It’s summer, I’m wearing the neon cotton shorts and cropped shirt I bought visiting my sister in the US. “Goddam you look good” — called out from across the street. I’m twelve years old, barely past my first period, barbie dolls still in a bag under my bed. Disoriented, made aware that someone else is reading my body before I can read it myself. The first in a stream of whistles, catcalls, of being stopped by grown men on the sidewalk asking me out for drinks.
Very young, with a body that looks nothing like Christy Turlington’s, exploding with emotions I don’t know what to do with. Wanting to be seen, and to disappear. In school there’s a girl’s club, for us to learn about makeup and find community. The first meeting we have to lie on a paper on the floor and have our figures traced, then our bodies are pinned to the wall.
Boys my age, almost worse than the men on the street. Irony, sarcasm and 90s detachment — “nice ass” can mean anything. “I love you with all my body and soul” or “you fucking loser, eat shit and die”. Safer to assume the latter. At fourteen a girl in my class loses her virginity in the toilet at a garage band party. He dumps her after the weekend, everyone knows.
Out in the Stockholm summer night, early 90s, in my hippie era. I’m fifteen, wearing the red and white scarf my dad bought in Palestine working for the UN in the 70s. Kungsträdgården is a sea of beer cans, ponytails, rugby shirts, hormones. Hope. A boy a few years older tries to put out his cigarette on my face.
Paléo music festival in Nyon, Blur playing the small tent. Air heavy with sweat and marijuana, lips sticky from beer and grenadine. Almost seventeen, in a batik hoodie, flowers cut from a plastic candle ring braided in my hair. A young guy comes up and asks “where are you from?” I look at him, with my clear blue eyes and very blond hair, reply “Ghana”. And walk away.