by Anita Rani
Katie’s caravan was pretty posh. A lot of girls at my school were quite well-to-do, you had to be to afford the school fees, so most of their stuff seemed posh to me. The caravan seemed really flashy and came with an extra attachment, an awning which became the bedroom for Katie and me, with a fold-out camp bed each, sleeping bags, tons of boiled sweets: pear drops, pineapple squares and my all-time number one chewie confectionery – my dentist’s nemesis – Black Jacks. We’d also packed the all-important cassette player, so we could practise our dance routines to New Kids on the Block.
My brief but utterly devoted boyband crush was NKOTB. My Swatch watch was even set to EST, GMT-5 so me and the lads were always in the same time zone: Boston, Massachusetts. Katie and I could spend hours in our little imaginations dreaming of our future lives with them. Katie was getting married to Joey and I was joining the band in some capacity, to go on tour with them, to travel the world, sometimes get called on to join a routine. Even though Jordan Knight had many adult girlfriends, I was his favourite girl, his best friend. And yes, I loved him more than any of the other girls, but there was the slight problem that I was only 12. At 12, I really didn’t want any kind of relationship, not even in my head. I was a proud and happy late developer. I liked my life simple. I did not want boys to mess up the equation.
Talk of boyfriends and relationships was also such a taboo in my house. Even as a joke, boys were no laughing matter. But my parents didn’t need to worry about me, not yet anyway. I didn’t want to grow up. I liked being a kid. I had no desire to wear Mum’s high heels or lipsticks, I didn’t want to look older than I was, not until later, when my motivation was solely to buy alcohol from the offy without getting ID-ed! I didn’t want to draw attention to myself, I didn’t want male attention. I found being a little girl so difficult and unfair at times that I often wished I was a boy.
Katie and I made friends with other kids on that holiday, and I experienced my first camping shower: put 50p into the slot for hot water and you’d better wash quick before the money runs out. Obviously with hair down to my bum, 50p’s worth of water ain’t going to suffice. I had head full of shampoo and had to scream for Katie to put more money in. I popped my head out to show her and we both found this very funny. I liked making Katie laugh, I liked making people laugh, usually by doing something silly.5
The best part of the campsite was the outdoor swimming pool and we couldn’t wait to get in there. I’d packed my swimming costume and I was ready for my classic British holiday. But my body had other plans, period plans – big bloody, you’re 12 years old on holiday with a friend and you are going to have your second ever period, plans. I hadn’t even talked about periods with Katie – she hadn’t started hers yet and here I was, totally not prepared and too shy to tell anyone.
What the hell was I going to do? First, deal with my dignity and the soggy issue in my pants. I needed to improvise and fast, so toilet roll it was, wrapped around my hand a few thousand times – that was my solution for the rest of the week. Rolls and rolls of campsite toilet roll, the cheapest, scratchiest bog roll you can get. All the kids were in the pool, splashing and laughing and having fun. I feigned illness. Katie’s mum kept asking what the matter was but I just said I wasn’t feeling well and was happy to sit on the sun lounger, fully clothed, watching the other kids play. Katie’s mum was lovely and God knows what she thought, maybe that it was against my religion to swim! It probably is against it if you’re on your period . . . The strange little Indian girl who won’t wear a swimsuit! I still couldn’t bring myself to just say I was having my period. I was cripplingly embarrassed, so the secret has stayed with me until now. I went home with a terrible case of cystitis and a tan. Both of which were a problem. Thank God I didn’t have to worry about shaving my legs as well. That fun was just around the corner.
* * *
My period was just the beginning of my bodily changes, but at least no one could see it happening. The other nightmare I had to deal with was hair. More specifically, hair removal.
There’s no way I can have a chapter about puberty (still feels awkward saying it) without talking about hair. For most girls on the planet, becoming a teenager means having to deal with periods, growing boobs, the odd zit or possibly the hell of acne. Asian girls also have to contend with getting a full-grown moustache. A black-hair line of soft fuzz on your upper lip. Like Clark Gable, Freddie Mercury, Tom Selleck, Borat. Not a good look on a 14-year-old girl. Come on, you all remember the Asian girl at school with her hair scraped back into a long plait and the moustache. You might have even taken the piss out of her, or secretly fancied her?
Light brown skin and jet-black hair, all over your body. And so much of the sodding stuff. It’s always been there, but before it was just a cute downy dusting of fluff all over your soft baby body. Now you’ve become a teenager, your hormones are raging and the hair has mutated into a coarse, thick, stubborn mat. It’s your worst enemy, living on your body. And it all coincides at the same point you begin to notice boys and all they can see is your moustache. Maybe this is why some Punjabi parents don’t let their daughters remove the hair from their bodies for years – they see it as a natural male repulsion method. It’s the ultimate cruelty! Give your daughters a break. It’s tough enough being the brown kid who doesn’t fit in, without also being the yeti in the corner of the room.
This is where my mum flourished as the liberal, progressive, open-minded mum she prides herself on being, because hair is Mum’s specialist subject and she has a lifetime’s worth of wisdom to impart and impose on her beast of a daughter. This is Beauty. And NOTHING matters more than beauty, remember? Beauty is a must, it’s what you will be judged on forever. This is Beauty with an Indian mumma twist – the first thing I was handed was a box of Jolen face bleach. Yes, you read that right, bleach. This stuff lightens the hair on your face so it’s no longer black but, depending on how long you leave it on your face, it develops into red, light brown or blonde and, in theory, blends in to match your skin tone. The night before weddings, it’s a ritual for all girls to mix up a giant batch and cover their faces in the thick white cream, eyes streaming from the hydrogen peroxide. Before I learned to do it myself, my mum would slather on tons of the stuff so my hairline would also go light brown.
Face bleach is the most straightforward method of disappearing unwanted dark hair. There are so many other ways of hair removal and I’ve tried them all. Bleach, wax, shave, pluck, tweeze, singe, sugar, thread, electric shocks to the core of each facial hair follicle, rolling metal cups up and down my arms. Every technique painfully attempted with varying degrees of success. And it takes years. Years of pain, misery and humiliation before you get on top of it, before we become masters of depilatory and disguise and, by that point, in your forties, your hair has started to fade away naturally, all apart from the odd stubborn one on your chin. In my case, the invention of laser technology and spending a small fortune changed my life and the smoothness of my legs forever. But that came later, much later, when I was living my best life in London.
I’m currently still a clueless, hairy mess in Bradford, now studying for her A-levels and about to go on a week-long cottage break in North Yorkshire with a load of friends. My crew of misfits from school and an equally oddball bunch of boys from the boys’ school. It took me and my closest girl mates longer than the rest of our year, but we found a gang of lads, equally nerdy, (they’d never admit to the nerdy bit) to hang out with. My parents knew them, liked them and, most importantly, trusted them, so they didn’t have an issue with us all heading off for a break together. I was well aware that my social life was completely different from a lot of my Asian girl mates – I had one, for starters. This was partly to do with my parents being more liberal and open-minded than other, more strict, Asian parents and partly because I was allowed to do what my white friends did . . . to a point. Plus, they trusted me.
I loved my little collection of girl friends at school. We called ourselves ‘the freaks’
: Jo, Rob, Al and Rach. A self-excluding, creative bunch of independent thinkers who enjoyed being on the outside looking in. None of us fancied conforming at school, we didn’t know how. Our fashion sense was free and wild and definitely not the uniform clothes everyone else seemed to wear, or what one might be described as ‘fashionable’. This lot, my lot, were one-offs. We bonded over our love of music and Keanu Reeves and watching Bottom. We could spend hours trying to do Ade Edmondson impressions and quoting lines from My Own Private Idaho. My friends were The Good Girls. Kind and thoughtful, productive, whip-smart and clever, proud to be clever. They didn’t judge me or make me feel different.
Mum booked me in for a leg wax a week before the trip, at Aunty Bubbly’s Beauty Parlour. Aunty Bubbly had a beautician’s shop but I’m not sure she had the required beauty qualification. She loved nothing more than inviting Mum over on a Friday afternoon to sit in the back room of her little shop and crack open a bottle of red. Dad had been called in, on a couple of occasions, to collect my slightly worse-for-wear mother. Mum never drank as a young ’un, she started later in life, just on the odd occasion, but she’s not equipped with the ‘handling of drink’ gene, nor the ‘remember it’s not fruit juice’ gene. Her style is: back it, giggle, puke, sleep. The puke has been in plant pots at garden parties, at a fancy dinner in Dublin and once in the back of Dad’s car. We all find this very funny and kinda sweet. I’ve got no room to judge. Like mother like daughter, I’ve been there a few times.
Picture this, please, my leg wax has begun: wax pasted on, try to rip, gets stuck halfway. Several attempts later, skin is getting tugged harder and harder. Not all the hair is removed so the process must be repeated, skin is red raw. This. Is. Torture. Just when I think it can’t get any worse, Bubbly Aunty suggests I should get my bikini line done while I’m there. Mum thinks this is a great idea. I’m still trying not to focus on the stinging sensation on my legs and before I can throw myself off the torture bed to escape, Bubbly Aunty is coming at me with a wooden spatula dripping in hot wax. On it goes. I’m nervous as hell. I’ve never had a bikini wax before, I’m not sure Bubbly Aunty has ever done a bikini wax before and to make matters worse, I think she’d already begun her afternoon wine party. Next comes the strip of material, smoothed down over the wax, which should be swiftly ripped off, taking the hair away from the follicle and leaving smooth skin behind. Only Bubbly Aunty tugs the wax strip hard and not fast so nothing happens, apart from the most excruciating pain I’ve ever experienced. The wax strip is stuck to my pubic hair. A few more failed tugs, now I’m screaming. Mum and Bubbly Aunty take a break to think of what to do. Maybe another sip of red while they’re there. They come back with scissors. It’s a nightmare. They manage to cut off the strip and leave a ton of wax behind. ‘Should I even it out and try the other side?’ NOOOOOOO. At least my legs are smooth and ready for my holiday. Even if I’m walking with a limp.
The cottage was in the middle of nowhere in stunning North Yorkshire and properly rustic, a mile away from the nearest pub (Tan Yarn, also the highest pub in the country). Behind us was a valley and across the road in front of us was a very inviting hill. We cooked a giant Indian feast, chicken curry, aloo gobi for the veggies. All my girl mates and I had been veggie for years after discovering Meat Is Murder by The Smiths. We were a resourceful bunch at 17. We’d bought all the ingredients we needed to cook and together we made pilau rice with cumin and peas and we even made chapattis. The Fugees’ classic album, The Score, was on repeat, the weather was sunny and spectacular. We crammed around the dining table to eat our feast, all ten of us. A couple of the girls – the ones who got most of the male attention – started a food fight by chucking peas around. This annoyed those of us who didn’t get the same male attention because we didn’t have time for it and didn’t really know how to play the subtle, confusing and ridiculous game of ‘be a little bit stupid around the boys and they’ll like you’. My mates were the hyper-bright, nerdy girls and trying to impress teenage boys just wasn’t a game they were capable of. It’s heartbreaking and humiliating, if fluttering your eyelashes at the lads doesn’t come naturally. It makes me sick to my stomach thinking about it. I opted out early and decided being one of the lads was preferable to being fancied by them.
The only way to get everyone on the same page was a post-dinner drinking game. What British teenagers learn to do as a rite of passage to lose their inhibitions! What is it with teenagers and shots? Out came the sambuca. Error number 1. Teenagers and sambuca, anyone and sambuca, is never going to end well. I make my friends laugh and I love it when they laugh. Another shot, followed by another. And then the inevitable: the aloo gobi and pilau rice want to projectile right back out of the gullet they went down. I had to bust open the old wooden toilet door, while Robyn was still on the toilet, to throw up. I was put to bed. I woke up super early, still pissed, and saw that a few of the hardcore fun bunch still hadn’t gone to bed and were crossing the road to climb the hill. I grabbed a jumper and ran out to join them.
‘Ahh, Anita, you stink of sick!’ they all laughed and so did I. The sun was beginning to rise and we couldn’t stop laughing. Up we climbed, stumbling, giggling, free and drunk, and luckily I’d thrown up and slept it off a bit so I felt invincible. It was like a scene from a movie! We got to the top of the hill in time to watch the sunrise, The Fugees still ringing in our ears. This was teenage bliss. Awkward, hungover, sicky-smelling, teenage bliss. Watching the sunrise is when I always feel at my most peaceful. ‘Let’s take a picnic down to the river and have a swim today,’ someone suggested . . .
Thanks for this sweet little detour, Anita, but what on earth has any of this got to do with hair?
It had been just over a week since the Bubbly Aunty torture session and my leg hairs had started to grow back, just under the skin. The sane and safe thing to have done would be to have left my legs alone or exfoliate them to help the hairs grow through the epidermis. What came next was a major mistake and a scene from a slasher movie. The last thing on earth to do in this situation is to take a razor to your legs. Which is, of course, precisely what I decided to do. And I butchered them. The skin came off along with the hairs and I had blood running down both legs. I was distraught at the massacre-like scene. First came the shock and panic at the pain and blood, followed by that sinking feeling, that once again, I’d be fully clothed not having fun. Another holiday ruined by blood. Everyone else went swimming in the river on that beautiful hot day. I sat on the side preparing the picnic, too embarrassed to tell them why I couldn’t swim. Because being an Asian girl means something as simple as going for a swim is never that simple.
My blonde friends were all laughing with carefree abandon, their hair barely visible. They didn’t even have to bother with shaving because slightly hairy blonde thighs are delightful. I wish I could go back and say to myself: GET OUT THERE WITH YOUR FRIENDS! YOU ARE NOT BOTHERED ABOUT THE BOYS ANYWAY.
Back to beauty, because some hair for Indian women is essential to beauty – the stuff that sprouts from your scalp. Long, flowing, luscious locks all the way down your back, moving like waves and glistening in the sun. I couldn’t wait to chop mine off, but cutting my hair was a big no. My long hair was lovely, shiny, silky and down to my bum. And I hated it. When I had it, it was usually scraped back off my face and pulled into a thick, tight plait. Until I was 18! It was hardly ever worn long and flowing, only at weddings and parties, and even that wasn’t straightforward. At 16, I was approached by an ‘uncle’, someone I’d known my entire life, who felt the need to compliment me on my beautiful long hair. He told me what a fine young woman I’d grown into, what a wonderful girlfriend I could make for someone. Such a skin-crawlingly strange comment and totally inappropriate. I always knew he was dodgy; I couldn’t wait to chop my hair off after that.
I wouldn’t have minded it so much if I was allowed to trim it straight, so I was determined to do a bit of secret cutting in the bathroom. To see the bottom of my hair in the mirrored bathroom cab
inet, I had to stand on the toilet. Of course, looking over your shoulder into a mirror to try and cut your own hair is never going to be straightforward, or straight, for that matter. I’d taken to secretly trimming away at the ends from time to time but, on one particular day, after the gross pervert ‘uncle’ incident, I decided to really go for it and the scissors travelled from my bum to halfway up my back and slice. I cut. Down it fell. At least five inches of my hair lying on the bathroom floor. I knew I was going to be in trouble. I panicked and decided the best thing would be to cut less on the other side. Down fell about two inches. Now I’d done it. I was going to be in so much trouble plus what was supposed to be a straight line was a little off . . . by about four inches. It was about four different lengths. I went down sheepishly to show Mum and Dad. Mum gave me a big thwack on my back: ‘What have you done?!’
They were fuming. I was sent to bed and my punishment was that I had to keep it at different lengths, my mum wasn’t going to even it out for me. Thankfully, someone at school did it for me but I was so frustrated by my stupid long hair. I felt it was keeping me from truly being me. Mum made a pact with me. As soon as I finished my A-Levels, I was allowed to cut it.
Guess where I went the afternoon of my last A-Level exam? Straight down to Toni & Guy in Bradford city centre. I felt like Rachel Greene from friends.
* * *
The secret code of silence around puberty in my family was so effective, so deep-rooted, so entrenched in ‘we do things this way’, that we didn’t even think to question it – we were too scared. Scared of what, though? What dawns on me now is that none of us were even aware of what the repercussions would be if we were to break the silence. Even writing this now, in my flippin’ forties, I’m wracking my brain to understand what would have happened if I’d talked about any of it to someone – other girls, other women. If I’d somehow managed to fight the stigma and openly discussed or maybe even asked a question about what was happening to me. I can’t, for the life of me, think what anyone else would have done.
