I straightened my hair before school today. Judging by the way my students reacted, though, you would’ve thought I dipped myself in gold. Students shouted from down the hall, “Miss, Your hair’s straight!” They questioned whether I did it myself or had it done. They touched it and wondered at it. Boys said, “Miss, You look pretty,” “Miss, You look better like that” (in contrast to my apparently-less-attractive curly hair).
It’s a funny thing being a white girl with light brown hair and blue eyes in a sea of dark-skinned, brown-eyed students. As if being a gringa from Indiana teaching Spanish doesn’t throw them off enough (I’m pretty sure at this point most of them think Indiana is an exotic country in a faraway land), throw in light-colored eyes and a decent wardrobe and most of the time they act like Miss Universe just walked through the door. “Miss, Are you wearing contacts?” “Miss, Are your eyes real?” “Hey Miss Barbie!” In fact, my Caucasian status confuses them so much, that on separate occasions my relation to pop-star Leona Lewis (born to an Afro-Caribbean Guyanese father and an Irish mother) has been questioned, along with my appearance in popular Bollywood films (the Mumbai-based Hindi language film industry in India).
It’s a serious confidence boost, but it also turns into a bit of an issue when male students incessantly request my phone number and refer to me as Miss Sexy. There’s also the time in the middle of a particularly disruptive class when I muttered in pure frustration, “What do I have to do to get you guys to listen?” and I heard one boy respond under his breath, “Take your clothes off.” Nice. (Please understand that I don’t actually take this as a compliment. I know these are hormonal little 13-year-old punks, attracted to almost any animate–and perhaps inanimate–object.) The upside to garnering this unexpected attention, though, is that the little girls look up to me. I have a captive audience. Talk about pressure. (Read “Parent-Teacher Conferences” for more details.)
