Michigan in Color & Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
5A — Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Dear Mainstream,

You have seen my thighs 

dangle out from under my 
shorts and my skirts. They 
jiggle, they flap and cause 
problems whenever I try on 
something new. It’s a little 
difficult to learn how to love 
every inch of my body fat when I 
go into a store — take your pick, 
H&M or Forever 21 — and have 
difficulty buying shorts. All of 
a sudden my regularly size six 
thighs can’t fit into your size 10 
shorts. That’s a problem. Oh, my 
beautiful thick thighs — I put so 
much onto you that it always 
leaves behind lines and marks 
from the jeans I force onto you 
each day. Mainstream, I love 
my rolls, the rolls that roll over 
my size six pants — but do you? 
Why don’t you see the beauty 
behind my curves and my rolls? 
I never see my reflection on 
any of those websites when I’m 
shopping online. I’ve rarely met 
someone who looks like those 
size small, 5’10” models, with 
a small bust and a small waist. 
You deceive us, making us think 
those clothes will fit just like 
they do on the models, but they 
don’t. Are they ever tried on by 
someone who was larger than 
a small? You imagine all of us 
to be the same, and you expect 
for us to change until we are. 
Mainstream, you don’t allow 
for individuality, and you’re 
so quick to deem someone’s 
body out of the norm, to be 
plus-sized. Why is plus size a 
different section in general? 
You choose every chance you 
get to embarrass my big black 
thighs, forcing me to go to the 
plus size section when you can 
easily extend the sizes into your 
regular 
lines. 
Mainstream, 

learn to love and accept my 
body for what it is. What you 
see as imperfections I see as 
uniqueness.

Mainstream, 
you 
have 

taken away my uniqueness 
by manipulating my nanas, 
aunties 
and 
mommas 
for 

years. For so long, I was told 
that I had to tame my hair and 
make it look “presentable,” all 
the while damaging my hair. 
My hair, oh my hair, it’s been 
pinched and bobbled, robbed 
of its texture and all. It’s been 
strained, lost, shortened and 
almost completely uprooted. 
For years, my hair follicles have 

endured 
chemically-induced 

pain. Sitting there for what 
feels like years, being permed 
and 
burned, 
permed 
and 

burned, permed and burned. I 
constantly complainied from 
the pain only to be reminded 
that “beauty is pain.” Why does 
it have to hurt to be beautiful? 
Mainstream, you’re the one 
who told our mommas to scold 
us in the morning if we didn’t 
wrap our hair the night before, 
always making sure that our 
hair would be neat. We’ve been 
placed in a bubble where we 
would rather spend the money 
to look good then spend the 
time to be true to ourselves. 
Mainstream, you are a catalyst 
for change — to make everyone 
look just like you. You have 
beaten into the heads of my 
nanas, aunties and mommas 
that the natural curl coming 
straight from my scalp shouldn’t 
be there. You have convinced 
many of them that the hair we 
are blessed with is not okay, 
forcing us to assimilate to 
straight long hair just so we are 
not looked at as beneath the rest 
of mainstream. How I choose to 
wear my hair is my prerogative. 
I want to see my natural curls 
back. I want to walk into a job 
interview with the curls that 
sprout from my head and not 
worry about whether or not 
my qualifications are the only 
thing in consideration for the 
job. I’m slowly having to prove 
to those who come before me 
that it’s okay to wear my hair in 
its natural state. Mainstream, 
accept me and my natural afro 
of curls, just like we’ve had 
to accept everything else that 
you’ve thrashed in our faces.

Accept my skin, embrace it 

— it’s not going anywhere. I am 
born and proud of my smooth 
cocoa skin — my beautiful 
chocolate skin that reminds you 
of filth, that you describe as dirt. 
Mainstream, you set aside my 
skin color as if it’s removable. 
We are not seen as an entity 
that needs representation. You 
were in my friend’s head when 
she thought her only option 
was to bleach her beautiful 
skin — her beautiful chocolate 
brown skin. Mainstream, you 
tell my sisters and me that we 
will be accepted if we look just 
like you, if we try to match you 
as best we can. There’s a divide 
between me and my lighter-
skinned sisters. Mainstream, 
do you only wish to inflict 

pain on me and my sisters? Do 
you know how difficult it is to 
look in the mirror and never 
see the image reflected back 
at you in media? Mainstream, 
do you hear from your nanas, 
aunties and mommas that you 
need to date someone with 
lighter skin so that your babies 
will have lighter skin so that 
your baby will be considered 
beautiful based upon her skin 
color? Mainstream, if you could 
change your skin color, would 
you be chocolate? No. You would 
rather just take everything else 
about black women and claim it 
as your own.

My lips, oh my lips, I was 

born with these luscious, full 
and round lips. They were not 
manufactured — just au natural. 
You constantly tore down my 
sisters for their lips and used 
it as a way to emasculate my 
brothers. “Big lips” are equated 
with 
ugliness, 
mainstream, 

except when it comes to today’s 
reality stars. We embrace many 
reality stars as if their newfound 
interest in having big lips make 
them look better when that 
same amount of tissue in my 
lips is deemed unattractive. 
These are the same lips I use 
to mindfully obey your every 
whim, 
policing 
my 
sisters 

about their hair expression and 
reminding our brothers that 
assimilation is the only way to 
get ahead — all of that to finally 
have my lips deemed “cool.” My 
grandmother actually tried to 
teach me ways to make my lips 
look smaller based on the type 
of makeup that I used.

There’s only so much about 

my appearance and my body 
that I can continue to take from 
you, so I’ve decided to take it all 
back. No longer will I look to 
you for justification. If you will 
not represent my beautiful body 
and everything that comes 
along with it, then I’ll find or 
create a space that will. If you 
refuse to recognize the part 
of your current culture that 
takes parts of the culture that 
I’ve had for years, I will shame 
you for it. Mainstream, if you 
continue to purposely tear me 
and my sisters down, remember 
that we’ll always keep rising up.

Sincerely,

The Conventional Black Girl

The Conventional Black Girl 

A

nnual Report 8/4/99

Adam Brodnax

(Nguyen Dai Duong)

Adam is 4 years old. He is very 

healthy and very happy. He is 
just over 3 feet tall and weighs 30 
pounds.

Adam is very athletic. He 

loves to run, jump, ride his bike, 
skate (roller-skate) and play at 
the playground. He is also very 
verbal. He loves to talk and to talk 
on the telephone. He can write his 
name very well and draws great 
pictures.

Adam is very animated. He 

entertains the whole family with 
his funny faces and actions. 

Adam will tatted a church 

preschool 3 days a week starting in 
September and will play soccer on 
a neighborhood soccer team.

We are lucky to have such a 

wonderful and loving son. We love 
him very much.

James and Terri Brodnax

The following is a letter I 

penned to my “other” self, the one 
that would have grown up in the 
backcountry of North Vietnam, 
in the style of the annual report 
sent by my adoptive parents to 
my biological parents.

Dear Nguyen Dai Duong

Adam is now 21 years old, 

weighs 117 pounds and is 62 inches 
tall. He is happy and healthy.

Adam has grown up in an 

American household. He has 
two beautiful siblings and loving 
parents. He lives with his mother, 
sees his father and doesn’t speak 
with his stepfather. He goes 

to college in Michigan and is 
currently studying business. He 
enjoys learning in school and has 
incredible friends and mentors in 
his life. Adam’s favorite things are 
helping others, socializing with his 
friends, being active, hiking and 
cheering on Michigan athletics.

Adam has made a lot of 

American friends. Adam has 
always wanted to be normal. He 
has found it relatively easy to find 
friends but has never really felt 
like he fit in. In high school, he 
always questioned why his friends 
had to group up and why his body 
was welcomed with one group 
while his soul fit in with the other.

His soul is every bit American. 

He responds to Adam Brodnax 
and speaks English very well. 
Growing up, he spent Sundays 
watching the Dallas Cowboys 
and Houston Texans. He did 
gymnastics 
for 
most 
of 
his 

childhood, learned the trumpet 
and played Little League baseball. 
He inherited old family recipes 
such as Grandma Sue’s potato 
salad and Mom’s pot roast. His 
family tree tells him that he came 
from a mix of European countries 
that migrated to America roughly 
three generations ago. He grew 
up listening to popular hits of the 
2000s such as Britney Spears and 
Santana. In school, he learned 
about 
Texas 
and 
American 

history but hardly learned much 
about himself. He says “y’all” 
and “howdy” while being mindful 
to hold the door open for others. 
His soul fit in well with his white 
friends, until he started wearing 
polos and Sperrys and realized 
he just couldn’t pull them off. His 
soul is every bit American.

His body is every bit your body 

and an open mystery. He doesn’t 

have pictures of his family, but 
he knows that they and his four 
other biological siblings were 
deathly ill. He is treated as an 
Asian American, expected to be 
smart and submissive, and he is 
often times mistaken for being 
Chinese. He is average height in 
Southeast Asia but is very small in 
America. During Texas summers, 
his body is blessed to have your 
skin. He has had his DNA sampled 
hoping to find family, only to find 
a list of diseases he is susceptible 
to. His body fit in quite well with 
his Asian friends in school until he 
went into their houses and didn’t 
take his shoes off. His body is 
every bit your body.

However, Adam is so very 

optimistic. He has put in time to 
learn about the hardships that 
he could have gone through. He 
knows very well that if he had 
survived the sickness in his family, 
his potential would have been 
limited to harvesting rice in the 
backcountry of Vietnam. Coupling 
the hardships with the sickness 
in your and his family, the odds 
are improbable that he will ever 
meet them. Yet, from listening to 
the success stories of the many 
adoptees who have done this, their 
odds weren’t much better than his.

Adam is lucky to have such a 

beautiful and loving family. He 
knows that he must make the most 
of his life in America for you. He 
takes every opportunity he has 
because he knows that you would 
never get that chance. His future 
is bright because his families 
have given up so much to help 
him along the way. He knows 
that he can read everything he 
can about Vietnam and hang out 
with Vietnamese friends, but he 
also knows that’ll never suffice. 

His soul feels misaligned and 
trapped inside the body that you 
gave him. He knows that you and 
he couldn’t coexist, but losing you 
has left him never quite feeling 
full. Learning to love a body he 
has trouble speaking to has kept 
him unsteady, but he knows his 
parents have shown him what 
unconditional love is. He knows 
that happy endings are hardly 
afforded, but the slim chance 
brings him the strength to find 
your story.

Yours with all the love I have,

Adam Yeager Brodnax

Before college, I had hardly 

talked 
about 
my 
adoption 

process with anyone. It didn’t 
start until I took intergroup 
relations during my freshman 
year. Sitting in that class, I read 
aloud my testimony about my 
upbringing. In the middle of it, I 
began to choke up reading about 
my biological family because it 
was the first time I had openly 
confronted that part of my 
life. Since then, I have had this 
urgency to make sense of my 
adoption process. I understand 
how singular it is that I have 
a life in America, and that has 
pushed me to connect the life I 
lost with the life I gained.

I was adopted when I had 

only logged 179 days. I come 
from a family of seven in rural 
North Vietnam. My siblings 
ranged from being 4 to 15 years 
older than me. My dad worked 
in the rice fields during the day 
with my older siblings while my 
mom kept to the house with the 
younger siblings. My family was 
ridden with tuberculosis and it 

seemed that they were afraid I 
would get it too.

My adopted family consists of 

my two American parents and 
two siblings. My brother was 
adopted from two legally blind 
parents a year before me from the 
same village. Five years later, my 
younger sister would be adopted 
from a young couple in central 
Vietnam. Digging through my 
adoption file, I realized the 
life I lost in Vietnam remains a 
scattered mystery.

I was afforded the opportunity 

to live the American dream that 
so many others sacrifice their 
lives for. Growing up, I benefitted 
from having a typical American 
upbringing — stable, suburban, 
white, middle class. Yet going 
through my adolescent years, I 
was constantly being exposed 
to these Asian-American lived 
experiences my white American 
parents just didn’t know how 
to handle. At my elementary 
school, people would ask, “Are 
you Chinese?” When my mom 
picked me up, the teacher would 
be hesitant to let me in the car. 
When I spent time with my 
grandpa, he warned me to leave 
“North” out of “North Vietnam” 
to 
protect 
me 
from 
being 

stigmatized by his old Navy 
friends. I was called several 
names 
— 
banana, 
Twinkie, 

whitewashed. 
Vietnamese 

barbers knew precisely how 
to handle my hair, but I never 
knew how to tell them what I 
wanted — I still don’t. These 
experiences would continue to 
shape my identity as a transracial 
adoptee that I still find difficult 
to articulate.

Through high school, I held 

onto the ideal that I would 

continue 
to 
grow 
toward 

normalcy. I hoped that I would 
find my space in society because 
all my friends eventually found 
theirs. The typical narrative 
about not fitting into either 
group took form, but instead 
of choosing between my Asian 
friends and my white friends, I 
was forced into this gray area in 
a world painted black and white. 
My soul and body never aligned 
like I expected, leaving both 
parts of me facing the same foggy 
reality together. 

One of the important values 

I’ve learned growing up is that 
hope is something powerful to 
hold on to. It’s hard. It’s hard to 
wrap my mind around what hope 
means to me. But as I keep my 
head above the water, I continue 
to define what it means. For now, 
it means that I just want to be 
sure of myself. I see so many of my 
friends being sure of themselves 
and I happily celebrate that, but I 
have always celebrated for them, 
never with them. I’ve never been 
sure of myself and I hope that 
this piece will help me do that. 
I am still on this journey, sifting 
through my adoption file trying 
to find answers about me. This 
past summer, I learned that I 
might not even be the right baby 
and that’s ok. I’ve found refuge 
in that everything that makes me 
who I am is because of my loving 
adopted parents and siblings. 
This journey is very much alive, 
and I am navigating through it 
with the hope and conviction 
that my soul and body will find 
harmony.

— Adam Brodnax is an 

LSA junior. He can be reached 

at abrox@umich.edu.

Life Lost, Life Gained

ADAM BRODNAX | CONTRIBUTION

I 

was born weighing two pounds, 
two ounces — three months 

premature. 
I’ve 
been 

told I need 
more 
meat 

on 
my 

bones 
my 

whole 
life, 

probably 
even before 
I 
can 

remember.

My 

weight 
didn’t 
bother me as a child. I didn’t 
see myself as different from my 
classmates, and the time where 
I could’ve been influenced by 
television was spent playing sports. 
I thought I was normal-sized. That 
perspective changed leading up to 
middle school, when media begins 
to make children doubt themselves, 
leading to tweens pointing out 
flaws in each other’s awkward-
stage bodies.

I 
can 
remember 
the 
first 

moment when I wanted to be in 
skin other than my own. I was 
playing Madden 2005 — I would 
have been around 9 years old and 
in fourth grade. I loved creating 
myself as a player on teams I 
created with the best, most cost-
effective players available from 
a fantasy draft before the season 
started. I would be the quarterback 
and lead the fictional Desperados 
to a Super Bowl victory. I tried to 
make my player as much like myself 
as possible at first, matching skin 
tone, hair and equipment I would 
have liked to wear to make myself 
look as cool as possible if I played 
football. One thing I obviously 
couldn’t match was my weight.

I weighed about 80 pounds then, 

and the minimum weight you could 
make a player was twice my size. 
But I didn’t make myself weigh as 
little as possible to be as accurate 
as I could. I augmented the virtual 
character’s biceps to be the size of 
watermelons. I fantasized that in 
this virtual world he, really I, was 

feared by everybody in the NFL, 
wasn’t doubted by anyone as the 
strongest man and got any woman 
he wanted.

I didn’t love my body, and I began 

to realize how much I really didn’t 
as I got older. I struggled to gain 
weight — probably because I was so 
active playing tennis and baseball, 
and playing in the marching band, 
all of which kept me fit and skinny. 
My metabolism was also too fast 
for my own liking, but I’ll probably 
be wishing that it still was lighting 
quick when I’m 40. I was told that 
I couldn’t protect my girlfriends 
because I weighed less than them. 
I lagged behind in the weightlifting 
sessions during freshman gym 
because I struggled to bench just 
the bar. And television added the 
icing on the cake with fake and real 
images of the perfect man — the 
man that it seemed all men wanted 
to be, and the one women wanted — 
an Adonis with bulging shoulders 
and six-pack abs.

Women 
have 
been 
facing 

exploitation because of their bodies 
and unrealistic standards all of their 
lives. Think Barbie, supermodels 
and pop stars. Though their bodies 
are not nearly as sexualized and 
exploited as women’s bodies, men 
face pressure and body shaming 
as well, even though it may not be 
as easy to spot. Think bulked-up 
action figures and weightlifters on 
the covers of magazines and reality 
television. For both sexes, images 
are touched up so models look more 
“perfect.” Women are made to look 
skinnier and men are made to look 
more muscular.

Looking at these pictures, I 

realize I will never be able to attain 
the physique that is deemed the 
ideal, dreamed-about man. Even 
as I continue to work out more 
frequently and gain more muscle 
than I ever have before, I’ll never 
look as good as the dude on the 
cover of Men’s Health. Because 
of my weight compared to an 
extremely muscular body, I have 
dealt with the lies people tell — 
that I’m not enough of a man, not 

attractive enough and that people 
won’t take me seriously because of 
how skinny I am.

But I want to encourage my 

fellow skinny guys to love their 
bodies the best they can. You can 
strive for whatever physique you 
want, but it shouldn’t be forced 
upon you. We, especially younger 
skinny boys, need help in the 
media. An idea I like is how the 
women’s retailer Aerie decided 
back in 2014 not to use touched-up 
models, using women of different 
body types to model its clothing. I 
don’t know how this would look for 
men, but a start may be not using 
touched-up images anymore or 
at least revealing the truth to the 
public so we will not believe the 
majority of the pictures we see are 
real.

Yes, 
good-looking, 
muscular 

men can still be ogled over and 
should be allowed to feel good 
about themselves, but everyone 
shouldn’t 
be 
pushed 
to 
that 

standard, whether it means losing 
pounds or putting more on. Trust 
me: Every time I am told to do that, 
I say, “I’m trying to.” It’s possible 
that your brothers, friends and 
boyfriends are facing the same 
thing. Just like some women may 
face the struggle and pressure 
of losing weight to gain a skinny 
“model body,” men face that tension 
just to gain muscle. This needs to be 
recognized because, far too often, 
this body shaming of less-than-
perfect male physiques is looked 
over. Men should not be expected 
to “take it on the chin” and move on 
or act like people teasing their body 
doesn’t warrant feeling insecure. I 
know it from experience. It’s hard 
to block out all the noise and voices 
selling drugs to help you get more 
jacked.

So 
to 
combat 
unreachable 

standards and my anxieties, instead 
of envying a desirable before and 
after picture, I’m making my own.

— Chris Crowder can be 

reached at ccrowd@umich.edu

LAUREN INGRAM | CONTRIBUTION

Men face body shaming, too

CHRIS 
CROWDER

Demario Longmire 

Toni Wang

Sabrina Bilimoria

Christian Paneda

Ashley Tjhung

Managing Section Editors

Senior Editors

OPINION

