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In elementary and middle school, I was shy about my culture and identity. Growing up in a Lebanese household, I embodied a true Lebanese girl. I had the black hair, the hairy legs and arms, and the “oh so loved” unibrow. I was embarrassed as the boys at my school used to always point out how “hairy” I was. Girls even told me I appeared “scary” because of my unibrow. Glancing at the faces of my peers, with their blue eyes, dishwater-colored hair, and freckles covering every inch of their faces, I looked at my face expecting to see the same youthful features, but instead, I was taken back by the spilled ink in the middle of my forehead.
By the time I was eleven years old, I started to argue with my mom about the need to divide my one eyebrow into two. To the naked eye, my need to separate my unibrow may seem like just a young girl’s struggle to fit in, but it meant so much more than just personal aesthetics. My brows were a symbol of my lingering struggle with my cultural identity. I was an American girl, but this feature set me apart from my peers. I questioned who I was. Was I Lebanese? Was I American? Was I Lebanese American?
My parents immigrated from Lebanon to escape the civil war. I grew up completely immersed in my Lebanese background. I grew up in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio suffused with the smell of kafta and chicken shawarma, embellished with Lebanese saints, and sounds of MTV Lebanon echoing through the house. Not only did I grow up watching Lebanese TV shows, along with Disney Channel, but also my parents spoke Lebanese in our home. My extended family lived only 30 minutes away. Holiday dinner tables were set for 35, plus drums and other musical instruments were involved. Until high school, my friends were mostly American and unable to point to Lebanon on the globe. Theology class particularly stood out to me while I was growing up. We were Maronite Catholic; I was looked at differently. I received the sacraments baptism and confirmation at the same time. I celebrated my First Communion twice, at my grade school and St. Maron’s Church. In high school, I wondered why the saints I acknowledged the most were never mentioned in theology class. When I mentioned these Lebanese saints to my peers and teachers, I received looks of confusion in return. Unfortunately for them, shutting off that part of me was not an option. I thought of St. Charbel when he said “You should realize the purpose for which you are born in this world.” My purpose is to educate and to remind my peers that there are other countries out there, not just America. This was the problem with my cultural unibrow; when my two sides confronted each other, life became rather hairy. At Church, the community saw me as “too American” but my classmates and teachers saw me as “too Lebanese.” Just as separating my converging eyebrow, it was much easier to deal with the two sides when they were apart.
When I started to travel, I learned that my Lebanese culture and identity were not to be hidden but rather embraced. There is such beauty in having both a Middle Eastern and American background, like a flower and its fragrance, so I will persevere in dealing with my cultural unibrow as I try to clean up the fuzzy caterpillar in the middle of my forehead. My unibrow is growing with me as I move through life. I am proud of the strong woman I have started to become, and that unibrow has now outgrown my forehead. It looks like I will need some bigger tweezers.
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