There have been a few times where white colleagues of mine have encouraged me to do something, and I said no. They weren’t terribly bad things; just things like leaving a few hours early, or taking a break by watching a video online, or just even chatting about the day, loudly, with abandon.
Transgressions mean more when you look like me. A woman, a woman of colour. Although, and I struggle with this, the concept of East-Asian people being the “model minority” is pervasive, and the social effects are real. I am undeniably a woman of colour, but I am a woman of privileged colour, a colour that does not immediately yell danger, or low achiever; quite often, it denotes the opposite.
I think about it often, when I refuse the invitation to slack off a little bit at work in a loud way. It’s harder for me, not just because I am a goody-two-shoes, not just because I want to work hard, but because I want to be seen to work hard. I must be seen to work hard.
Because when you are a woman of colour, it is not enough to simply do your work. What doe sit mean to work twice as hard? It means that your work shouldn’t be on time; it should be early. It means that your work shouldn’t be double checked; it should be perfect. It means that your work shouldn’t just be done; but that you should always be doing something.
I often get comments on the way I dress. Less so in Toronto, but quite often here in Cape Town, where my colleagues in the program are predominately white. They ask why I always look dressed up. I shake it off and explain that where I’m from in Toronto, people usually are dressed up. That how I dress is normal.
I have to rethink that. Where am I from in Toronto? I move in professional fields, at an elite university, at the bank, in the city. I move with diversity, with other women of colour, with queer folk, but also with white people, with layers of privilege. I did not lie when I said that people in Toronto dress up. It is true: my people in Toronto must dress up. From Scarborough, the colour on our skin as stark as our postal code: if we do not dress up, we are not treated the same. And that not the same is often insidious. That not the same is denial of entry, is added suspicion, is violence, is micro-aggression.
I love clothes. I love beautiful clothes, and I love fashion, not just in a shallow way, but in a way that can identify the season of your Gucci loafer, that can tell you the marred histories of Lagerfeld and Galliano, and the pheonix like rises of Donatella and Miuccia. I can name models, I can recite history, I can predict trends. I love fashion, I do.
But clothing is an armour, and it is simultaneously a concerted choice and a lack of it. When I put on my blazer and strap in my heels and pick up my designer bag, I am sending a message to the world: that I belong to a certain class, a certain circle, a certain ability. What I choose to wear is a plea to the world to treat me better.
And it has. It does.
gigiestee.com 