Wahid's Words

Hey ya'll! A while back, I made this post, that explores, very briefly, the dilemma that exists between conversing from the point of view of a person who has had significant exposure to the myriad of possible identities in the world and bringing this information to conversations with people who have grown up in an ethnically and linguistically homogeneous society. One of the topics I touched on was the idea that fair skin is a precursor to a truly beautiful woman, in the eyes of the everyday Bangladeshi. This paragraph started a conversation between myself and a dear friend. At my urging, she decided to write a response to the post. As a woman of color, this friend is much better equipped and adept at talking about this unique struggle of the vain pursuit of "achieving" beauty —  aka fair-skin. Without more rambling from me, here is this beautifully raw piece of writing. Hopefully you leave understanding her struggle —  as well as the struggle of many Southe...

Imagine me in a program put together for my building, sitting at a desk in front of the elevators, giving instructions to everyone entering that we have candy on the first 4 floors of the building, and they should get a goodie-bag and go Trick-or-Treat with Terrace (my building). Taylor Swift comes on, I'm lip-syncing with my best friends, stopping when new people come in to pester them about the event. Then, Rihanna, and I've abandoned my position at the desk and am dancing in the lobby by myself, letting everyone else take care of instructing the flustered-yet-entertained residents. Now you're probably going, "why am I imagining this? I've already seen this happen in real life. You practically do this all the freaking time it's so annoying I don't want to imagine this scenario any more." Fair. So lets go back to this summer. This same me, this person that's singing and dancing and being boisterous in front of at least hundreds of strang...

At the conclusion of training for HGRs/RAs, they took us to a closing ceremony followed by a barbecue. They provided a 4-sided black board and many colored chalks. On each side, the same prompt: "Before I graduate, I would like to ____." Everyone took a chalk, filled something in, smiled as they read the various things written (my favorite? "Find BAE." I feel). But as I stood there, electric blue chalk in my hand, members of my staff looking on urging me to write something so we could leave the heat, I was blank. I literally had nothing to put on that board. I could go generic, talk about finding love, boosting my GPA, finding a great internship, become fit, all of that jazz that ya'll probably associate with me and the likes. But as I stood there thinking, what did I really want to accomplish for myself? Something that's unique to me, that I can check off my list and go "I did that and the reason I did that wasn't because it was expected or...

Blue button-down. Grey dress pants. Black belt and shoes. The shoes- sparkling clean. Nobody would've known where he'd had to walk from to avoid the chauffeur from telling his parents. Red skirt, big black shades, white halter top and electric blue pumps. She's just your typical girl-next-door with a no-bullshit attitude to add some flair to her character. An orange towel, hanging from the balcony of a 34 story tall apartment complex that's still in the process of being built. A family, perfectly well placed in a society that is all too obsessed with perfection. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ There are wails coming from the nursery decorated with a motif of a terrifying yet friendly bright-yellow lion. The dueling couple inside the duplex couldn't care less. Pieces of a transparent vase scatter the floor, husband and mistress carefully avoiding the big pieces while hurling insults at each other suitable only for the streets. Illusion...

Okay. That title sounds extremely pompous and glorifying. For the purposes of this post, my version of worldly defines a person that has spent a significant amount of time living in 2 different countries with different customs, as well as having mixed with multiple echelons of society and spent a great deal of time reading up, be it novels or news-related mumbo-jumbo. I think I fit into this category. Now that that ramble is over, let's get to the point of this post (the point is not to define worldly, if you hadn't guessed yet). After spending all of high school in the fairly progressive state of Maryland (and the especially progressive county of Montgomery County) and then having finished a year of college in UCLA, probably one of the world's most progressive universities, I've changed quite a lot. Words, phrases, sentiments, thought processes, etc. that didn't even make me think twice now makes me want to gauge my eyes out. Let's take a for instance; t...