Polar Bears Have Eyebrows Too

A summer 2001 story

I’d like to thank everyone who took the time to comment my last newsletter. Whether in private or in the public comments, it seems that many of you had things to say about uneventful summers and your love/hate relationship with social media. Thank you for being here, for reading my words, for giving me the extra kick I need to sit down in front of my laptop and write stories nobody asked me to write.

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Speaking of stories nobody asked me to write, today’s essay is about another uneventful summer. Well, that’s not true. There was an event. And this event was so catastrophic that it forced me to retreat from the world and spend summer 2001 in the safety of my childhood home. Before I tell you what happened, I must share some important information with you.

I’ve been blessed with a full head of dark hair. And when I say full, I mean a lot. An abundance of hair is a wonderful thing, but it can also cause problems. For example, when you get head lice as a child. Do you know how many hours my mother spent inspecting my thousands of hair strands with a fine-tooth comb? After a night shift at the hospital? Too many. I’m the reason why we use a hair catcher in the shower. Why the bathroom floor looks like a shag carpet every time I dry my hair. Why I probably gave my hairstylist arthritis because I just had to be an icy blonde.

The thing with having a lot of hair is that it’s not solely concentrated on my head. Sure, I have lush locks. I also have flourishing eyebrows, legs, underarms, lower back, bikini line and other areas I won’t mention. My forearms? They’re mini Chewbaccas.

My hairiness wasn’t an issue until I realized girls should look a certain way. I was six years old.

I remember the exact moment it happened too. I was at school, minding my own business and eating my ham sandwich when two boys sitting at the same lunch table noticed my fuzz.

“Look at her arms!” the little blue-eyed blonde yelled. “They’re SO hairy!”

“Yuck!” his raven-haired friend replied. 

“You know what we should call her?” Blondie said. “POLAR BEAR.” 

I was mortified. Polar bear? I couldn’t understand why they had chosen a white bear to tease me. It made no sense. They could have called me a grizzly bear or a black bear. Weren’t kids supposed to have hair on their arms? I analyzed theirs. They had fuzz too, but it wasn’t as dark and dense as mine. And then it hit me. Mine was a problem because I was a girl. I tried defending myself the next day when they chanted “Polar bear! Polar bear!” over and over but it just made things worse.

At almost thirty-five years old, I’m still unable to deliver a clever clap back. I think that’s why I write. I can pour my heart out and clap back all I want on the page. The page will never ridicule me in return.

Over the next few years, I found ways to hide my hairiness. Long sleeves. Pants. In the sixth grade came an end-of-year field trip at the local water park, Mont Cascades. I could no longer hide underneath my clothes. Forget self-acceptance. I begged my mother to wax my legs and my lower back, which she eventually agreed to do since puberty was just around the corner and my hair was thicker and darker than ever. I begged her to wax my arms too. She refused. “There’s nothing wrong with your arms, Michelle.” 

In high school, I became an expert at waxing my underarms, legs, bikini line and lower back. Those regions weren’t an issue anymore since I could control what they looked like. I was told repeatedly by my parents to leave my arms alone and I obliged. My next area of focus instead? Eyebrows.

Back to summer 2001. I was thirteen going on fourteen. You remember what the trend was, right? Pencil thin and tadpole brows ruled the faces of teenage girls. My brows? Black, bushy and reminiscent of McDonald’s golden arches. Not acceptable. I needed a makeover like Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality. And that’s when, one humid July afternoon, I thought it would be a good idea to give my eyebrows a thorough pluck.

My sister and I were home alone when I decided to operate on my face with the family’s silver tweezers. I was sitting on the bathroom counter, my face an inch away from the mirror. I knew I couldn’t pull off the tadpole look, and I wasn’t sure how to create thin lines. I figured I could start plucking and see how things went. One thing led to another and things got out of control. When I realized there was no turning back, I had to make the left side symmetrical to the train-wreck that was my right brow.

When my mother arrived home after work that evening (again, after a 12-hour shift at the hospital), she found me curled up on the living room sofa having a major meltdown. Sitting beside me was my seven-year old sister who had been consoling me for hours, innocently believing me when I told her my life was officially over.

“What is going on?” my mother said as her eyes widened.  

“Leave my sister alone!” my sibling yelled at my poor, hard-working mother. She was worried I had gotten into trouble.

“What happened? Is Michelle hurt?”

“Michelle plucked her eyebrows and she’s really sad.”

“It can’t be that bad. Michelle, let me see your face.”

I removed my hands from my face and turned towards my horrified mother, revealing two very small rectangles of hair above my eyes. That’s when I vowed never to leave my house until the end of summer break. I refused invites from my friends to hang out. I wore bucket hats when I accompanied my mother to Costco to avoid being recognized. I don’t remember having my friends over to celebrate my birthday that August either. I was so consumed with my inexistent brows, so ashamed of what I looked like, that I deliberately opted out of summer fun. 

How sad. I feel like shaking my fourteen-year-old self. Snap out of it! I want to tell her to stop obsessing over her face in the mirror, over the hair on her body. I want to tell her to focus on joy, fun, art, family and friends. I want to tell her that beauty standards are a construct. To buckle up buttercup and accept herself now because guess what? Beauty culture is going to become even more insidious and toxic. A lot of time will be spent taking pictures of our faces with a phone while making a facial expression called duck face. A lot of time will be spent modifying our faces with filters and apps, don’t worry you’ll understand what an app and a filter is in a decade or so. A lot of time will be spent watching hairless women with personal trainers, plastic surgeons and fancy dermatologists shake their salads and cruise the streets of Calabasas in their Rolls Royces. A lot of time will be spent on something called Instagram, watching people called influencers, convincing you that you absolutely need this plant-based retinol because nobody wants wrinkles. A lot of time will be spent.

Opt out of THAT honey, not out of human connection and love.

Finally, I want to tell my six-year-old self that she is loved. That her arms are beautiful and that she is strong, smart and kind. That polar bears are strong and smart too. I won’t tell her about the melting ice caps though. That can wait.