By Fleur Howe

“With all due respect, you don’t look like you’ve been babysitting tonight.”

Appearance and dress underpin Emira’s social power, and lack thereof, in Kiley Reid’s novel Such a Fun Age (2019). Accused of kidnapping the child she babysits, Emira is told she does not ‘look’ like a babysitter. Calling to question what a babysitter is supposed to look like – or rather how a woman of colour is expected to present herself. It is undeniable that Emira was accused not just because she was with a white child at night, but because she was not dressed in ‘uniform’. This incident signifies a not so micro, microaggression that results in ‘constant reminders that you don’t belong, that you are less than, that you are not worthy of the same respect that white people are afforded’ (Oluo, 165).

“She wouldn’t have gotten in trouble that night if she’d been wearing uniform.”

(Reid, 228)

Uniform not only represents the black woman’s necessity to be presentable, but also represents the not so invisible traces of slave relations. Alix dresses Emira in a uniform with the family name on it to instate a sense of ownership over her child’s babysitter. ‘At least I’m not still requiring a uniform for someone who works for me so I can pretend like I own them’(Reid, 227), Emira is branded with her employers name in a display that labels her as acceptable or safe to the kind of privileged white people that harassed her when she was not in uniform. For the ‘shabby black person might be read as dishevelled, wild and threatening’ (Dabri 2019, 26). Out of uniform, in her own clothes Emira is threatening because she is not visibly white or white-adjacent to her employer.

Equally, Emira’s uniform signifying her as property underpins the class and wealth disparity between her and her white employers, a disparity which ‘reveal[s] the effects of accumulated inequality and discrimination, as well as differences in power and opportunity, that can be traced back to the inception of the United States’ (Dabri 2021, 122). Alix is ironically aware, and embarrassed of presenting her privilege in front of Emira ‘she took the tags off clothes and other items immediately’, ‘Alix no longer felt comfortable leaving out certain books or magazines’ (Reid, 138). She hides her spending habits as if hiring Emira is not in itself a signifier of her privilege. Their relationship portrays this engrained power imbalance and is emblematic of slavery in the United States, Alix’s childhood home even being described as having ‘plantation columns standing out front’ (Reid, 108). Alix effectively owns Emira, her poor attempt at closing the class barrier between them by hiding her expenses only signifies Alix’s lack of accountability, not her allyship or sympathy towards her black employee.

Emira is plagued by the necessity for the black woman to be constantly presentable. Tamra, Alix’s friend is condescending towards Emira about her braids ‘I’m guessing you’re afraid to go natural’ (Reid, 164) While Tamra is, from her perspective, supporting Emira’s right to wear her hair in its natural state; Tamra is simultaneously highlighting her ignorance and privilege by insinuating Emira’s fear of wearing her natural is purely cosmetic. Emira is not granted the privilege to appear anything but acceptable in the eyes of a white person, the conflict in the supermarket asserts this as fact.

Whilst being shabby makes Emira a threat, Alix pretends to be less wealthy ‘pretending – in front of Emira – that she was about to eat leftovers’, highlighting how ‘the carefree insouciance of shabbiness does not invoke the same social costs for a white person: their lack of effort will be afforded a value perhaps elevated to chic’(Dabri 2019, 26). Alix’s pretence is an attempt to lower herself to be closer to Emira’s social standing, but in doing, so she affirms that she views Emira as lesser.

Emira’s boyfriend Kelley is has an ignorant understanding of racial discrimination, his limited perspective leads him to think about race only when he witnesses discrimination. Emira asks him to ‘remember we have different experiences’ (Reid, 194) his outrage at her uniform highlights this. His comment ‘You should get to wear your own clothes with people who deserve you’(Reid, 190) is ignorant to how when she wears her own clothes she is subjected to oppression and harassment. Emira’s uniform represents the inescapable necessity to present herself in a certain way, a way a white man cannot understand. ‘The white body is not subject to the same regulatory procedures as the body racialised as black’ (Dabri 2019, 26) Kelley goes to work in a ‘t-shirt’, and ‘will never have to even consider working somewhere that requires a uniform’ (Reid, 191) Not only does Kelley not have to work a lower wage job like Emira, but he does also not have to uphold a certain presentability to be respected. Even for Emira’s birthday she is gifted ‘interview shirts’ (Reid, 234) from her friend, indicating that no matter the job, no matter her position she will still have to uphold a certain white-pleasing appearance.

The conflict that underpinning the entire novel is the representation of the conjunction between microaggressions and appearance. The relationship between presentability and the perception of black people as inherently threatening and unprofessional. Dabri argues that ‘until white people are prepared to see us as ‘innocent’ … racism is present’ (2021, 121), asserting that no matter what Emira does, she is not innocent in the eyes of a white person. Emira therefore highlights that to be safe, and be considered safe, she must present herself as white normative, or owned by a white person.

Works Cited:

Primary:

Kiley Reid, Such a Fun Age. Bloomsbury, 2019. Print

Secondary:

Dabiri, Emma. Don’t Touch My Hair. Penguin Books, 2019. Print

Dabiri, Emma. What White People Can Do next: From Allyship to Coalition. Penguin Books, 2021. Print

Oluo, Ijeoma. So You Want to Talk about Race. BASIC Books, 2020. Print

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/31/books/review/such-a-fun-age-kiley-reid.html