#just fyi this isn't to self pity or anything bc I am mostly happy with my body and looks nowadays cause Idgaf anymore lol

[whistlewhileiblogit]

"You're white, just not white in the same way that I am"

This is something an old friend said to me. Not out of malice or with any intent to hurt me. We were simply discussing if I, a person of Italian (half) ancestry, would/should be considered "white". To clarify, I am undoubtedly half white at least. Irish and English roots on one side.

But my Italian genes have given me a few things I noticed growing up that made me look different to (most of) the pure white kids.

- Olive skin. Currently it is fairly light, but when I was younger it was more brown.

- Curly/wavy/frizzy hair. It does what it wants. Sometimes it is in beautiful soft coils, other times I look like Meep from the Croods.

- "exotic" appearance (allegedly)

- Curvier/chubbier/thicker figure (again clarifying this is generalising, I know not all white girls are skinny)

- Hairier. I grew thicker, darker body hair much sooner than my fellow classmates growing up. And yes, I was picked on for it.

There may be more, but that is all I can think of for now.

Growing up I recall having times where I was treated differently for being (half) Italian. Not bullied excessively or anything like that, but just being treated...differently. It is hard to place my finger on it exactly. One thing I thought was cool was that I never seemed to burn in the sun half as easily as my friends did. That was neat.

My hair was always something I both loved and hated. For a long time all through primary and through half of high school I wanted straight hair. I thought my natural hair was ugly. I remember seeing beautiful pure white women in commercials and movies and wondering why I didn't really look like them. The girls at my school always had silky smooth hair that felt soft when you touched it. Mine always felt coarse. Even when they had flyaways, they hung down, framing their face. My babyhairs simply curled straight up, mad professor style.

My apparent "exotic" appearance is something I didn't really know I had until my late teens-now. After getting jobs in retail, I have experienced conversations such as this:

Customer: Wow, you are beautiful!

Me: Oh! Umm thank you

Customer: Where are you from?

Me: Ugh, Australia?

Customer: No no, I mean, where are you from?

Me: Err...you mean my ethnicity?

Customer: Yeah! Where are you from??

Me: Well my mum's side is Aussie, Irish and English...and Italian on my dad's side...

Customer: Ohhh! Meditteranean! That explains it!

That is an actual conversation I had with a customer, word for word. I remember it, because it was perhaps one of the most upfront times I'd experienced something like that.

Another, much worse time, was when I was once hanging out with a friend of mine. I was explaining to him how the Italian side of my family are racist, and how my nonna constantly used to tell me never to date a "black boy". How they would pretty much reject any partner I had that wasn't at least Italian, Greek, or at the very least white (though that was not preferred, but tolerated). And male, of course.

So he started saying to me: Ugh, I hope you never date a wog-boy. I can't stand them!

I was sitting there (we were in his car driving so I couldn't move) with my jaw dropped. Did he seriously just fucking say that to me?

Are you fucking for real?

I said to him, You do realise I AM wog, don't you? And you know you can't say wog, either.

(fyi wog is a derogatory term for Italians, Greeks, and sometimes lebanese people. It is a reclaimed slur that we call ourselves in Australia. However when it is used in a way such as that we still take offense.)

So he said: I didn't mean you! I meant the wogs that act like lads *he did a (poor) impression of an Aussie-Italian dialect, exaggerating and everything)

I eventually just changed the subject because I knew he just wasn't going to get it. How could he get it? He was literally making fun of my culture. People I knew. Family, friends. And it wasn't funny or light-hearted, it was done with hate.

My body was and still is something I struggle with. Of course this isn't exclusive to me, but my issues were a tad different to the white girls I knew growing up.

They could shave their blonde leg hairs and pubes, no worries. I couldn't unless I wanted a five o'clock shadow and multiple ingrown hairs.

My figure was just a totally different shape. My hips came in far sooner than theirs. I developed a very clear-cut "hourglass" figure. Though at the time it wasn't desired. At the time skinny, slim was in. The flatter you were (with the exception of breasts), the better. So I loathed my hips, thighs, stomach and ass. I thought I was fat. I was told I was. I spoke frequently about wishing I could get liposuction. I wanted a thigh gap like those blonde haired girls. I wanted to be pretty just like them. Pretty girls didn't have chub like me. They had bodies as straight as their hair. I looked dirty and ugly in my own mind. I wasn't dainty or feminine. Those girls didn't have to worry about shaving their moustache out of embarrassment before school every morning. They didn't have to worry that because of their wide hips they took up too much space when sitting besides others.

Yet whilst growing up in a very "white" society, being told the way I looked wasn't ideal, that I was fat and ugly by other people and media...I had the opposite from my Italian side.

"You look so skinny!" my nonna would cry, going on about how sick I apparently looked. "You need to eat more! Put on more weight!"

Yet in the same vein, people would poke my tummy and giggle. And I know this isn't just me. It is very much a wog thing. A nonna thing. Though I didn't know that then.

White boys I interacted with would call me "cute" "chubby" and say things like "I don't mind a bit of extra" but go for skinnier girls anyway.

But Italians loved my body?? "Why are you so self conscious?" one Italian guy said to me, "you literally have the perfect body!"

"child-bearing hips!" another friend once called my figure.

Needless to say I had no idea what to think of my own body without thinking about what everyone else thought.

Another thing about my body, was my breasts. My nipples, specifically. I hated them so much. I remember watching teen movies, or even porn, and seeing white girls with their tiny, perfectly pink little nips. I wondered why mine didn't look like that. Mine were bigger and browner.

I recall going to see Pitch Perfect with some friends. I remember early on in the movie there being a joke where the punchline was a girl had "bologna nipples", in which they showed her very dark, large nipples through her shirt. I remember instantly recoiling as everyone in the theatre laughed. But to me, that was what I felt like. It was exaggerated, of course, but ultimately that was the joke. I had bologna nipples. And that was ugly, and something worth laughing over.

And I've spoken a bit about my body hair. I grew armpit hair and pubes faster than even some of the boys in school. I learned quickly that people found it disgusting. So I turned to getting waxed, which was too painful for me to handle as a child. But I went through it, with tears, because I didn't want to be picked on for that.

So we circle back to that original line; "you're white, just not white in the same way I am".

I can't explain quite how often I think about that statement. To me, it really reflects the culture we're living in.

A friend of mine and I once were discussing the history of racism in Australia, and he said something that stuck out a lot to me.

"The colonisers hated the aboriginals, the Chinese, and the Italians. But they hated the Italians slightly less because they decided they were white enough."

And that hit me. That really is how we are seen even today. Italians, Greeks, Lebanese...we are white enough.

So we live with micro-aggressions, barely even noticing them until they stand out like a sore thumb. And we continue to ignore them because at least we don't have it AS bad.

There are still debates as to whether or not Italians should be classified as white. I have looked far too much into it to know.

But from what I see, we are stuck in a weird middle ground, belonging neither to the whites nor POC's. We are simply "white enough".