Summary: This pic came from last year’s Halloween party. I’ve been meaning to write about it ever since. When I dug it up last month, I was horrified all over again at the story behind those batwing eyelashes and badass blue-black wig. Staring at the cosmetic puncture wounds and oozing blood I'd drawn on my own neck, I cringed. I gasped. How do you do, my name is Kriste, and I am a Victim. That I'd casually drafted myself into that role without so much as an afterthought was chilling, because the realization went way beyond spooky dressup and made me think about some of the other ways I'd probably been playing that role in real life without realizing it. Probably a lot, I reckoned. Suddenly, the light table of my life had flicked on in my mind’s eye and a parade of my Victim slides fanned out into sharp focus for review. Oh crap, I thought, I'm good at this. It was my illuminating nah-ah moment, and I didn't like it one bit. And that’s the main reason why it took me so long to get to this post: it's not pretty, honey! So, a story. Victims love stories. At last year's Halloween party, a friend who'd never seen me in makeup and fake hair complimented my look—raved, actually—and told me how incredible I looked, just like Naomi Campbell, he said. He stared at me for a long time and even told in the days that followed that I should consider fake hair for real because it made me look so hot. I wasn't about to venture into the minefield of what beauty and beautiful hair was or how narrowly-perceived his idea of it was/is at a Halloween party of all places. So, I let it go. I didn't bother launching into the fact that even Naomi Campbell has a team of paid professionals to help her look like she does and that, if I look like her in makeup, then maybe she looks like me out of it. Not out of it as in inebriated, but out of makeup, I mean. Instead of calling him on his remark, I went one better and quietly decided to begin the process of de-friending him after he'd returned me safely home at the end of the evening. The next morning I called my girlfriend Bailey and rolled the story out for her in chapter and verse, leaving no detail untold in the case against my ignorant friend and the culture at large that incubated and spawned such beliefs. For forty-five minutes I railed on about the impossible standards of beauty that get piped in through the mainstream and how society suffers as a result and discourages any true expression of and the stifling global oppression that emerges as a result. I bemoaned the unnecessary, expensive burdens placed on women who couldn't see past the lies long enough to recognize their inherent beauty and to value the tresses they’d been blessed with from birth. I'm all for hair and nails and makeup as accessories and fashion options, I told her, but it's the message that expensive additions like these should be the norm that pisses me off. Bailey listened while I called for women everywhere to come out from beneath the cumbersome burdens of weaves, extensions and wigs and, thusly, out from the pockets of the booming grooming industry. I was angry that people seemed to be under the illusion that beauty and esteem were simply a matter of money and an over-the-counter transaction. Just a few dollars down for full, pixie, partial, single track, silky, waved and braided allure. What's worse, I told my friend, was that my other friend, Kevin, had absolutely no idea how clueless he was about The Issues and that his ignorance only fueled the oppressor's grasp around women's minds and wallets everywhere and, and, and... Will you calm down, Kriste? Bailey interrupted. That man was just paying you a compliment. I see that as him recognizing your beauty. You need to be grateful because I saw that picture and I think you look terrible, if you want the truth. I didn't want the truth. Not that one anyway. Despite her attempts to diffuse the clarity and venom of my diatribe,
