Taking on My "New Shape"

I was driving on the 405 northbound playing a demo from producer and collaborator, Sean McVerry on repeat. My 2006 Toyota Corolla’s engine rumbled beneath a static signal, words breaking through the occasional radio interference. A woman meekly described the vision she had for herself through the eyes of a man she thought she was in love with.

I tried to fit your gaze
Bleach my hair but it’s too late
Tried to replicate the antiques
in your living room
I went au natural
Quit hiding scars so you’d fall
for a blemished girl
but did I take it too far?

My beauty never stood a chance against hers
My beauty never stood a chance against hers

—

I was driving up from Joshua Tree in the early June heat. The air was warm, my window was partially down, whistling criticisms back at me. “What’s too late?” “How can bleaching your hair be late?” Alex Espinoza’s markings on a manuscript a few summers ago broke through my subconscious, begging me to dig deeper.

True, his living room and the act of bleaching hair was specific to me in the same way a baby’s babble is specific to them. If I had bleached my hair before he met her, I would fit his vision of beauty. But to an outsider listening in, my lyrics were not a language fully formed or understood. I had to drop the early aught songwriting abstractions and allow the image of this time in my life to come through the speakers.

—

When I was 15, I wanted to look like Britney Spears. Not a unique experience, I’m finding. But, for a Mexican American girl with charred brown hair and eyes, the only way she could be seen was if she looked like who everyone else was looking at. And she was not what everyone else looked at. The only way she could be visible was to fit the perception of the mainstream. Her mom would never let her drain her hair of its pigment, let alone its waist-length.

So, when she turned 30, when she fell for a man who looked at women with ivory skin, her impulses came to a head. She bleached every strand until it was silvery––more like what her tias looked like at 60.

—

I was driving in the middle of heartbreak and anger. The man I’d grown to like responded to my admission of being attracted to him like every white guy before him, with a terror to confront that he was not attracted to my features. I could not be grown like granola, my hair would never naturally be honey, and my skin wouldn’t freckle, but would drink the sun and reject the plants white women often flock to when they claim to be of the earth.

No, I was not his granola girl. But why would I write those words in a song? I thought a little deeper about my process of “transformation.” How many shades did my hairstylist say I got through in a single sitting? Seven feels right, a lot more so than relating hair to time. And so, I sang over the demo, forming a new verse and chorus that spoke more about a woman desperate to change so that someone would accept see her, capture her.

I tried to reach your gaze
Bleached my hair seven shades
Tried to replicate golden sweet
Honey (hmmm)
I burned every scar
Singed twenty years of my flaws
For a blurred vision
Did I take it too far? (Hmmm)

Is this really me in the mirror?
My beauty doesn’t reflect hers

—

After bleaching my hair, I got a tattoo on my left shoulder. At 30, I thought was becoming––metamorphosing. Taking on a new shape for a new chapter. Yet, there were nights where I would stare in the mirror, crying at the sight of ink on my skin, at the little silver hairs that hid age and heritage. Was this really who I was becoming?

At some point, being blond was too much work. It took hours sitting in the chair, probably about as long as it feels to a caterpillar cocooning itself to become a butterfly. When I emerged from each hair bleaching session, or highlighting party, only for a moment did I flap my wings in front of the people who had seen me come in with my roots showing.

—

I was driving forty minutes home from my friend’s house that night. Sean’s demo played and played, and I rethought every line as a headlight passed by. More questions, and the deeper I questioned what story I was meant to tell, the more detailed the words became. A reverse bleaching, a revealing of my truth.

In my mind, the narrator is speaking to many “yous.” She’s speaking to the men who told her her beauty was not worthy of his affection, and to the self who naively believed in that lie––who let herself kill a part of her that is truly unique and rare.

—

I was parking when I realized the power of revision once more. How beautiful it is to have a new set of eyes to review yourself, the story you write about your life and the versions of yourself that you share with the world.

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