A Hundred Other Girls by Iman Hariri-Kia

Author:Iman Hariri-Kia
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2022-05-25T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

Have you ever gone viral?

No, I don’t mean “dropped in the family group chat” or “making the rounds on Facebook” viral. I’m talking about “messages from strangers,” “comments telling you to go kill yourself,” a “nine-page spread in the Daily Mail with an offensive headline” viral. The type of viral that leads you to spend all night googling the keywords of your article, searching for Reddit threads, scrolling through tweets. Virality that expands your ego and fills the corners of your brain with narcissistic, self-serving thoughts.

Of course, no one knows who I am. No one is talking about me. The only name on the tip of their tongues is one C. Bates.

After promising Saffron I’d take over the Beauty Politics column, I worked on the premier feature for a week straight. Everything else fell to the wayside: updating NoorYorkCity, Loretta’s expenses and bone broth, even picking up my family’s calls from Dubai (and those long-distance minutes are expensive). But from the second I sat down at my laptop and typed that very first sentence, I felt something ignite in my body, like a candlewick about to catch flame. This was it. This was what I was always meant to do. The words flowed out of me almost seamlessly, to the point that I began to feel…guilty? Was it supposed to feel this simple, this good, so early on? Wasn’t I supposed to wrestle with writer’s block, holing up on the couch, shutting out the rest of the world, ignoring Leila as she runs out the door to meet up with potential “connections” for casual drinks? Instead, writing this piece felt as natural as a bottle of orange wine, as organic as the Whole Foods avocados Loretta makes me spread all over her seeded gluten-free toast. Nothing has ever felt so right, so quickly—and the feeling that washed over me after I was done with my first draft was the most surreal level of satisfaction I’ve ever encountered. Better than blogging. Way better than sex.

I was dedicated to telling the story I set out to uncover: an exposé on the hair removal industry and how it profits off making dark-haired, hairy people feel “less than” and “other,” especially Middle Eastern and Latina women. It’s a narrative I know all too well. After all, I began waxing and threading off all my hair at the age of eight. When I was in middle school, a peer told me that she found my mustache confusing. “I thought only boys had mustaches,” she said to me, brimming with innocence. “Are you a boy?”

To get the piece just right, there were so many people I needed to anonymously interview—members of my own Iranian American community, salon owners, ad executives. I was working on an accelerated timeline, which meant conducting phone interviews, transcribing, editing, and writing faster than anyone can ask, “Did you reach out for comment?” But I had two things going for me: First, Saffron is an incredible editor. Like, truly phenomenal. They

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