One of the first things I always notice after arriving in Chile is being looked at. This is especially obvious in enclosed spaces like the subway in Santiago. Every time I glance up, it seems, someone is looking at me. Or seems to be commenting about me to someone else. Or am I paranoid? I don’t think so. Most of the tourists in Chile are from Europe, Canada, or Australia, not the United States, so people ask if we’re German, or French (“French!” I think, “go ahead, think I’m French!”). I find myself noticing Michael’s pale eyes, his pale skin. At home I’m used to seeing him as darker than me, more olive-skinned, with more green and brown in his hazel eyes than my blue-green-gold mixture. But, in a world of black hair, very dark eyes, and pale-olive- to brown-skinned people—and especially now that Michael is white-haired—we are both very pale there. When I see another pale-skinned, fair-haired (rubio) or, especially, a pale-eyed person in Chile, I am invariably, automatically drawn to look. Because the pale human colors contrast so dramatically with the surrounding human coloration. And then I think, “That’s me, I’m looking at what I look like, and this is what happens when Chileans look at me.”
The range of color variation in physical appearance is pretty narrow among these 4th-graders (Lucy's first class of students) in Chile.—Photo by Lucy Engle.
I’m used to fitting in, appearance-wise, or imagining I have control over when I fit in and when I don’t—by what I wear, for instance. In Chile, I don’t have a choice: I don’t fit in, I can’t hide, and I’m always looked at because of being in the “pale” category. Except, I noticed, on the last few days in Santiago—on the subway with Lucy—when I was aware of people not looking at me: I suspect middle-aged female paleness is trumped by young-adult female paleness, and they were looking at her instead.
In the late 1970s, when Michael was in library school, we lived in student housing in Kalamazoo, MI, with young families from all over the world, mostly Saudi Arabians and Iranis. A group of Middle Eastern kids asked me one day why our toddler Anna had such blonde hair when Michael’s and mine was darker. I told them our hair used to be Anna’s color, and they looked confused; they all had the same black hair as their parents. And when my sister Sig visited—she had very long, orangey-red hair—a group of Saudi kids couldn’t keep from touching it. They asked me, “What did she use to make it that color? henna?” I said, "No, it just grows that color." “But, what did she do to make it that color?” they asked again. My answer obviously didn’t make sense. On the other end of the color spectrum, a twelve-year-old Icelandic girl, Anna Rut, with yellow-blonde hair, used to come by and ask to take Anna Rose to the playground for an hour. I think she liked walking around the apartment complex hand in hand with a toddler who could have been her little sister.
Many Chilean women add blonde highlights, or red, to their naturally dark hair. This is an especially common choice for middle-aged women—President Michelle Bachelet is a visible example. So, we look a bit alike, Chilean middle-aged women and me, except for eye and skin color. Performers and models in ads also tend toward blonder hair. An even more extreme version, in another context, is the use of Caucasian coloration—and facial features—in Japanese animation characters (even in the films of Hiyao Miyazaki, a great director). What does it mean for a dark-haired, dark-eyed culture to adopt the appearance of northern people from European colonial cultures and the United States? Part of me feels uneasy, even though the “chosen” appearance is my own. I wonder if there’s a positive side to the phenomenon, an aspect of cultural globalization? Or, maybe there’s just an inherent magnetism, either attraction or repulsion, or both mixed up together, in every manifestation of difference.
Am I short or tall here? It depends.The other thing I notice a lot in Chile is that I’m short. Why this awareness in a culture where I’m actually more in the middle height range? It doesn’t make logical sense. But I feel very aware of my small stature in Chile. The only explanation I can think of is Kate’s impression that, since short people are always looking up in relation to others, over time we begin to imagine that “looking up” is actually “looking straight across.” At home, I find that I’m regularly off in judging others’ heights, assuming they’re shorter than they are, maybe even shorter than me, when in fact they’re usually taller. Maybe I notice being short in Chile because I’m in denial about being short in my own, taller culture. In Chile, in this appearance category, I fit right in, I’m smack in the middle, and I belong without question.
—Jane
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