"James Alan Gardner - League of Peoples 07 - Radiant" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gardner James Alan)

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tropical people, originally from Old Earth's Southeast Asia. The British called our homeland "Burma,"
their version of our tribal name. Burma = the Bamar... even though the same region held hundreds of
non-Bamar cultures who raged at being left out of that equation.

But the story of Ugly Screaming Stink-Girl isn't about Old Earth history. It's about being beautiful.

Bamar skins are like burnished copper: red-brown protection against the sun. Even so, the searing
brilliance of equatorial noon could still damage our exposed skin. Bamar women therefore developed a
natural sunscreen from the bark of the thanaka tree—a paste that dried to yellow-white powder. It
prevented sunburn and kept skin cool. Even men wore thanaka sometimes, slathering their faces and
arms if they had to work in the fields on a blazing-hot day.

By the time my ancestors left Old Earth, science had created much better sunscreens; but that didn't
mean the end of thanaka. Thanaka was a symbol of our birth culture—our birthworld. On an alien planet
like Anicca, people clung to such symbols ferociously. Female Aniccans who didn't wear thanaka were
thought to be rejecting their Bamar heritage. They might even be trying to lookEuropean... which was
enough to get little girls slapped and grown women labeled as whores. On Anicca, decent girls and
women wore thanaka.

The makeup was brushed on in streaky patches thin enough that one's underlying skin showed through
the brushstrokes. A specific pattern of strokes was deemed "correct Anicca style": a single swipe of the
brush on each cheek, another swipe across the forehead, and a fine white line down the nose. Thicker
coatings all over the face might have provided more protection than localized daubs, but that would have
defeated thanaka'sother purpose. Thanaka makeup, shiny yellow-white on dark copper skin, was
excellent for catching the eyes of men.

Far be it from me to criticize my ancestors. But there's something askew in your priorities if you keep
your sunblock thin, risking serious burns, because a light dusting sets off your complexion better than an
effective full-face coat. On the other hand, women have done much more foolish things in the pursuit of
beauty than diluting their sunscreen and dabbing it on in dainty patches. Foot binding. Neck extension.
The surgical removal of ribs. Compared to our sisters in other places and times, women on Anicca were
paragons of restraint.

Even so: if a few pats of tree-bark powder hadn't become an indispensable element of beauty on my
homeworld, "Ugly Screaming Stink-Girl" would have been just a childhood nickname instead of a life
sentence.

Here's why. My mother was allergic to thanaka. She could never wear the tiniest beauty spot without
rashes and bloating. She tried a host of substitutes, but found fault with every one. My mother refused to
be satisfied—nothing but real thanaka was good enough. (Another of those fixations the Buddha called
"unskillful.")

So my mother went bare-faced and became a social outcast. Or so she told me years later. How can a
daughter know if her mother is telling the truth? Was my mother really treated badly for being different?
Or did she just blame the normal disappointments of life on the way she looked?