I’ve been meaning to update our blog for a while now, but I just didn’t have the time the last couple weeks. After I got back from Amsterdam, I was in luck for some amazing weather in Brighton all of last week after my first psychology exam, which meant beach all day, everyday. (I’m so dark my mom even called me black when she first saw me). Followed by consecutive end of exam and goodbye parties, my last dubstep/drum and bass gig at concorde 2 with zinc and skream (an amazing night except for the end when the crowd got rowdy, started a mosh pit and pushed me to the side, where a guy picked me up in an attempt to save me from the mob but ended up dropping me and giving me a huge cut on my shin, next to the one I got from drag ball last year), sunrises at the beach, friends who don’t mind dirtying their pants to take tequila shots with me on the beach, more reasons not to leave, nights I don’t remember, my last exam on Saturday (which I took with an empty stomach, worst idea ever because all that I could think of were questions like what I should eat afterward, how I should cook it, and whether I should stop by Falmer bar to get their duck and pork paella, instead of questions such as how do Freud and social cognitive theorists think of unconsciousness differently), and last minute packing, which involved throwing out half my shoes, all of my notes, and drinking all the wine I didn’t want to leave behind.

But there is a story I forgot to tell, and I want to take you back to last Monday to share with you a bit of what I go through because of the way I look. No, because of the way people look at my eyes, the color of my skin, think Asian and nothing more.

After dancing my night away to Zinc and Skream on Saturday, I realized my hair was too long. It came up to my shoulder. I could even tie it in a ponytail. It was too long. So on Monday, I took a day off and went into town to get a haircut at Pee Wee’s hair studio, which was all booked, and I made my way down to Headmaster’s to see if they were looking for hair models because I didn’t want to pay 40 quid for a haircut. They were looking for hair models and had an opening for seven that evening. I was in luck.

I was initially hoping to cut my hair this short.

But after talking to Chelsea over dinner, for some reason, I started picturing a bob in my head. And that’s what I described for my hairdresser when she asked me what I wanted. I decided on an impulse that what I wanted was what she called an asymmetircal A line bob.

Since I was a hair model for a student at the academy, the girl who was to cut my hair was only a student, and there was a professional stylist who gave her advice on where to start, how to cut my hair, and at what angle she should cut it at. She came to check up on us once in a while. As my hair took shape, however, I realized an asymmetrical A line bob wasn’t exactly what I wanted. I didn’t mind it being asymmetrical. I just didn’t want a bob.

“What do you think about making this side shorter?” I asked the professional hair stylist when she came around again to check up on her student. I pointed to the side that was already short, barely half an inch below my ear. “Oh, but it’s going to be shorter when it’s dry,” she said, implying that the length was short enough. That was fine with me as long as it was going to look good. But her next words made me doubt my ears. “And Oriental hair is a pain anyway.”

I stared up at her in surprise. Not even in a malicious way because I was in shock. I didn’t believe that’s what she said. Well, at least I couldn’t believe that’s what she meant. What did that even mean? What was so different about my hair that she differentiated it from everybody else’s, called it Oriental, then proceeded to call it a pain to cut? Was it the black color that made it difficult to cut? And why did she feel the need to point that out? This frustrated questioning only boiled into anger. I sat there in complete silence, not because I didn’t know how to react (I was reacting already), but because even though I was dying to ask her why my hair was a pain to cut, I didn’t want to know. One such comment was enough.

But maybe it was my silence that condoned her words because she didn’t stop there.

“Where are you from?” She asked. “Korea,” I answered.

“Oh I worked with a Korean lady once. Shim. That’s her name.” And she continued on. “You know, Koreans, Japanese, and Chinese people have eyes that are shaped like…” she stopped to squint her eyes and traced the outline with her fingers. “Almond-shaped?” I tried to help her with her word choice. “Yeah, wider!” She was excited I had understood what she meant.

Oh, I understood what she meant. Whether she understood the implications behind her hand gesture is another matter. Again, it was another unnecessary comment that I can’t attribute to anything other than her attempt at trying to be friendly. She was just trying to relate to a person so different from her. But really? The shape of my eyes? That’s all you could think of? A small talk about the weather or about Brighton would have sufficed.

This time, I didn’t know how to respond. She saw my eyes, then she saw my race. She probably thought I must be very different because I looked so different. I wanted to point out how racist she sounded in making those associations, but I didn’t want to irritate someone who had full control over how I was going to look in ten minutes. Plus, she was one hot hairdresser. But just as ignorant as she was attractive. “Yeah, we tend to have smaller eyes,” I said with a smile, which made my eyes even smaller.

Race is a social construct, but I can’t escape it. It’s in my eyes. And apparently it’s in my hair too.

An asymmetrical A line bob. I hate it and love it at the same time. I love it because its a great look but sometimes I hate it because I don’t think it looks good on me. But you know what, I’m going to rock it. And I don’t care if you think my hair is too short, my eyes too small, and my skin too yellow. But I would prefer if you just kept it to yourself.