"I myself have working-class, racialized friends who have spent hundreds of dollars on beauty procedures while living paycheque to paycheque. One of my cousins even used her hard-earned money to buy a new purse instead of a textbook for a university class she needed to graduate. I remember her squealing about the bag, telling me she looked like the 'ladies who work in offices.' I’m not shaming them, because I’ve been there too. When I was younger, I wanted to be a chemist and create a makeup brand for darker skin tones. In my mind, I took the saying 'Dress for the job you want, not the job you have' literally. I gleaned what a scientist should look like from television—think Gwen Stacy from Spider-Man—and wanted to look like that too. In my third year of university, I tried to pay—with my student loans—for a nose job and a laser skin resurfacing procedure, which the doctor refused to do. A good five years of my youth were spent starving myself, micromanaging my facial expressions, and monitoring my high-pitched voice to fit my idea of a scientist and, later, a journalist."
~ Ashlynn Chand
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