My mother, who had three daughters and a son before me, says she had an inexplicable burst of energy when she was pregnant with me. “This one’s a fighter,” Mum would later recall to relatives, partly because she was expecting (and hoping for) a boy.
For years after I was born, my Arab father would wrestle with feelings of frustration and quiet pride as I demonstrated strength, assertiveness and courage – all the qualities he believed only suited a son.
Labels continued during early life, throughout school and beyond, yet sometimes – temporarily – there are grudging exceptions. Such was the case at my Year 10 high school formal. As a member of our school’s Student Representative Council, I helped to fundraise for and organise this milestone dinner and dance for my Western Sydney high school.
I also did an excellent job of pretending not to care that almost everyone else had a date to an event that would host as many hormonal teens as it would Kodak disposable cameras. It did bother me. Shrug it off! I told myself. You’re not here to be liked, you’ve helped make the event possible.
With that, I swung my sari over my shoulder, buckled up my Jesus sandals and sashayed past my classmates, who were struggling to walk in their strapless pastel satin dresses and pleather heels.
I’m not entirely sure why I wore a sari instead of a ball gown.
Antoinette at the Year 10 formal. Source: Supplied
Perhaps I was trying to own my place, separated from the pack – an attempt to demonstrate that it didn’t bother me to go against the grain. Safe to say, the boys weren’t lining up to escort this subversive, cool sixteen-year-old, who was clunkily wearing traditional Indian dress to the event of the year despite her Middle Eastern lineage. (In hindsight, I should have really leant into my heritage and worn traditional Arabic thawb or a belly dancing outfit and not culturally appropriated Indian clothing!)
One part of the school formal I didn’t oversee was the awards, which were peer-selected and very much the marker of your place in the pecking order. Those labels again. While I was certain of the awards I wouldn’t win – like ‘Most Popular’ or ‘Most Sporty’ – I certainly didn’t anticipate the gongs that were coming my way. First up for me was ‘Most Likely to Change the World’.
I was chuffed to be awarded this, given that I had spent my teenage years committed to what I believed were noble pursuits. I spent my spare time volunteering for the local newspaper, taking photos and pitching articles about issues facing young people from the maligned multicultural suburbs we grew up in.
Antoinette (far right) with family. Source: Supplied
I also debated competitively and ran a youth organisation called Western Future Leaders of Australia that focused on emerging Western Sydney thinkers and artists. This was an attempt to give a platform and path to young people who hailed from culturally diverse and lower socio-economic backgrounds.
I also worked closely with some teachers to deal with racial hate speech on bathroom walls. I was one of the volunteers who spent lunchtime in gloves and with Gumption trying to scrub off ‘FOBS get back on your boat and go home’ or ‘F**k the Lebs’ as well as ‘Aussie scum’.
So yes, I was textbook trendy and popular.
To be fair, the competition for the change-the-world award was – let’s say – distracted by other, more pressing affairs. By my Year 10 formal I had already attended baby showers for classmates and would lose a handful of my male peers to the juvenile justice system.
What came next, though, was a little less flattering. And by a little, I mean a lot. As the emcee read out the next award – ‘Most Likely to Die a Virgin’ – the room erupted into side-splitting laughter.
I don’t remember if I said anything to my peers seated at my table before I walked up onto the stage to receive this put-down dressed up as an award.
I wondered if I had brought it on myself for attempting to provoke the school equilibrium by challenging entrenched racial divisions.
I pasted on a smile, hoping to convince my fellow students – as I had with the sari – that being an outlier was comfortable and natural.
But I felt humiliated. In the cheaply decorated function room, hilarity ensued. I don’t know how long it took for the laughter to subside, but I do know that I didn’t attend the afterparty.
Years later, that same feeling would wash over me many more times, and I would witness it envelop others. More than a harsh joke, this was a form of punishment for daring to challenge the natural order. These two awards have become a symbol for my life course, and that of many other people from diverse backgrounds.
While I was recognised – even valued – as a leader, communicator and agitator, that role couldn’t be reconciled with being desirable or even liked. Therefore I was ‘destined’ to die alone with my virginity intact. The fact I was able to grow a more convincing moustache than my white male peers probably also contributed to why there wasn’t a queue of boys wanting to date me.
Like most teenagers, navigating identity and friendship circles was difficult for me. In addition to grappling with raging hormones, braces, glasses and a face full of acne, I was torn between the clear racial divides within the school. Back then they were referred to as the ‘wogs’ (Middle Easterners), the ‘fobs’ (Pacific Islanders) and the ‘skips’ (Anglo-Australians). I lost friends for not being ‘wog’ enough. I lost friends among the ‘fobs’, due to snitching on their leaders for being the repeat graffiti culprits.
Antoinette Lattouf. Source: Supplied
Yet it was the friendships severed with some of the ‘skips’ that surprised me the most. It was the blank stares I received when I asked questions they didn’t have answers for. Like the time a friend said to twelve-year-old me: “Sorry, Antoinette, my mother said you can’t come to my birthday party because you’re Lebanese. She said we can’t trust people like you.” Not one to back down, I responded, “That’s okay, that must make you feel pretty bad. Do you want to talk about what it’s like to live with a racist?”
Turns out she didn’t want to have that conversation, or any others for the rest of our school life together.
I could accept that answers are hard to find and at least spend time, however short, pondering what was being asked. Why did she just accept her mother’s logic without asking any questions or thinking about it herself? Of course, I pretended not to care, serving up a quick retort, but it hurt. Deeply.
I also felt sad for my friend, who was just repeating what her mother said and was oblivious to how unjust it all was. I wonder if she remembers this conversation, or is aware of the lasting impact it had on me.
Antoinette Lattouf is an award-winning journalist and the co-founder of Media Diversity Australia.
This is an edited extract from her book How to Lose Friends and Influence White People (Penguin), published on May 3.
