We're Going to Need More Wine - Gabrielle Union Page 0,19
to promote the idea of natural hair, you are somehow a better black person than someone with a weave or someone who straightens their hair. You have transcended pettiness and escaped the bonds of self-esteem issues. But I have traveled around the world and I know this to be true: there are assholes who wear natural hair, and assholes who wear weaves. Your hair is not going to determine or even influence what kind of person you are.
GROWING UP, I WAS ALSO OBSESSED WITH MY NOSE—AND NOSE JOBS. I still kind of am. I first became aware of rhinoplasty when people started making fun of Michael Jackson getting his first big one. I was on the playground and a kid asked, “How does Michael Jackson pick his nose?”
He didn’t wait for me to answer. “From a catalog!” he yelled.
I paused. “Wait, that’s a thing? I don’t have to live with this nose if I don’t want it?” It wasn’t just Michael. Growing up, it felt like every black star, people who you thought were beyond perfect the way they were, changed their nose. The successful people, who used to have noses like you, suddenly didn’t. It only made me more self-conscious. I would stare into the mirror, thinking about how as soon as these people got the chance to fix their mess of a nose, they did.
Like them, I wanted a finer, more European nose. I used to call my nose the Berenstain Bear nose, because I thought it looked exactly like the noses on that family of cartoon bears. As a kid I tried the old clothespin trick. I would walk around my house with my nose pinched in a clothespin, hoping it would miraculously reshape my nose. I had a method, attaching it just so and mouth-breathing while I did my homework. It didn’t work.
There was a whole period of time in high school where I would do this weird thing with my face to create the illusion that my nose was thinner. I’d curl my upper lip under itself and do a creepy smile to pull down my nasal folds. I thought I was a nasal illusionist, but I ended up looking like Jim Carrey’s Fire Marshall Bill on In Living Color.
The reality is that growing up in Pleasanton and coming up in Hollywood, nobody ever said one word about my nose. I imagined people talking about my nose, but it was really just noise that originated in my own mind. People have since accused me of having a nose job, however, which made me even more convinced that people thought that I had a nose I should want to fix.
So here is the truth: I have never had a nose job. I am, in fact, the Fugitive of nose jobs. Like Dr. Richard Kimble, blamed for killing his wife, I too stand accused of a crime I didn’t commit. It’s a constant on social media. Catch me in the right light, or after a contouring makeup session some might deem aggressive, and the comments section lights up. “Nose job.” “Fillers.” “She fucked up her face.” The next day I’ll post another shot with my nose fully present and accounted for and people will literally say, “She let the fillers wear off.” It takes everything I have not to write these people and say, “Do you have any idea how fillers work?”
Okay, I will admit I have researched. I have even fantasized about putting myself in the able hands of Dr. Raj Kanodia, Beverly Hills sculptor to the stars. A white friend went to Dr. Raj, and afterward I took her chin in my hand, literally holding her face to the light like it was a beautiful work of art. We actresses talk and share secrets, so I know people who feel they owe their careers to his work. But that won’t be me. I can’t even get the slightest tweak, because I will be slammed. I am stuck getting all the flack for a nose job without any of the benefits.
Maybe one day, when I’m a real grown-up, I will wear my hair natural and I won’t contour my nose. Hell, I’ll just be me. And hopefully people will accept me the way I am.
four
THE BALLAD OF NICKIE AND LITTLE SCREW
Here I am, three decades later, and it is as if I am seeing him for the first time. He just suddenly appeared, striding across the massive fields at Sports Park. It was the summer before