Halocline

Part 1: While in Korea

I was seventeen years old when I first started tanning. It wasn’t spurred by anyone around me, because the beauty standard in Korea was pale skin. Nor was it a natural summer activity, because it was a chilly April afternoon when I picked up my self-tan. In fact, it was a symbolic act to deliberately exclude myself from society.

As an international student in Korea, I lived amidst a spectrum where on one end, there were peers whose worldviews correlated more with mainstream Korean society, and on the other end, mainstream American society. Identifying more with the latter group, I often felt out of place with the homogenous Korean society, where everyone around us relied on shared humor, identity, and style that actively clashed with mine. As a result, it led to many of us unintentionally segregating into a community of those culturally similar to us, because that was the only time we were truly able to be ourselves and accepted for that.

Yet, when I transferred schools my junior year, I quickly realized that most of my peers had a more Korean upbringing, and subtle things about me, from my style to my values and personality, were rarely validated or mirrored. The cycle of changing myself to fit in but burning out continued for a year, until senior year spring, when I got an eyelid surgery for my hooded eyes. The procedure unintentionally made my eyes relatively large, especially when it was still swollen, and made me look different from everyone else. At that moment, I felt a sense of clarity. I realized I could channel the feeling of alienation into empowerment, because now that I was both externally and internally different, I could stop assigning self-worth to those around me because I no longer adhered to Korean standards, but instead, create my own metric.

The realization compounded as the morning after my fake tan, I was filled with a sense of confidence I’ve never felt before, because my orange skin actively disqualified myself from fitting into Korea’s fair-skinned mold, but held immense power as it finally promised I would fit in elsewhere, in America. While subjecting myself to societal standards often made me feel powerless, if I could create my own American metric where I would solely evaluate myself under, I could always feel empowered and control how I’m perceived. That day at school, I felt an intoxicating freedom and a sense of invincibility, because I felt like I was above society itself and was untouchable. 

I recognized the difficulty in fitting into both Eastern and Western societies, and my drive to obtain a sense of belonging led me to channel everything into the latter, while forfeiting the former. For the next two years, I constantly upkept my tan as a token of fitting in. Meanwhile, I started getting more and more highlights, until I went full blonde right before I would leave for college in America. I found this act to be oddly enlightening, because I figured out a way to break through a society that I held great stakes in, but one I’m not actually a part of, by holding a stake in its beauty standards. Even before moving to America, I secured myself a belonging, which reassured my biggest fear that I wouldn’t fit in anywhere. 

Part 2: Once in America 

Yet, once in America, the temporary alleviation from finally being mirrored by others quickly matured into the realization that belonging came with a cost. Here, my tastes, values, and personality neatly aligned with others, and because I was like everyone else, I was no longer on the high horse. If people were to dislike me or exclude me, I would be destroyed, because I no longer had the excuse that I was above society. So I took the necessary measures to give myself a feeling of invincibility once again, from weekly tanning beds to dressing up for class and straightening my hair everyday, as a shield to protect myself from possible rejection. Although I was often validated, it was because the wall I put up granted me control over the outcome, and I became more and more fearful of living without this armor and being truly vulnerable and subject to scrutiny. 

Then, Halloweekend rolled around by the time I had finally achieved the perfect brown tan I had longed for, drawing a striking contrast with my light blonde hair. Physically, I was at my prime, adhering to a beauty standard that was supposed to empower me. Yet, throughout the night, I saw the dissonance in how my friends were able to easily talk to guys, but I would only freeze or go in fight or flight mode whenever I saw someone I liked. Beneath my costume and my makeup, I felt utterly powerless, because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get myself to be in vulnerable positions, where I would have to confront my fear of rejection. All I could do was hope that I was good enough for people to voluntarily come up to me, which was what I had been doing all my life. Yet, the irony was that I was at my prime, and there was nothing more I could do. That’s when I realized the problem wasn’t that I needed to become truly invincible, but that my obsession with invincibility itself was what was secretly destroying me. 

Part 3: Realization

During my debrief with my hometown friend, there was something she said that although was common sense, permanently changed the way I thought. She knew she would never be everyone’s cup of tea, and she goes about life confidently because she had learned to internalize that. 

Previously, I was so certain that by taking specific steps, I could be liked by everyone and never have to deal with rejection. But her message brought to light how even the most successful and beautiful people in the world are also prone to rejection and get cheated on. For the first time, I truly had to confront how it is utterly impossible to have control over how everyone reacts to or perceives me. The shield I put up for myself limited me to safe spaces where I would be liked, but I had to break free in order to have true agency, and it was the only way I could be vulnerable without being destroyed. 

Suddenly, I felt hatred for every wall I’ve built up to protect myself. I hated how I channeled the number of profile views on instagram I had each month, to my persona based on differences back home, into feeling special. I especially felt so much hatred for the shares I got on my post, or the random followings, because it helped continue my habit of only living under constant validation, slowly imprisoning me into tighter cages. This external proof that I was good enough, instead of granting me power, restricted me so I could only feel confident when other people deliberately recognized my worth, eating away at me when I was the very person who created this system.

What I hated the most was my constant upkeep of tanning, because it was a gesture to feel invincible in both societies. In Korea, it purposely excluded me so I could pretend I was above society itself, and in America, it garnered me an armor that I couldn’t function without, stripping me of my autonomy. While my immediate urge was to quit tanning to liberate myself, I realized how forsaking certain symbolic acts would do little to actually change my mental framework. Extreme measures from deactivating my instagram to dying my hair black, would only manifest as the opposite end of control by intentionally sabotaging myself. Instead, I decided to embark on a long-term project where I would document my growth, which is the purpose of why I started this blog. 

Part 4: Rebuilding my life

In the debrief with my friend, I began to explain why I sought so much control. My middle and high school experience was far from ideal, which left a lasting scar where I began to depend on external validation to feel worthy, because I’ve never learned to internalize self-worth. After my glow up in senior year, I channeled the bitterness I felt towards my peers from my old school into proving to them how I was cool and to gain power back. I never healed my trauma, but instead put a bandaid on it through performing, and derived my worth from outward validation because I didn’t know how to build it from ground-up. Instagram solidified my status, expanding what was once a thin divider between my frail, vulnerable self and my newer, more assured self. Yet, I never learned to function without the facade, and for me, vulnerability was still closely linked to the profound sense of powerlessness and shame I felt from my high school years.

In fact, in my first paper in America, we were to share our identity. While everyone else was presenting their kindergarten pictures, I reasoned that the most accurate representation of my identity would be my lifelong struggle with cultural dissonance. Truthfully, I was hesitant to show my pictures from before senior year, because they brought me back to a period before I had control over my image. Although I underwent tremendous growth, I never truly learned to embrace every stage of my life and be confident in who I was before my life started turning around for the better. 

Yet, my friend shared how she was drawn to me for the littlest things I didn’t even know I exhibited in my rawest self, with my walls down, rather than from my controlled image. She said my particular energy, that was extroverted yet down-to-earth, naive yet loveable, quirky and interesting, embodied a child she would like to have one day. While I don’t know exactly what that means, it made me emotional because I was somebody’s dream child, yet I didn’t even believe in myself enough. By presenting to everyone a curated version of myself, I was never giving them a chance to embrace me and get to know me on an intimate level. I was sticking to what was safe instead of taking the risk and showing who I was to others, including parts I deem shameful, and while it may scare some away, some would also cheer for me. And this was what she meant by how I’d never be everyone’s cup of tea, so I had to put myself out there to discern who is there for me, and filter out those who aren’t. 

I heard a saying that you are re-born in your twenties, so that when you’re twenty-one, you are 1 in adult years, and so on, because after high school, you enter this newfound period of growing and making mistakes. Although barely nineteen, I felt reassurance in how no one has everything figured out until much later, and how I get a chance at building up my new, adult life, and this time, more intentionally. 

Part 5: What now?

Being vulnerable is scary because it requires letting go of control, which is easier said than done. I’ve attempted small gestures like going to class bare-faced, but it didn’t change my attitude in embracing vulnerability. Instead, I became less confident to interact with others, or would cling onto my already existing social capital to validate myself. Just like how money can help one live a privileged life, and taking away one’s money would only leave them worse-off, my social capital was what garnered me more opportunities and helped me live a life of privilege, and stripping it would only make me more insecure. The issue isn’t external validation itself, but how I’ve never built internal self-worth to exercise this power correctly, leading to over-dependence and letting it take control over my life.

This blog concludes here, to intentionally leave it open-ended, because devising a plan or a solution right off the bat would only oversimplify the issue. For now, I want to work on minimizing the incongruency between my external image and the insecurity I feel on the inside, so I can eventually let go of the shield. I don’t know how to carry that out, but I will work on finding ways to. Also, since my journey of tanning coincides with when I started to build up external validation and an armor for myself, I want to now reverse the years-long project by quitting tanning and going back to my natural skin tone, which would likely leave me disillusioned again and forced to confront the premise of this facade. Just like how tanning didn’t solve all my problems, quitting tanning won’t automatically jumpstart my growth, but I hope seeing my skin turn more pale over time can be a visible symbol to accompany my journey of letting go of control.