{"id":59251,"date":"2019-11-19T02:55:15","date_gmt":"2019-11-19T02:55:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=59251"},"modified":"2019-11-19T02:56:38","modified_gmt":"2019-11-19T02:56:38","slug":"the-difficulty-with-asserting-your-beauty-identity-when-youre-mixed-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=59251","title":{"rendered":"The difficulty with asserting your beauty identity when you\u2019re mixed race"},"content":{"rendered":"

The difficulty with asserting your beauty identity when you\u2019re mixed race<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Dazed Beauty<\/a>
\n2019-11-05<\/p>\n

Layla Haidrani<\/strong><\/a>
\nLondon, United Kingdom<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Rachel<\/a>
\n\u00a9<\/sup>Rachel Rumai<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n

We explore the confusion of navigating your personal identity when you have multiple heritages with conflicting beauty standards<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve grappled with the complex relationship between mixed race identity and beauty for a long time. Both my location and my heritage \u2013 I\u2019m half-Lebanese, half-Pakistani \u2013 upheld beauty ideals that were at odds with each other. Looking too overdone would court much derision growing up in North London<\/a>, but this minimalist approach conflicted greatly with Beirut\u2019s<\/a> \u2013 a city I spent most summers a teenager where \u2018more is more\u2019 is the unofficial beauty mantra. Once the plastic surgery capital of the Middle East<\/a>, appearing permanently preened and polished with a face full of make-up isn\u2019t just encouraged, it\u2019s expected \u2013 even if you\u2019re simply loitering in a shopping mall.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d never seen myself reflected in advertisements in the Middle East<\/a>, where heavily groomed women subscribe to traditionally narrow ideas of femininity \u2013 carefully sculpted arched eyebrows, immaculate nails, hairless body, paired with long, sleek black hair \u2013 but that didn\u2019t stop me from trying. In the lead-up to visiting for my holiday, I\u2019d spend hours in beauty salons having head-to-toe treatments including a manicure and pedicure, eyebrow shaping, and a full-body wax. It wasn\u2019t unusual for me to have an entirely separate make-up bag bursting with products. It was trickier when I factored in my Pakistani roots and when I spent time with my Desi<\/a> London<\/a>-based friends, I\u2019d deliberately kohl my eyes and straighten my hair so our differences wouldn\u2019t be glaringly obvious.<\/p>\n

The fluidity of my beauty regime, which shifted according to the spaces I inhabited and the people I was surrounded by, felt stifling, as if there was only one \u2018right\u2019 way to look. This would be further exacerbated by Instagram, where I\u2019d be confronted with dozens of images of what a \u2018normal\u2019 Lebanese or Pakistani girl should look like.<\/p>\n

The term \u2018mixed race\u2019 itself tends to lump people as a monolith, and just as their experiences and heritages can wildly differ, so can their beauty identities. Dr Sarah Gaither<\/a>, an assistant professor at Duke University who studies racial identity and social interactions, says that mixed race people report higher rates of social exclusion than other racial and ethnic groups. \u201cThey\u2019re constantly being questioned about their racial backgrounds and denied their identities and group memberships,\u201d she explains. \u201cThese experiences are known to cause increased levels of stress and depression at times and can be associated with more difficulties in forming a true sense of self and a sense of being an \u2018imposter\u2019.\u201d…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We explore the confusion of navigating your personal identity when you have multiple heritages with conflicting beauty standards<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,125,8,394,10,25],"tags":[30522,30521,850,30523,11816,28038,9692,30524],"class_list":["post-59251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","category-uk","category-women","tag-dazed-beauty","tag-layla-haidrani","tag-london","tag-rachel-rumai","tag-sarah-e-gaither","tag-sarah-elizabeth-gaither","tag-sarah-gaither","tag-zuleika-lebow"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59251"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59255,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59251\/revisions\/59255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}