Insecurities

6.0: I’m so insecurr
By Gyasi Ross

Story Created: Jul 13, 2009

When I first moved from the reservation to the city, I felt like a fish out of water. Like a leopard with no spots. Like the New Kids on the Block without Donnie. Awkward. I was short and chubby. I was also a nearly-teenaged Skin, pigeon-toed with long and bushy hair – like a brown Axl Rose. I had an incredibly thick Starr School (the community from where my family comes) accent. I remember people always made fun of the way I said “bag.” Apparently it sounded like “beg.”

In short, I got teased a lot in the city. Thing is, I also got teased a lot on the rez. Through this strange cross-pollination of teasation, I became an expert on the fine art of teasing and also learned to differentiate between different types of teasing. I realized – because of my experiences being the perpetual victim of vicious wit – that all teasing is NOT created equally. There are, in fact, many specific types of teasing.

For example, on the rez, I tangled with a lot of older Skin kids and they systematically utilized a five-step process to tease me (“Wash. Repeat.”). I call it the “Build Me Up Buttercup” approach to teasing; they’d hurt me, but not too bad. They’d typically make fun of my sister’s lavender shoulder-padded shirt that I was forced to wear because we couldn’t afford to do laundry; make fun of the part of me that was not Skin (oh, 3/8ths or so); and, hit me. I would fall. Crying. They were slightly more aggressive and unsubtle on the rez than in the city. Still, I knew that we’d play kickball or basketball soon after – magically friends again.

And I usually forgot about the episode until we started again the next day.

In the city, however, it was much more passive aggressive – almost to the point where I thought the teasing was harmless, because there was no real physical aggression. I called this the non-Skin, “backstabbers” approach to teasing. See, I was much bigger by this time, and so my “friends” would tease me and sing songs (“♪Sing a song with meeeee, ♫Gyasi’s Ugleeeeee♫”) in a very friendly, smiling way. They’d make fun of my long and bushy hair, and tease me about my nose, which they said looked “broken,” as well as my big lips. I always laughed it off because, well, it was funny, right? Not everyone is born handsome or beautiful. I was just one of the unfortunate people.

Unlike the times when my older Skin friends beat me up on the rez, I never fell to the ground or cried. My only reaction was an uncomfortable smile and me wondering why I didn’t look like everyone else.

I remember – in reaction to the teasing in the city – I concluded that I wanted to look like one of my white friends; I wanted to appear exactly like the majority of the kids that went to my school. I asked my dad to cut my hair short. Thereafter, I’d put tons and tons of Aqua Net into my wavy/frizzy hair to try to make it go straight so I could have the cool, lil’ sexy “one-banged” look like Sonny Crockett on “Miami Vice” (which still might be the best show of all time, FYI). I remembered how even my amazing older sister was self-conscious about her “Blackfeet-nose” before me; I now empathized with her and tried to avoid girls seeing my profile. I learned to suck in my bottom lip as well, to draw attention away from it. I tried to change my accent. I paid attention to my vocabulary so that I didn’t “ho” or “ayes.”

The teasing in the city ensured that I wasn’t too fond of how I looked or the way I talked.

But I was still somehow convinced that this type of teasing was much more humane than the teasing that I received on the rez because I never got a bloody nose or a black eye. In retrospect, I realize that the backstabbers-style of teasing may have been more damaging than the black eyes and bloody noses – it caused me to hide myself. My “hiding” – being quiet, not speaking up, and trying to be anonymous lasted much longer than any of the bumps, bruises, cuts or scars that I endured on the rez. In fact, every once in a while I still feel myself defaulting to that awkward teenager, who later grew into a very tall, lanky and goofy looking Skin kid with a huge head and huge feet. Still, whether I was short and chubby or tall and goofy, it didn’t matter – I still didn’t want anybody else to see me.

Unless they saw me as Sonny Crockett.

Now, I know that I’m probably one of only a few who have ever felt insecure about being Skin. I know that nobody else has ever felt out of place in a mostly-non-Skin world. I know that “Native Pride” will not allow most Skins to feel completely uncomfortable in their own skin. Still, I have to admit that I was fairly uncomfortable from the time I moved to the city until high school – when sports started to allow me to find my social comfort zone. Yet, I’m curious for those few that have felt insecure about being Skin, how did you get over those feelings? How do you plan to pass that peace of mind to your children – so they do not likewise feel uncomfortable?

What do you Skins think?