The Pretty Girl Complex

You know a girl like Sara.

A pretty face without much substance.

She's not very smart. She's not very witty. She's not very original.

Sara lacks that special core, that uniqueness. Her personality is based solely on how people react to her outer beauty.

Growing up, she didn't take time to nourish her soul. She didn't read books. She didn't treat people nicely. Everyone kept saying she was beautiful, so she knew that was her power. That's what made her special. That's what made her better than everyone else.

Boldly placing yourself on top of a superficial pedestal is easy when you think everyone else is beneath you. Beauty trumps brains. It trumps money. It trumps creativity.

Sara craves people worshipping her. She only feels human when men are fawning over her. She only feels worthwhile when other women are jealous.

While most people have hobbies, Sara spends a lot of time staring in the mirror, putting on makeup or just admiring herself.

Guys are obsessed with her. It makes their day when she flirts with them. They tell their girlfriend "she's not my type" but secretly wish Sara was in her place. They would ditch their girl in a second if Sara batted her curled Maybelline eyelashes in distress. It would make their dick feel bigger to have such a stunning girl on their arm. A girl who looks like she stepped out of a movie.

While Sara is flaunting her youthful, trendy beauty, other girls her age feel invisible.

They don't realize they're attractive too, but in a more fascinating way. They're most beautiful when you take the time to study every crevice of their face. Those oddities in their features, the kind that might seem imperfect next to Sara, are what make them perfect. These girls have bumps on their noses. Freckles on their cheeks. Gaps between their teeth. Dark, creamy skin. Their beauty is so poetic, it's mesmerizing.

But immature guys don't pay attention to real beauty. They're programmed to want the obvious, whether its Heidi Klum or Megan Fox.

And while most girls hate Sara, they don't realize how much it would suck to be her.

Guys don't chase after Sara because she's interesting. They chase after her because she won the gene pool lottery. They don't want to learn everything about her. They just want to fuck her.

Eventually, Sara will no longer be able to triumph over the other girls.

Even her beauty won't hold a candle to reality.

Men might be attracted to shiny objects, but they get bored with them quickly. Real men want a partner who can stimulate them physically, mentally, and emotionally. They want someone with fiery passion. They want someone who can make intelligent conversation. They want someone who can make them laugh. They want someone who shares the same interests. They want someone who isn't bloated with arrogance. They want a lover who is their other half.

A best friend and a soul mate, wrapped up in one.

It might take a while for them to figure it out, but they eventually do.

And that's why it sucks to be Sara.

She never wins in the end.

Oh, Frankie!

When I was in middle school I had virtually no self-esteem.

Of course, I wasn't alone. But when you're 13, it feels like it.

I had been a really cute kid. But then things drastically changed. My teeth grew in severely crooked, thanks to a gum surgery (a benign tumor was removed). My front teeth grew in sideways. When I opened my mouth I looked like a freak. I stopped smiling when I was nine.

I hadn't grown into my nose yet. It was wide and had a hump and not at all like the dainty little upturned noses my blonde peers flaunted.

My hair was long, stringy, and frizzy. The humid south Florida weather promised I would never see a good hair day, no matter how many products my mom gave me.

I was pretty damn miserable.

I had crushes on boys, but they were pretty cruel to me when they found out. One popular boy even shouted "woof!" when he discovered I had the hots for him. If that doesn't shatter a sixth-grader's self-image, I don't know what does.

I suppose you could say being an awkward, unattractive pre-teen developed my character. I became extremely sarcastic. I didn't have many friends. I holed myself away at home, spending weekends writing humorous stories and fake magazine articles on the computer, instead of going to the mall with other girls my age. The Jennifer you know today was founded on that time period.

But I desperately wanted a boy to like me. I didn't even want a boyfriend. I just wanted a boy to LIKE ME. I wanted to feel pretty. I wanted to feel like I wasn't the biggest loser on the planet.

On the first day of seventh grade, that changed.

Frank, the new kid, sat next to me in algebra class. He was cute, in a non-threatening sort of way. He didn't use hair products and he didn't dress like a douchebag. He wore flannel. He had a strange accent. He had kind eyes.

I cracked a joke in class, and while my other classmates stared at me blankly, Frank laughed. Not at me, but at my joke! I couldn't believe it! It was a miracle!

Later that day in the cafeteria, my friends and I looked up to see Frank holding his lunch tray, hovering over us.

"Can I sit here?" he asked.

I nearly knocked my milk over the table, I was so eager to make room for him.

"Everyone here seems really superficial," he said, narrowing his eyes at a group of popular girls applying makeup at the next table. "I'm from New Jersey. I'm not used to palm trees and all these fancy houses."

After the girls I was sitting with went to hang out in the sunny quad, Frank and I talked. He was so easy to talk to, which surprised me. Other than my cousins, I didn't have much experience talking to boys my own age.

We became fast friends. He ate lunch with me every day. He laughed at all my jokes. He talked a lot about New Jersey. He was clearly very homesick. I didn't mind though because I didn't know much about the east coast. I found it all very interesting. I couldn't imagine not going to Disney World every weekend. I couldn't imagine a beach without palm trees. It all seemed very odd and exciting. Industrial and cool.

We started hanging out after school. I even went to a school dance with him, as friends, and taught him the Macarena. I couldn't believe Frank had never done it before! It was like hanging out with a Martian! Even President Clinton knew the Macarena!

And of course, from the moment we became best friends I knew I was madly in love with him. I had never been treated so nicely before by a boy who wasn't a relative. He made me feel so special.

Suddenly, my life changed.

My parents took me to Bennigan's for dinner during a weeknight. I should have known something was up because we only went there for special occasions and never during the week. I was halfway through my delicious hot wings when my parents dropped the bombshell.

We were moving to Nebraska.

Haha wait, what?

My dad had been offered a much better job up there in Omaha. One he simply couldn't turn down.

I was devastated.

I awkwardly parted ways with my friends. Saying goodbye to Frankie was the hardest. He promised me he would write.
And guess what. He did.

For a month, we wrote each other once a week. Neither one of us had e-mail back then. It was all snail mail, which, looking back on it, made his correspondence even more impressive.

But I was miserable in Omaha. I thought about Frankie all the time. I slept with his letters underneath my pillow. It was torture knowing he was there and I was here. That I was in love with him and he didn't know.

So, I decided I needed to tell him how I felt.

I recorded myself singing "Don't Let Go" by En Vogue onto a cassette tape and I mailed it to him.

It seemed like a really good idea at the time. It seemed so rational!

I didn't take into account that my singing voice sounds like a dying cat. I didn't realize that my wailing "there's gonna be some LOVE-MAKIN', HEART-BREAKIN', SOUL-SHAKIN' loooOoooOoove" was severely inappropriate.

After I mailed him the tape, I never heard from him again.

I was crushed.

At the time, I couldn't figure out why. Didn't he like me back? Wasn't my message obvious? Did he not like R&B?

I was flummoxed.

Of course, looking back now, I realize that I pretty much made the worst decision in the history of the world. And I laugh hysterically thinking about it.

Oh, man. Poor Frankie. I wish I could have seen his reaction when he hit play. I must have scared the shit outta that poor boy.

I wonder if he still has the tape.

Miss America (behind the backlash)

Yesterday, history was made in my country.

The first woman of Indian descent was crowned Miss America.

As an American who also has Indian blood, I was incredibly proud. But that taste of victory was short-lived. From the moment Nina Davuluri was named the winner, articles started to appear all over the Internet revealing racist tweets against the 24-year-old.

There was no time to smile. No time to feel pride. Nope. It was here's the crown, and then a barrage of hate.

What really pisses me off is that these racist tweets only represent a tiny, pathetic little fraction of the United States (.005 % of the population) but when you put all those tweets together, they seem like the entire country is on a full-blown rampage against brown people. Because the media magnifies it and blows it entirely out of proportion.

What a lot of people don't realize is these articles are meant to shock other Americans by saying "Look! There are still people in this country who are jaw-droppingly ignorant!". That's all.

But, unfortunately, now the entire world is horrified of people in the United States. They don't understand that these tweets represent a tiny percentage of uneducated Americans.

I think it is very important that people all over the world understand that most of these racist people on Twitter do not really hate Indians in particular. It's a general racism which stems from something much more abstract and complex. These people are uneducated. They were raised in a hateful environment. These are people who can't afford to go to college. They are not book smart. They couldn't point out France on a map. And seeing more and more brown people come here and do incredibly well (i.e. become doctors living in huge houses) makes them bitter.

These racist people were not raised to do well in science and math. They were not encouraged to do well in school. The only jobs they could find were menial work (like tele-marketing) and then those jobs got shipped over to India.

Oh, and then the 9/11 terror attacks happened. Brown people all look the same to these racist people. They don't know the difference between Iraq and India. A brown person with a funny name is an Arab to them. A Hindu is a Muslim. Even with the world at their fingertips, they don't bother to educate themselves about these things online because they DON'T CARE. They just want to hate.

What is more ironic is that the way the majority of Americans view these hate-spewing rednecks is the same exact way the majority of Muslims view the terrorists. They're disgusted, horrified, and angry. But, the rest of the world clumps them all together anyway.

Please don't clump all Americans together. These tweets do not reveal reality. They reveal circumstantial stupidity.

What breaks my heart is that these few people who tweeted racist remarks are stealing the spotlight away from the winner.

Our Miss America plans on being a doctor. Did you know that? Probably not.

There are millions of little girls out there, of Indian descent, who watched television last night, mesmerized by a dream coming true. Proud of where their parents and grandparents came from. Excited for the future because another Indian-American girl proved right there on camera that anything is possible.

You can be Miss America. You can be beautiful. You can be a doctor.

That's the real story.

Jezebel?

I know a girl who was kind, funny, and sweet

But her life was merely deceit

She had long blonde locks then cut them short

She might have had babies she had to abort

I wanted to be her best friend

I didn't know her presence would end

(so abruptly)

The lies caught up with the image

We were left to pick up the wreckage

Was she...? Did she...? She was, she did

It breaks my heart the secrets she hid

Cheating, lying, scandals, and sex

Paying her bills thanks to horny rednecks

(it seems)

I want to believe it's not true

I want to believe that's not you

In times of desperation I can understand

But not when it comes to cheating on your man

Maybe we're wrong, maybe we're right

But why would you block us out of spite?

(otherwise)

This is a terrible poem and I know it

If you're not guilty, why don't you show it?

I'd like to think you weren't faking the sweetness

But either way, it's a terrible mess

I guess you really just don't know someone

Until you hear the truth and they're long gone

(without a word)

It's okay. Don't cry.

Besties or bitches?

Women always complain about men being terrible communicators.

Ironically, we're terrible about communicating with each other.

When men get into fights, there's usually punches, blood drawn, and quick forgiveness.

With women, our fights are a little more...complicated. And unnecessarily drawn out.

First of all, we often don't tell the other girl why we're upset. That's our first mistake. We just figure, well "she should KNOW."

We talk shit behind their back. "Omg, she's SUCH a bitch." We complain about them behind their back. "I'm so tired of her crap." We lie to their face. "I love you too!" And then finally, when we can't take it anymore, we often just cut them out of our lives without a single word.

There's no heart-to-heart chat. There's no rational explanation. The friend is left potentially mystified, devastated, and justifiably outraged.

And oftentimes the reason for the fight is something so silly, that over time, with all the manipulation and back-stabbing, it has morphed into something incredibly pointless. But in the meantime, the hatred has deepened.

Like snowflakes, no two girl fights are alike. Each are complex, messy, and bizarre in their own delightful way.

I have lost so many friends through this process. Sometimes I've been the victim. Other times, I've been the bitch.

A few significant friendships of mine were shattered this way. Girls I considered my dearest sisters.

Remember Nancy?

She's a textbook mean girl. She had been talking badly about me behind my back for years. She never voiced to me why she was upset with me. She just simply vanished one day, out of my life, after five years of close friendship. To this day, I'm completely clueless as to what happened.

What's even worse is that literally, the very next morning after I wrote that blog post about her last year, I went out to the parking lot of my apartment complex and discovered somebody had painted the word "bitch" all over my car. It took poor Rian an hour to wash off.

Coincidence? I think not.

I wish with all my heart that girls would just fucking communicate with each other.

I wish that instead of defacing private property, Nancy would have just sent me an e-mail that said, "I read your stupid blog and I hate you. The reason we're not best friends anymore is because _____, you fucking bitch." At least then we would be off to a good start! I could write back either, "I had no idea that's why you were so upset with me! That was a misunderstanding!" or "Oh wow. So that's why you were mad at me? Well I didn't mean to hurt you. I had no idea it offended you. I'm very sorry." And we could have gone on from there. Either patched things up or decided collectively to part ways. I was never given that respect.

I'm not going to lie. I've been guilty of pulling a Nancy in the past. And I regret it. When it comes to a friend, there should always be straightforward communication. Do not be afraid to pour your heart out in a letter. Over the phone. Even through a fucking text message. Anything is better than nothing.

And what's worse is that this is the reason so many female relatives have fights spanning over decades. I once had two aunts who didn't speak for 15 years over a squabble they couldn't even remember. My boyfriend's mom and her youngest sister stopped speaking several years ago over something petty. You all know what I'm going through with my aunt. Eight months and that shit still hasn't been resolved.

It's pathetic.

Why are we so good at expressing our feelings with our boyfriends and husbands, but we're so idiotic at communicating with our friends? Our sisters? Our mothers?

I want to change. I'm trying.

I'm sick of being a mean girl.

Are you?

"Where are you from?"

People in the United States are obsessed with color.

Yeah, we're a melting pot. Our pedigrees are like recipes. One-fourth cup of Ireland. One-eighth cup of Puerto Rico. Half cup of Germany.

But that doesn't mean anything.

If you're white, you're American. If you're black, you're American. But if you're not white or black...well, you must be something else then, right?

My father immigrated here from India 43 years ago. My mother's ancestors immigrated here from Sweden more than 100 years ago.

And my entire life, there is one question I have been asked more than any other: "Where are you from?".

Never mind I have an American accent. Never mind I'm living in the Midwest. Never mind my name is JENNIFER.

No, no. I simply must be from somewhere else. Because I'm brown.

Some of you may not really understand why it upsets me so much. After all, people are dumb and it's just a question. But to constantly be asked where I'm from in a country that is my home is insulting, frustrating, and sad. When I was a kid, it almost felt like I didn't really belong here, which was a very scary and lonely feeling.

What hurt even more is that my childhood best friend was a Polish immigrant. She had only been in the country for a few years. Her name was ridiculously foreign. People always fucked it up. But nobody ever asked where she was from. The girl named Jennifer got asked all the time. It was like Katarina was the American and I was the immigrant. Being around her caused a lot of resentment and bitterness for me. Why was she treated like the insider and I was treated like the outsider?

I hated being a mixed race kid. It was embarrassing always having to explain to everyone that the blonde haired, blue-eyed woman standing next to me was my mom. Always. Nobody ever assumed she was related to me. I was always unsure what to checkmark in that box when we took standardized tests. Was I Caucasian? Or Asian? Seriously, what the fuck was I? (This problem was eventually solved 20 years later when I was arrested and the police officer wrote down 'Caucasian female' in his report. I was thankful to finally know the answer, despite being in handcuffs).

Growing up, the world idolized Heather Locklear and Britney Spears. I so badly wanted to be a beautiful blonde American like my mother. No one ever asked her where she was from. I was determined that one day I was going to marry a white man so my kids and descendants would NEVER be treated like a foreigner in their own country.

(My first serious boyfriend ended up being half-Egyptian and half-Irish. So much for that.)

When I grew up, the world started changing and I started maturing.

There are now Indian immigrants everywhere in this country. There are gorgeous women all around me named Anika and Ridhi and Navya. There are so many that now when people learn my name is "Jennifer" I don't get asked where I'm from as often. I've become less exotic.

And I no longer have the desire to marry a white guy. I simply want to marry someone who makes me happy, whether he's black or Chinese or a global mix.

I love that Rian is a quarter Sioux. The stories that run through his blood are inspiring and heartbreaking. His grandmother, who grew up on a reservation, is one of the most fascinating people I've ever met. And even though I'm not super close to Rian's mom, I feel a bond with her that I don't share with many others. She is also half-Indian (the other kind) and from what Rian tells me, it wasn't easy for her either.

I've learned that to be a part of the melting pot, I need to embrace it. I need to respect it.

But I'm only one person.

The United States as a whole is still obsessed with color. My name could change to Jennifer Smith tomorrow and I would still have people curiously asking me, "where are you from?".

And no matter who knocks me up, my kids will be multi-racial. They will have color in their skin. When I was a child, I hated that fact. Now, I adore it. They'll be just like me!

Except there is one major difference. They will be far removed from India. They will be far removed from Sweden. They will be far removed from the Native American reservation, perhaps.

And when someone asks them, "where are you from?" they will have to just shrug, with a smile, and say

"the world."

Summer of 2006

I knew what he was going to say before he said it.

The panicky feeling of dread enveloped me, squeezing tighter and tighter. I nearly collapsed under its clutch. It had started six days before. He took longer to answer his cell. He wouldn't talk more than a minute. He didn't want to make plans. That warmth in his voice, reserved especially for me, was gone. He stopped saying "I love you."

It was so out of the blue.

There had been no fight. No obstacle had presented itself.

But there he was, standing on my parents' doorstep that sweltering summer day, looking sheepish and grim at the same time. He shuffled on the welcome mat. He didn't even want to come inside.

I grabbed his arm, desperately. Too desperately.

"I bought your favorite bagel," I cried out. "And that jalapeno cream cheese you love so much! Come eat lunch. Please."

He reluctantly stepped inside.

"I can't stay," he said, awkwardly. "I need to do something. I wanted to do it in person. Please don't make this any harder than it is."

I stood there in shock. A large mass blocked my throat from uttering any sound. Tears welled in my eyes.

"It's over, Jen," he said.

There were other words. I think there was even a fucking speech. I'm not sure. All I remember is crumbling on the floor in my white sundress like a giant tissue.

I was so pretty back then. Ninety-nine pounds. Twenty-two years old. Long brown hair.

"You can have any guy you want," he comforted me.

"But I want YOU!" I wailed back.

A panic attack arose in me. I begged him to reconsider. I told him he just needed time to think. He didn't even have a reason, other than he didn't think we were right for each other.

"WHY?"

"I just do."

Pride didn't exist that day. I threw myself at his feet. He didn't care.

When he left, I ran into the kitchen and threw the bagels against the wall. I picked up the carton of jalapeno cream cheese and smashed it on the floor, glaring at the white and green clumps against the beige tile.

Your first broken heart is the worst one. I heard that somewhere recently. It made me half-smile, because it's true. You honestly think the world has come to an end. It's a shock. It's grief. It's your soul trying to readjust to life without him.

I didn't eat for eight days. I forced down juice. I dropped down to ninety pounds. I was putting on a bikini in my bedroom when my mom came inside. "How can you be so sad when you look so amazing?" she marveled, staring at my body. I looked in the mirror. I had never been so thin. It didn't matter though. Nothing did.

Eventually I ate because my hunger returned against my will. But I was like a prisoner, trapped inside my aching mind. My head physically hurt to think about him.

Later that summer, I got my first real job at the newspaper. It distracted me a little bit. I went on a bunch of first dates and then hit ignore on my cell when the guys called back.

That fall, a guy I knew from an American Literature class in college randomly Facebook messaged me and we became pen pals, sharing our lives and deepest secrets. We fell in love through black and white and have been together ever since.

I'm with the person I'm meant to be with now. It's a comforting feeling amidst all the other troubles occurring in my life.

But that doesn't erase the past.

Today, my dad bought me lunch and the minute I took the first bite, an overwhelming sense of sadness smacked me in the heart. A distinct feeling I hadn't felt for seven years. I looked down.

It was that damn jalapeno cream cheese.