In Which A Million Different Things Happen

The Difference Between Black And White

I pull out a black pencil skirt and a white blouse before putting them back in hastily.

Too formal, I tell myself, as well as the fact that the blouse is white and will get dirty quite easily.

Traveling in a bus is not everyone's cup of tea, after all. Then I pull out a yellow dress that reaches my knees and wear it without any further arguments with myself.

I really don't want to be late for work today. They will fire me or eat me alive and then throw the remains out of the window onto the innocent little heads of the passerbys.

I quickly tie my blonde hair into a pony tail and proceed to step out of the tiny one bedroom house before realizing I am wearing nothing on my feet.

I wear a pair of white sandals and quickly walk to where the bus will be waiting for me. The bus driver, Herbert knows my condition where I can't afford a car and cannot be late and the distance from home till the bus stop and stops the bus for me for at least ten minutes everyday before moving to his next stop.

In the bus, I don't find a seat and have to stand up. None of the men who are having a discussion about how women in the country are treated unfairly and how men should do more for them get up to offer me a seat and I sigh.

Hypocrites. I smooth down my skirt when it flies up the smallest bit but am not able to escape the whistles from the two rough, greasy haired creepy men standing nearby.

It reaches a step further when my bag drops- involuntarily and I bend down to pick it up. The men whistle again and I hastily straighten up. My blond hair gives me an unfair, stereotypical disadvantage right now.

The men who were having that discussion about unfairness to women are watching this- not making it too obvious, but I can see it from the way they aren't looking up anywhere particular.

I finally reach the office just a minute before the bell rings for the doors to shut and as I move up the stairs, my dress catches onto a nail just below my head.

I hear the ripping sound before my head turns around to see it. Fortunately enough, the tear isn't big. I hope that it won't get bigger during the day. I do have a stapler in my bag just in case it happens again, courtesy to a fellow model who apparently once felt that my dress was better than hers.

I just hope my dear boss doesn't catch it on my shoulder. Otherwise the fat will be in the fire and all that incredible nonsense.

I soon get my new assignment- I'm going to be showcasing a new selection with my rival- the girl who tore my dress and made me use the stapler.

I am also told with this deeply disturbing information that the showcase will be happening today itself and that I am to report to my makeup man for a glam fest.

This morning, the only makeup I had bothered with was some black eyeliner and a touch of gloss on my lips. Fortunately, my makeup man is gay, so I don't feel too uncomfortable with him fussing me around and helping me with my dresses.

I walk up to my room at the office where he is waiting for me with a cup of coffee and my eight hundred pound makeup bag.

Not really, of course, but with all the blush and eyeliner and nailpolishes and foundations and all, it looks even more than eight hundred pounds.

Quickly he helps me with a long, long pale blue dress with sleeves that come in spirals down my arms, which is a little bit raised at my shoulders and which has a trail behind me. It is lose at the waist and spreads towards the bottom. The neck isn't low, so with the exception of the heels I am going to endure, this dress will be fine.

Every single strand of my hair is made very frizzy and sprayed with almost an entire bottle of hairspray. Then he applies on my lips the darkest ever cherry red lipstick, and huge amounts of mascara on my lashes.

A pale pink blush and that is where I draw the line, telling him firmly and in certain terms that the make up is enough and that I am not going to do anymore.

He tells me in an equally firm tone that boss has told him to make me bathe in makeup, and that is just what he is going to do, even if it is by force.

By the time he is done I look hideous, with the dress and the heels and the glamming up devices on my face.

I wonder why I haven't already left this job I dislike so much, then feel the stupidity because I am doing this to prove a point, that girls can earn their own bread, no matter what.

I had left my home after being told by my father after another one of my 'women empowerment' outbursts and was given the time of two entire years to prove myself.

One year into it, I have got a harassing but well paying job, evening classes in a law school and an hour or two every day with myself, that is, if I sleep very late, missing out on my beauty sleep.

I intend to prove that the only thing wrong with many women of the society is their too male centered families.

By the end of the second year, if my blonde hair and awesome boss don't get to me, I will have a proper job as a lawyer and lots of time for self reflection.

I live in a shared apartment, and I use the bus for travel. Even if the blonde hair issue does get to me, I will have enough money saved up to sustain myself for a few more days before going back home to repent after what a failure I am.

Today, my rival is surprisingly causing no trouble at all, maybe because she is wearing sandals and lesser makeup and even the designer is nice enough to compliment us about our respective performances instead of mumbling and complaining about how we models aren't curvy enough for walking the ramp or how we models don't have any 'dressing and makeup sense.'

The irony, considering the dresses we show him are his.

But this designer signs the deal with our company and goes away. As I change back into my clothes I wore from home, well, the shared apartment that I live in.

By the time the makeup is off, I'm exhausted. An hour to reach, an hour with the boss, three hours for makeup, four hours at the ramp, two hours waiting, waiting for the meeting with the designer to get over, an hour to remove the makeup and do all the congratulations. I really am exhausted.

Exhausted with living in the gray zone, neither black nor white. By the gray zone I mean where my life is one big complaint, where nobody is happy with anything I do. Where it is always foggy and motionless.

Where nothing is very clear and the future is white and blurry and foggy with no surety of what's going to happen.

Where the past was black and much too clear and rough and decided and yet still hard and kind of motionless.

A year more, I tell myself. Before I am out of this zone of black and white and finally somewhere with beautiful hues, lots of color, and maybe a degree.

Where I'm not living in the difference between black and white anymore.

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