Plight of the Gigantic Gringa

It's one of the coolest holidays on the block, but it's been eons since I felt excitement over Halloween. It has nothing to do with age, and everything to do with the collection of skimpy costumes hanging in my closet. Worn for a week at a time: the cop, the beer maid, the Disco queen, the firefighter, the Geisha- they all worked countless bar shifts with me. Dressing up has lost its allure. When Christina shares her costume plans one day over lunch however, I catch that old spark of creativity. The masked beckon of slipping into another identity for an evening. 

Christina Ramirez is one of my favorite work buddies.  Pretty, young, and sweet, some might gloss over and dismiss her. Wiggle past her quiet, well-mannered reserve, and you find a devilish wit. This is why I have no qualms in calling her a bona fide coconut. Screw HR. It's not a slur, it's an endearment. Not for trying to be something she's not, but for simply just being her. For those needing Urban Dictionary: "Noun. A person who is tan on the outside (Mexican, Indian, Filipino), and white on the inside. Ex: 'Jenny is a total coconut.'" 

Christina shies away from all that is 'beaner.' Her word. Not mine. The girl went to private school. While she loves her some authentic local Mexican food (Come on, who doesn't.), she can't eat anything spicier than a cucumber. She recently bragged of bouncing some cumbia at her quinceanera, and I nearly busted a vessel picturing it. When she shared her Halloween costume aim- I shriek. A low-down, sagging, leaned-back, crouching, deep-in-Compton chola. 

"I'm in! Let's DO this!" I'd been toying with the very idea for years. I wanted another crack at my school years. Your childhood, Katie? Aren't you a banana-cream pie, Anglo-Saxon, cracker? What does a gringa like you know about Dickies, low riders, and the Virgin De Guadalupe? Truthfully, not much. But I can mimic like a motherfucker. As long as my genetics don't get in the way.

My grandma was a wholesome, country, white-girl, and over 6 feet tall. Now that's obscene. Myself, I've always been just a touch taller than the other girls in class. Just tall enough to often hear, "You're tall, aren't you?!" Just tall enough that a night out means heels, and heels mean I cannot rest my head on my date's shoulder at any point while standing. In heels, I cannot kiss my dear without crouching, at least a little. The act is quite de-feminizing. 

To be fair, I never shied away from the attention it brought. I never minded being asked, "Do you play basketball?" or even,

“Would you stand in the back of the picture?"

I loved to hear my mother say, "Geez your legs are a mile long" or,

"You're so statuesque, you can wear anything."

I was blissfully daft, for quite a while.

I grew up in a grand old neighborhood in Bakersfield's quaintly crumbling East side. The inhabitants of Primera Vista St were mainly decrepit old white people with mature fruit trees shading their crisply manicured lawns. Crossing any major road however, and you quickly found yourself in the sinking ghetto. Brimming with first-generation Mexican immigrant families, the small stucco homes with dirt yards usually housed many more relatives than could be found in our WASPy little Frank Lloyd Wright abode. Across this narrow divide, the businesses drifted from Young's Marketplace, to the tiny carniceria boasting exotic animal body parts. Caught in the era of a neighborhood's evolution, I had the distinction of being one of the few pale-faced kids at Horace Mann elementary.  My first boyfriend was in 5th grade, his last name was Tapia.

"Like Tapioca, right?!"

"What's tapioca?"

While we never even went as far as holding hands, it was many years before I realized, my first relationship was interracial?! Nobody gave a fuck.

My mother later said I was often the only blonde on the roll call. Literally head and shoulders above the rest, shining like a bleach spot on black slacks. As long as I didn't notice this however, she wouldn't bring it to my attention. I applaud her for this. Eventually though, as we all hurdled toward puberty, the differences between me and my playground buddies became glaring. 

It wasn't the difference in melatonin that first caught my attention. It was my size.

One warm fall day, the girls of our class stood in parallel lines in the track field facing each other. It was football 101, and I was assigned defense. One foot staggered back, I kept a two-point stance, arms locked into a shield. The whistle blew, and my opponent, a dainty, black-haired beauty, shot forward. I leaned slightly into the pretty little bullet speeding my way. As her graceful frame made contact with my impenetrable wall, I found it easy to stand firm. Her tiny figure crashed into mine, and bounced back with as much force as it came forward.

The decades since have hazed the scene, but I can still see her little face twisted up from shock. She winced from hitting me, then hitting the ground, with equal impact. She had yet to even fully sit up, when she became surrounded by her friends. One of her cousins in attendance. The victim glared at me through flushed cheeks and accused, "That was too hard!"

I felt a little bad for putting her in the dirt like that, but I was a kid. I'd only done as I was told, and hey! Look, Mom! I won! Maybe it was in retaliation to my beaming pride, or maybe it was because I shamed her friend, but it was only moments into the ruckus and confusion of an injured player, before someone turned to me.

"She's too big to play with us!" A slim, brown finger stabbed in my direction. 

I was the lumbering, pasty ogre. Not genteel enough to go toe-to-toe with the local flowers. I was obscene.

I measured myself against my girlish mates. Height and width, color and tone, I found my over-sized and under-colored body to be lacking. The fault of my boring heritage. I tried to emulate the exotic femininity that came to them so easily. But, you know, I was a kid. I copied them badly.

I sneaked chocolate-hued lip liner out of the house to apply at school, outlining my mouth like a budding vato. I used a Bic pen to dot the Mi Vida Loca symbol on the web between my thumb and forefinger. I swayed my head like a cobra when talking at a sad attempt in sass. I gelled my hair to the texture of aged glass, and perfected a Rosie Perez-esque accent that my round, freckled face belied. I never wore hip-hop with the natural flair that fellow white-girl Gwen Stafani later would- I looked downright costumed. This made them hate me. For those that didn't take me in, I was the "rich white girl." I wish. A family of four on a school teachers salary? It didn't matter that I shopped at the same Family Bargain Center, and could chomp Habenero peppers like a pro. It didn't matter if I could copy their style, sound or culture. Standing next to them, I looked like Will Ferrell socializing with Penelope Cruz. This started a life-long envy of every woman born dark and petite.

As I got older, I tried to stay as slender as possible. I invested in self-tanners. I bought loads of hair thickeners to coax my limp wisps into the gloriously heavy tresses they wanted to be. Sought makeup tutorials to exotic-ise my eyes. My perfectly ingrained posture withered in the company of others, lest I loom over them. Seeing any love interest with a delicately dusky creature- I cursed my pink skin and alpine anatomy.  I don't wanna be built like a brick house.  There is nothing tender or sensual about brick.

In my early twenties, I dated a wretched and handsome man. A rugged Italian with wide, dark eyes, and a wicked, dark heart. Though a man's-man, he didn't hit high on the meter stick. 5'10 on a good day. Strolling down the Las Vegas strip one summer evening, we pass a middle Eastern beauty with her beau. Faintly bronze. Darkly sexy. Tiny.  Compact. A real 'spinner'- if you still have that Urban Dictionary tab open. Seeing her linked arm in arm with a strapping older gentleman, head just brushing his shoulder- I was reminded of all that I wasn't. I felt like a Polar bear beside a jaguar. I was slouching in my stillettos before you could say 'gigantic gringa.'

"Stand up straight." My boyfriend instructed, without turning his head toward me.

"Huh?"

"One of the things I liked about you was your impeccable posture. You walk like a dancer. A ballerina. But sometimes you slouch. It looks bad. Stop."  All sensitivity and flowers, he was.

I mull on this a moment before admitting, "I’m too tall next to you in high heels. I feel funny."

"Well, duh, Katie. You're a tall girl. Get over it. I'm not a tall guy, and I'm over it. When I go out with you, I feel like I'm with a supermodel. So stand up straight."  This would prove to be his most positive act in our time together.

I've become reasonably respectful of my physical lot in life.  Aspects are aging, but I try to keep the vanity to a minimum.  Or at least try to only be concerned about what affects my health.  All before Dove soap told me to. I stand up straight. I rock 4 inch heels. I grin over the tops of others heads while crowded at the bar, and call my order while the shorties still wait in front of me. I can wear some dramatic styles that might overwhelm a smaller girl's build.  I haven't tried to pull off mahogany hair in ages, yet I still buy self tanners. I still try to tease volume into my hair.  I did, however, ditch the brown lip lines for some plain old Chapstick. I've grown more comfortable in my skin, regardless of color or girth. I no longer rue my humdrum European lineage.

Christine and I banter the stereotypical, southern California chola uniform, piecing together our garb. We Google gangsta chica images to email across the office. "Ohmygod- we need suspenders."  I brag about my cursive name plate necklace, and the 'K' initialed buckle on my old, cloth belt. I get excited to drape myself in those ghetto-fun fineries. At some point I mention my upbringing on Bakersfield's decaying east side.

"Really... That explains a lot." She muses. One doesn't need to mention the demographics for another local to understand.

Later that day, I stand at the printer, mindlessly faxing. A salesman approaches. A tall guy. 6'2' probably. His wife is a petite, Asian stunner.

"Exactly how tall are you in those things." He eyes my heeled boots in offense.

"Meh. About 6 foot." I smile. 

I'm so obscene.