The Colombian culture is and has always been obsessed with external beauty. For this reason, growing up in a matriarchal family like mine was challenging. I was surrounded by women (on my mom's side) who spent hours working on looking great. Weekly mani-pedis, biweekly hair trims and uniform fashion sense was the norm. They had techniques to shave split ends and make hair shiny with crude oil. Yes, CRUDE OIL! They spent every gathering criticizing and competing with each other. Not one party lacked the weight conversation. "Your too fat!" "You're too bony, have some beans." No one ever really won the secret beauty pageant. It was awkward and mean-spirited. My mom told me a story about these women crowning her the queen of garbage when she was little. Who does that?! In a country obsessed with beauty queens, that was the lowest insult anyone could give a kid. The pressure to be pretty was immense. But the prettier you were the worst it was for you. You would then be targeted by all the other insecure not-so-cute ones in the family ready to pounce on any mistake you made. They were like hyenas waiting for their share of the zebra, salivating for their turn to tear your fashion mistake to pieces.
On the other hand, we attended a church were some women only wore ankle-sweeping skirts and rarely shaved or cut their hair. These women had fussy mustaches, arm-pit bushes, butt-cheek-kissing hair and the sense of style of potatoes. I watched them in awe as they convulsed on the filthy concrete floor with complete abandon. I would stare at their lipstick-less lips utter gibberish and their shadow-less lids flutter over their whitened eyes. Women who act like this probably have no idea who Coco Chanel is and why she liked the number 5 (that's not a pun on their ability to skip the deodorant step of grooming). My church was so strict and my family was so into it, I heard stories about my grandma tying my older siblings to the bed when they misbehaved during Sunday service. These being my first memories of church had a long-lasting impression. As I grew older we moved to different churches who had different doctrines and focused on different laws in the Bible. Although some considered themselves charismatic, they were still fixated on a specific set of rules and social norms as much as the fundamentalist Pentecostals that attended the church I was born in. They may have allowed women to wear pants but they made it their full time job to meddle in people's personal lives to tell them how to live it!
Defying logic, two opposite poles lived happily in one being. I lived by the rules of beauty and bible. I have always been able to follow advice. I never looked to rebel to one or the other. My mother spoke, I listened. My sister scolded me, I straightened up. I walked the arduous path of a martyr while following the latest trend in fashion. I obsessed about my daily devotional and fitting in with the cool crowd. I'm a Libra, that's the only way this makes sense (as you can see, fashion is not my only vice, I also like astrology). I was able to balance it all with a smile on my face. Now it all makes sense, a golden base with brown spots all over. I was born to be a sunny girl with spots of darkness. Said spots are not flaws or blemishes. They blend in on a sea of yellow contentment providing some depth and interest to an otherwise basic color.
I say, allow yourself a leopard print once in a while. Allow yourself to be free to have two distinctively different personalities. Never allow anyone to tell you it's a flaw or that it does not make any sense. What would a leopard be without its spots? And what would we be if everything about ourselves made perfect sense? If spots make sense on a yellow cat to create a magnificent leopard, a hard-core Christian can be allowed to healthily obsess about fashion and beauty. If there's a balance in it all and it all comes together to create some happiness? Let it flow and prance freely across the open spaces.
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