A Little More Beauty

It will start like a harmless comment. A passing joke. About how your nose has taken over half of your face. They will ask if your mother forgot to massage and sculpt it with hot towel when you were a baby so it could be more aquiline like hers. You will be confused but you will also feel bad because beneath the layers of their remarks is a sting that is easy to miss if you were not the object of the fixation.

It gets worse as you got older. The jokes will become more biting. They will wonder loudly while first born daughters take strongly after their fathers especially the ugly dads. Your aunty will make tugging gestures around her lips emphasizing how wide she has always deemed yours. They will say if only one was left in place of the other. A smaller nose and bigger lips or a bigger nose but proportionate lips. You will spend the rest of that day crying because your cousins will start calling you Bozo the clown behind the grown folks back. The name will spread in school and your classmates will start calling you Bozo anytime you answer questions and they feel you are doing too much. They will whisper Bozo when only your hand is up when the teacher asks who did research on an assignment over the weekend. So you will stop. You will purposely silent yourself so you can be accepted.

And the unfairness of life gets amplified when you go shopping with your mother.They will stop throwing jabs at your mother about her inability to gain weight despite being a big man’s wife. They will no longer recommend yet another mawumawu product – fattening concoctions to her. Instead they fixate on you, wondering why your mother was so benevolent towards you, they assumed to be the maid. Then the double takes when they find out she birthed you and no, you were not switched in the hospital ward because you were a splitting image of your father with a circular birthmark in the same location. And your mother, you notice seems to be basking in it all, finally she is no longer the object of their fixation. Besides, society has always made women see each other as competition. What better thrill for a self-obsessed mother with crumbling insecurities than to be told she looks younger and prettier than her daughter.

And being pretty has never been a word anyone has ever used to qualify you. During the social day in school, none of the boy jostled to ask you to come with them to the tuckshop. Nobody asked to wear matching tees with you and nobody was your secret santa during the school’s christmas party. The phone you got from your dad for finishing top of your class was empty, none of them will share their 2go usernames with you and none asked for yours. Not even your school crush Laolu who was besotted with Fakhua, the Lebanese girl with curly hair and dainty features. The one everyone in school flocks around even the teachers couldn’t bring themselves to whip her and they are fond of distributing punishments like party packs. You realized life was not just unfair but terribly unkind the day you arrived 5 minutes after school assembly and the Head Prefect asked you to kneel down despite your protests it was only 5 minutes. Then, Fakhua arrives after the assembly had dispersed and she sashays straight to class without even pausing to see if she would be allowed to go. And when you pointed out the injustice, the Head Prefect had pinched your nose before whipping you with his belt. Your mother came the next day with her shawl tied around her waist every inch the mad Yoruba woman ready for a fight. Of course it was amicably resolved and everybody pointedly ignored the elephant in the room as they have always ignored you.

In university, it was easy for you to hide, the many folds and excess of yourself deemed unworthy by the society. Nobody cares about anybody in class except you are wearing extra bright colours or part of the Dem Boys crew. It was easy to read, have good grades and still be invisible in peace. When fortune and fate brought you and Ella together in your third year, you were going through the throes of a first heartbreak. Tejiri had dumped you via a scathing text message because you asked why he often posts pictures of his female friends and never yours. He called you all kinds of insecure and said you were making mountains out of molehills again! He then ended it with ‘’as if…’’ For several weeks you filled in the remaining words. ‘’As if I would ever want to be seen with you.’’ ‘’As if you are worthy of being posted.’’ ‘’As if…’’ It haunted you, what he ever meant. Tejiri with his smooth caramel skin and chiseled features who chose you despite your homely look. Tejiri who made you feel empowered by making you pay for his shirts, brow maintenance and meals because he says he is a feminist and wouldn’t want to disrespect you by undermining your financial capabilities. You mourned what was lost and what you are not sure of ever finding again. And it was during your mourning you got roomed with Ella, a boisterous, light skinned curvaceous girl. It was Ella who had marched to your side of the room and flopped you over to see your tears stained face. It was Ella who had said in a firm voice

“Hope you are not crying because of a stupid boy?’’

So, you told Ella everything. And when you were done she had sighed deeply and brought out her phone. She passed it to you after scrolling awhile. You looked at the dark-skinned, buxom lady on the screen wondering what you were to make of it. ‘’That was me’’ Ella had said simply. ‘’’Well, before my lipo and yadayada’’ she added and gestured at her skin. Woah was all you could manage as Ella took you through the process of her reconstruction and beauty makeover. It was Ella who made you realize beauty could be bought if you have the money for it.

So you started, with the creams first. A lotion that Ella mixes herself in your shared room. Relaxer, yoghurt milk and liquids that smell strongly like latrines. They were potent though because within 2 weeks people started commenting about the freshness in your appearance. Soon the women in Okeodo began to call you Oyinbo as they market their wares to you. During your service year, you underwent a rhinoplasty, finally. The end of your torment. It was a modest and tastefully done work to make your face less shadowed by your nose. Your mother nursed you and dutifully assisted you with your recovery even though she talked nonstop about how there was no need for it. She asked if you wanted to turn yourself into Michael Jackson. You wanted to yell as she shuffled towards you with the pain meds and tell her ‘’easy for you to say’’ but you swallowed the words with your pills.

Your new nose debut made Sam, the handsome contractor that frequents your office, whom you had secretly nursed an affection for to notice you. He asked you to dinner. Months later you were entangled in a sizzling and passionate romance. All was going well until he made a passing comment about how Salma Hayek was his teenage crush. You asked why and he said it was her boobs and there was something about the perfect hang and size of it. Heavy enough to be cupped by the palm while spilling over tastefully but not too much that it might suffocate a lover. You nodded and began to search online for trusted surgeons who have had success with creating the perfect teardrop breast implants. It was a grueling four weeks of recovery, but worth it when Sam saw you in that low-cut top you had never quite figured out how to wear.

When Sam broke up with you because he had misgivings about your new lip fillers and your constant procedures, you called him a bloody hypocrite before falling to your knees in front of him and begging him to stay. How can this be happening? When you just secured your first big girl job and could afford all the proceedures you need to finally make you… perfect. He refused to heed yor pleas and stormed out dramatically out your life. So, you drove down to the Medspa in a daze and requested a fox eye lift to make yourself feel better.

It was comforting. Every time you lay on that desk, that bed, that chair for a treatment your mind feels at ease. You brace for the reemergence. The lightness in steps. The boost in confidence. A correction of flaws. A new beginning.

It was easy for you to mold and tweak yourself for acceptance. Who would understand you and the pain of rejection that has calcified within you and you have tried to dissolve to no avail? Who would? So you took Vitamin C IV drip even though you are several shades lighter than your original skintone. You injected your thighs with ozempic because it was the latest fad. You got a buccal fat removal which made your face gaunt and aged you by a decade and then you got fillers to restore the lost volume and bring back the youth you shaved off yourself.

And you are tired! Nights after night the mirror tells you there is a need for a little nick for your lips. That you need an extra tuck for your nose for that perfect aquiline shape that would complement your face. Your sanity strips away a little more each day. And the confidence you chase to the doctor’s office, that begins to trail behind you like a perfume fades before the anesthesia wears off.

And there is that beauty that you have not quite been able to reach. The voices in your head are silent when you ask if enough is enough, they will never tell you the only constant thing with being human is never being sated.