Blue-Eyed Blondie, Perfect Body by Lina Chokrane (16, New York)

Hi everyone.  My name is Lina Chokrane.

​That’s CHOKE like the verb, RAIN like the noun.

I get it: to someone who doesn’t speak Arabic, you may not recognize the proper pronunciation. I’ve gotten “cockrane,” “shockran," and once someone just gave up. A substitute was going through attendance, reading out names like “David Smith” and “Isabelle Sanderson” and when they got to mine, they just said “Lina”  — their head tilted to the right because it was better to say nothing, then to just say the wrong thing.

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​And I get it. Listen, I hate the way my last name sounds.

I spent years of my life pretending to be someone I wasn’t. I was embarrassed in my own skin. I mean, my close friends know what my last name means, and where I’m from and where my parents are from too. They know my deep passions, my love for the  performing arts,  my hobbies, my goals, who I aspire to be when I’m older. We’ve been through that.

But something they may not know about me is that sometimes when I look in the mirror, I can’t even tell you who I am — because I tend to just reject my own identity more than not. I see a Muslim who has never read the Qu’ran because she’s afraid of what it might tell her about her actions. A Muslim that doesn’t wear a hijab because she doesn’t feel the need to cover herself.   I see a daughter who is afraid to be honest with her parents about her own cultural discomfort. I see characteristics that make me feel alien.  I see a big nose and burnt tan skin.

But most uncomfortably, I see. I see all the things I wish I was: skinnier, prettier, blue eyed, blonde, and finally: white. 

I tried — believe me. I tried being comfortable in my own skin. I tried gaining self-confidence and loving myself. I tried accepting who I truly was. Believe me, I tried. Some days, I spent hours scrolling up and down on social media wishing I looked like those blonde skinny Instagram influencers you see online. 

I mean if you think about it, meeting someone doesn’t necessarily mean you know them. Everyone you encounter — a neighbor, a best friend, a family member — they all might be familiar, friendly to you but you might truly not  know them. When I’m at school, talking to my friends that I consider family, my real  family and even my own mother and father, I show them this false appearance that I portray, an appearance of who I want to be, an appearance that’s mostly a disguise and mostly a lie of who I am.  I’m a 16-year-old American that struggles being a teen Muslim girl. And, as a child of Moroccan immigrants growing up in New York City, I wanted to have blonde straight hair, blue eyes and a perfect body, and I wanted to be white because that’s what felt “normal." I wanted that intense feeling of being accepted, wanted, and looked at. Throughout my 16 years of living, I felt excluded, lost, and sometimes broken solely because of my ethnicity and because I was different. I wanted to be white, and that’s my hidden story. Thank you.