspect of what I am working on. The other day, a young woman, around 30 years old, had a consultation to understand why she was losing her hair. She had round patches of hair missing all over her head. The diagnosis was alopecia areata, an autoimmune condition making her lose her hair.
She was devastated because, like it or not, hair represents a big part of our identity. We allude to or are referred to as “brunette”, “redhead”, “bald guy”. But, what about bald women? How are they seen in many occidental cultures? Well, Michelle Law, an Australian writer with the same condition, spoke from experience when she said,
“Bald women are often depicted as weak, disadvantaged, undesirable”.
It’s easy to let stereotypes or socially imposed thoughts get the upper hand. Isn’t it what many of us do? When seeing a blind person in the street, the fact that they’re blind is the first thing that comes to mind.
When seeing a Muslim woman wearing a burqa in countries where Islam is not the predominant religion, the first thought usually coming is, “she is a Muslim”, as my friend Ayda shared. Yet religion shouldn’t be part of her identity more than it is for anyone, at least not before learning to know her better.
Many times, it all happens unconsciously, and there’s nothing wrong with having these thoughts running through our minds. It’s simply the first thing we see when meeting someone different than the majority. What would be less ok would be to let these thoughts influence our opinion of someone, let them induce bias.
“What helped me through my hardest times was finding out who I am as a person is more than what’s on the surface.” — Diandra Forrest
It can be easy to forget our identity when others label us, even when they don’t realize it.
This goes for any visual difference on someone or physical disability. This leads to people being afraid of showing their true selves and afraid to be who they are because we still live in a world where difference isn’t always most welcome.
And until we all have the guts to show that our differences as persons are actually part of normality, that word will be used in a negative way.
In the words of Oxford Languages, the term difference refers to “a point or way in which people or things are dissimilar”.
Difference is part of you, it’s part of me. It’s part of anyone who made it until here. It may have participated in making us who we are, but, as Diandra Forrest said, “it’s not all of me”.
Difference is good, it’s actually what makes meeting new people fun. Sometimes it is what makes us notice someone in a group, or what makes a conversation interesting.
So why are there still socially accepted differences, and others that are hard to tolerate?
When we learn to let go of —sometimes unconscious— physical-induced bias, maybe then, society will change. Maybe then, people will stop being obsessed with whether they are good-looking, spending hours looking at photos of people meeting society’s definition of beauty, to focus more on being who they really are. And hopefully then, physical appearance will stop taking such big place in society.
