I can’t tell you how many times a stranger has asked me if I’ve been punched in the eye. It’s an inappropriate question to ask someone you don’t know, as if I did have a black eye, I can’t imagine wanting to talk about it with a stranger. But what bothers me more than the prying rudeness of the query is the immediate shame I feel upon being found out, being declared physically damaged. The inquisitor always asks with utter confidence, as though expressing concern for a fact, not asking a question. In their mind there is no other option and when I deny any harm to my ocular area, I feel like I’m defending myself in the same way a woman accused of being pregnant needs to deny it while battling mortification.
“Really? You look like you have a black eye,” the accuser states, perhaps thinking they are coming to the aid of an abused woman who’s unable to stand up for herself.
I want to respond with outrage, I want to tell them that they are wrong, embarrassingly wrong, that I would have noticed if someone punched me in the eye. Instead, I’m polite and assure them that I’m ok. I’m not abused, tired or sick, I don’t have an iron deficiency and I certainly haven’t had an accident I’m trying to keep secret. There’s nothing wrong with me. I just have dark under eye circles.
They’ve been there as long as I can remember, like two bruise-colored inkblots pressed permanently under my eyes. Even though I hoped I would grow out of them, or perhaps into them, like the gap between my front teeth that miraculously closed when I became a teenager, I logically knew they would only get worse. My dad has them and, along with his comically narrow feet, this was another physical attribute I inherited. An unfortunate combination of genes, pale tissue-thin under-eye skin, and prominent blue-green veins form a trifecta of unladylike qualities. To make matters worse, a thick vein under my right eye traces the precise semi-circle of thinner skin, making that under eye circle even more noticeable.
I’ve spent my entire life trying in vain to hide my under eye circles. When I was a bespectacled child, my glasses did an adequate job of shielding my circles behind thick plastic lenses. As a pre-teen—when the way you look takes on newfound significance—I tried every natural remedy I thought had the slimmest possibility of working. I pressed cold teaspoons, seeped tea bags and slices of cucumber and potato against my eyes to shrink the blood vessels, took iron supplements in case I was anemic, undertook periorbital massage and made certain I got ample sleep. Apart from chilling my eyeballs and giving me sweet or sour smelling skin, these “solutions” did very little.
As soon as I was allowed to wear makeup, I experimented with various products aimed at camouflaging under eye darkness: yellow-tinted corrective concealer to mask purple tones; illuminating, light-reflecting concealer; pancake makeup used by stage performers; and bronzer applied under the eye to help brighten the skin. I avoided dark eye shadows because they made my eye area look even darker, and never wore mascara because it habitually feathered below my eyes, depositing even more darkness.
I investigated the efficacy of countless serums, creams, packs, masks, roll-ons, gels and strips designed to combat dark circles. Every time a product promised to illuminate the eye area, build up collagen to thicken the delicate under eye skin, shrink the blood vessels or deposit “natural optic brighteners,” I was disappointed by the lack of results. It didn’t matter how many darkness-inhibiting ingredients the products contained, nothing worked. By my late twenties it was time to face facts. No antioxidant could change my genetics. But perhaps surgery could?
Upon the suggestion of a friend, I asked my dermatologist about the possibility of getting my under eye veins removed. I was under the impression I could get them taken out, in the same way varicose veins are removed, as though pulling a worm out of mud. Unfortunately, I was told that no such procedure existed.
So I continued my daily application of concealer, the only way I knew to reduce the intensity of my panda eyes. On days I couldn’t be bothered to wear makeup, I paid dearly for the oversight with the concerns of people who usually saw me concealed. When they inquired about my health or asked if I’d gotten enough sleep, I sometimes felt too embarrassed to correct them. Conceding that there was something wrong was easier than trying to convince them that there was nothing wrong. It’s just me, naturally.
I find it unsettling that there’s something about a woman’s appearance that people feel justified in publically commenting on. When you are a woman, there is little that is private about your appearance and remarking on it almost seems to be a right owed to the general population. In tabloids, women are consistently harassed for their weight, the shape of their bodies, the fashion choices they make and how they look without makeup, but I rarely see this same scrutiny towards men.
If I had been born a boy, I imagine my dark circles would barely be noticed, much less commented on. While men can have lined faces, crooked noses and bushy eyebrows and still be considered attractive, women with these physical attributes are crucified. What makes a man manly doesn’t make a woman womanly. It just makes her manly. In fact, I think there’s a high probability my dark circles, on a man, would be considered attractive in a sexy-ugly sort of way. Benicio del Toro is the embodiment of dark circles as appealing. He looks edgy, dark, mysterious, perhaps even unhealthy, but damn he’s sexy.
And I’m not immune to this either. I clearly remember my first real-person crush (Michael Jackson doesn’t count), not for his kindness or sense of humor, who knows if he had either because all I can remember are these two things: his pink button-down shirt and his dark under-eye circles. I’d like to think that being attracted to someone with the physical attribute I hated most in myself was the most intense act of self-love I’ve ever indulged in, but I doubt that’s the case.
Instead, I think it was something else that drew me to him. While we had a kinship in our shared physical affliction, our perspective on this trait couldn’t have been more different. I covered up my dark circles, felt them to be an attack on my femininity, but he seemed to have no insecurity about his. He was confident despite of them and made no attempt to hide this part of himself. Being a male, he might never have even really noticed he had dark circles. Being a woman, I felt mine were as obvious as a beacon. And if I didn’t feel this for a moment, someone would surely remind me.
You might be surprised to learn that, even with all this, I sometimes don’t see my circles. They are a part of me, just like the thick, white scar that adorns the center of my forehead, along my hairline (a souvenir of hitting my head on a concrete step when I was four). But, unlike my dark circles, this scar doesn’t bother me at all. In fact, I like it. Perhaps because it’s a man-made problem, a physical affliction I created, I don’t think of it as a defect.
My dark circles being an inherent part of me is one reason why I sometimes don’t see them and here is another: when I’m comfortable and confident, I’m less self-aware. It’s when I look at myself through the eyes of someone else, only when I think about how they view me that I default to self-consciousness and I see them.
My awareness of how I’m viewed by others says more about me than anyone else though. The under eye skin is the thinnest skin on the body, up to four times thinner than anywhere else and there’s a symmetry that I like in this physically delicate area being the one I’m the most emotionally sensitive to as well.
There’s a certain freedom that comes with realizing something is out of your control. Through all the potions, lotions, makeup and home-remedies I’ve tried, I’ve come to accept that I can’t change who I physically am. I can hide it, but to do so all the time makes the inevitable reveal so much more jarring.
When I told my Mum that I was writing about my dark circles, something she knows I’ve always struggled with accepting, her reaction was another lesson on perspective. Granted, a mother’s perspective is not an objective one, a fact made more obvious to me when she said she considered seeing the veins underneath my under eye skin to be a “bonus.” What she did say to me that I took to heart was this: “if you didn’t have such beautiful, translucent peaches-and-cream skin you wouldn’t see the veins under your eyes. Your skin is to die for and maybe the veins under your eyes want to be noticed.” Just like Lauren Hutton’s gap teeth and Cindy Crawford’s mole became their trademarks, perhaps my panda eyes could become mine. Maybe it’s possible I could not just be pretty in spite of my flaw, but because of it.
Instead of trying to find a new concealer that promises something I know it will never deliver, I’m going to try finally getting comfortable with the way I look. So, the next time someone asks if I’m tired, upset, malnourished or abused, I’ll try saying something they can’t argue with. I’ll try saying, “Nope, it’s just the way I look.”