Serious question, because I don't really understand beard grooming in general. How can you NEVER cut your beard? Like wouldn't it drag on the ground by a certain point?
I had the same question when I first met the man who would be my husband! From what I understand, hair length is determined by genes. Like how some people can grow their hair to their ankles while others, like me, struggle to get it past their shoulders. Same thing with beards. Some old Sikh men have beards to their stomachs, but others barely have any beard at all. Some of the men with long beards bind it like you would your hair, using pins or even a piece of fabric. MH binds his (it reaches down his neck) using pins and hair gel.
Other Sikhs trim their beards, but there's debate about whether or not that's what was originally envisioned. It's really just a matter of personal choice from what I understand.
Serious question, because I don't really understand beard grooming in general. How can you NEVER cut your beard? Like wouldn't it drag on the ground by a certain point?
I had the same question when I first met the man who would be my husband! From what I understand, hair length is determined by genes. Like how some people can grow their hair to their ankles while others, like me, struggle to get it past their shoulders. Same thing with beards. Some old Sikh men have beards to their stomachs, but others barely have any beard at all. Some of the men with long beards bind it like you would your hair, using pins or even a piece of fabric. MH binds his (it reaches down his neck) using pins and hair gel.
Other Sikhs trim their beards, but there's debate about whether or not that's what was originally envisioned. It's really just a matter of personal choice from what I understand.
This is legitimately blowing my mind. I didn't realize that you couldn't just grow your hair / beard forever and ever.
I'm from the Bay Area too! Where in the Bay Area are you guys from?
Napa Valley originally I miss the bay but do love it where we are now what aboiut you?
I'm from San Francisco originally! I get homesick all the time, but then I go online and look at housing prices and feel better about having moved to Seattle My parents are in the process of selling their house in the Inner Sunset and moving to Sonoma full time!
Post by wishuponastar on Feb 17, 2015 13:27:29 GMT -5
Hello!!! I usually hang out on the adoption board, but I was lurking over here and related to your story. I have a very multicultural family too! I am white, DH is African American. We just adopted a newborn who is biracial...(African American/Puerto Rican)
Hello!!! I usually hang out on the adoption board, but I was lurking over here and related to your story. I have a very multicultural family too! I am white, DH is African American. We just adopted a newborn who is biracial...(African American/Puerto Rican)
Post by ombradellarosa on Feb 19, 2015 0:51:58 GMT -5
I've been following this thread for awhile and I'm finally posting!
Okay. So MH and I are not interfaith, we both grew up in the same church. We are interracial though ("Barely," DH said. "There are no degrees of interraciality!" I said. "You are or you're not, and we are!". This is a touchy subject between us. My mother is half black, half white and my father is white. My husband is white. My mum was slightly disappointed when I fell for a white boy. She wanted me to marry someone Latino, Asian, or Polynesian. ("Something we don't have yet!") She couldn't really be too mad though because she did it. My husband doesn't think I'm black because I have light skin. I've tried to explain to him that it's a cultural thing, not a skin colour thing. He's not completely sold on the idea. What I find is that black people tend to accept me as black without question, while white people tend to deny that I could be black because I'm light and I don't act like their idea of what a black person acts like. It makes me sad that my husband is one of these people. What gives me hope, though, is that my dad totally gets it. We talked about the more typically African-American cultural aspects of my upbringing, such as collectivism and matriarchal structure. I hope that eventually DH understands that as well. The thing is, while I don't identify as "white" and I do identify as "black", I mainly identify as "mixed" because that's what I am. Since it is a cultural thing to me, I identify as German and Scottish just as much. I have had enough intercultural communications classes to know that racial identity is a personal decision, so I don't know why other people so often feel they can define me more accurately than I can myself.
My boss, a white woman, says people often say to her when they meet her husband, "you never told me that your husband was black." As if she should give people a warning, or that is the sort of thing someone would expect a person to automatically announce if they were married to someone of the same color or religion. She thinks most people don't mean anything by it, but it seems like a strange comment to me. To be honest, I'm surprised by the number of people who have others inquire into "where they are from" or whether their kids are adopted if they have a different skin tone, etc. I would never even think to ask someone those types of questions unless they were discussing their background and clearly didn't mind someone asking for more details (out of genuine interest).
As for the comment that you received 12thwoman, I don't think anyone would know what to say to that. Horrible!
I feel like most people expect people's spouses to basically look like a duplicate of that person. I don't know why. I hope there's a legit psychological reason for this and it's not just racism, because I definitely made this comment to a coworker of mine the other day. I sort of just pictured her fiance as a male version of her, but he's this hulking white dude with a huge red beard. (She's Hawaiian.)
I don't think it's racism in any case. Possibly prejudice or stereotypes, but not racism. Not unless you have negative beliefs about people who don't marry someone who looks like them, and obviously you don't. I'd love to know if there is a psychological reason, though.
Funny enough, my husband and I do look a lot alike. We both have light skin and curly brown hair and are roughly the same height and build. Actually we don't look that much alike other than those things, but it's enough that people mistake us for siblings all the time. People are more likely to think he's my brother than my brother! My brother is darker than me and has different hair texture. But I do think we look more alike than my husband and I do. People are just easily tricked by colouring and stature.
Hi, I am a white 34 year old American from New England and DH is 34 and from Benin, West Africa. We met while I was serving in the Peace Corps. We married over there and he came back to the states with me and we have been here ever since, coming up on our 10 year anniversary. We have a 3 year old daughter and are expecting #2. We now live in metro DC-MoCo, but started out in Alabama and then Mississippi (There were many interracial issues there). DH grew up in a very small village, no running water or electricity. He is #6 of seven children and had a tough childhood. He was passed around to different family member after his parents divorced when he was a toddler and does not really have contact with either parent. He is the only one of his brothers and sisters to have any formal education and he only got that because he worked growing and selling vegetables and paid his way through school (public school was not free when he was a kid). His transition to American life was pretty interesting and I wish I had written about it. Cultural differences are tough as are language difference. You don't realize ow many idioms we use that just don't translate or make any sense. I grew up in white suburbia with one bother and two married parents. He is Catholic and I am Protestant which isn't really an issue for us.
Hi, I am a white 34 year old American from New England and DH is 34 and from Benin, West Africa. We met while I was serving in the Peace Corps. We married over there and he came back to the states with me and we have been here ever since, coming up on our 10 year anniversary. We have a 3 year old daughter and are expecting #2. We now live in metro DC-MoCo, but started out in Alabama and then Mississippi (There were many interracial issues there). DH grew up in a very small village, no running water or electricity. He is #6 of seven children and had a tough childhood. He was passed around to different family member after his parents divorced when he was a toddler and does not really have contact with either parent. He is the only one of his brothers and sisters to have any formal education and he only got that because he worked growing and selling vegetables and paid his way through school (public school was not free when he was a kid). His transition to American life was pretty interesting and I wish I had written about it. Cultural differences are tough as are language difference. You don't realize ow many idioms we use that just don't translate or make any sense. I grew up in white suburbia with one bother and two married parents. He is Catholic and I am Protestant which isn't really an issue for us.
Welcome! MoCo here too! Your H's story is so interesting, wow. How far he's come, it must have been major culture shock for him.
Hi, I am a white 34 year old American from New England and DH is 34 and from Benin, West Africa. We met while I was serving in the Peace Corps. We married over there and he came back to the states with me and we have been here ever since, coming up on our 10 year anniversary. We have a 3 year old daughter and are expecting #2. We now live in metro DC-MoCo, but started out in Alabama and then Mississippi (There were many interracial issues there). DH grew up in a very small village, no running water or electricity. He is #6 of seven children and had a tough childhood. He was passed around to different family member after his parents divorced when he was a toddler and does not really have contact with either parent. He is the only one of his brothers and sisters to have any formal education and he only got that because he worked growing and selling vegetables and paid his way through school (public school was not free when he was a kid). His transition to American life was pretty interesting and I wish I had written about it. Cultural differences are tough as are language difference. You don't realize ow many idioms we use that just don't translate or make any sense. I grew up in white suburbia with one bother and two married parents. He is Catholic and I am Protestant which isn't really an issue for us.
Welcome! MoCo here too! Your H's story is so interesting, wow. How far he's come, it must have been major culture shock for him.
Neighbors!! It really was. He just completed his degree which was a huge accomplishment since he came here speaking 0 English.
Hello all! I'm 24, had my DS in November of this past year. H and I are both Christian, however he is black and I am white and we were raised differently. This sometimes poses problems as we each have our own parenting styles and occasionally butt heads.
Glad there's a board to come to besides my regular BMB for this stuff!
I'm really happy I came to this board - reading y'alls intros makes me feel like I'm not alone (especially persianmaman and toratoratori, an amalgam of them might be me?).
I'm half first-gen-American-Persian Jew and half totally-American-and-very-Midwestern-Ashkenazi Jew (my grandma is DAR and from the midwest, she converted from Methodism) and all of DH's ancestors hail from somewhere that was once a part of the Holy Roman Empire by way of the northern Midwest. My parents are divorced and my mom went off the deep end and became Chasidic, then atheist/Mensan (it was a religion for her!), then Buddhist, then Wiccan, she is now settling into the Reform Judaism in which she was raised. DH is an atheist whose dad is a super conservative pastor (not an 'all roads lead to the same house' kind of guy).
It's hard for me because I'm the product of a culturally mixed marriage, who was then raised in a religiously weird environment (I went from not being allowed to watch TV or movies ever/keeping strict Kosher/strict tsnius/shomer Shabbat/etc to one Saturday morning my mom turned on cartoons and ordered us a pepperoni pizza - no joke. The divorce was nothing compared to that radical shift!). DH and I agreed to raise our children Jewish and he has a great affinity for cultural Judaism (candles, challa, pesach seders, etc are totally his jam), but we don't go to synagogue.
Thanks! We are super excited as well - home study on Wednesday. Yeah, it really was quite a sight. We had a more traditional, American wedding, though the ceremony was Baha'i. My relatives kept complaining about why there was no Persian music for dancing, and my great-aunt wanted to smuggle in Persian pastries from Canada for the reception (not a joke - she wouldn't believe we couldn't bring in food from outside vendors).
I did not realize how much DC/former DC families are on here! We live on the MD side of the great metro area, and I kinda love how big the Persian community is out here (was fairly non-existant where I grew up).
MD side here too!
A few years ago H's half Korean/half white cousin married a Persian guy. The had a Catholic ceremony, a Korean ceremony, and then all the Persian ceremonies/celebration. It was insane and took like 2 weeks. I would have eloped!
I'm from Maryland, too! Currently stationed in Delaware, but we go back to Maryland all the time.
Post by pumpkin0918 on Feb 26, 2015 11:45:34 GMT -5
I'm white and Pagan and my husband is Ruska Roma/Russian Gypsy (they a dark complexion), but was adopted when he was little by a white family and raised Catholic. We've had issues from his side of the family about me not being Catholic/Christian, but we've done our best to brush it off. We get the occasional rude remark from people about us being interracial, but I shut it down in a heartbeat and they don't dare say it again.
We plan on raising our children Catholic and do our best to keep them in touch with their Russian and Romani roots.
I'm white and Pagan and my husband is Ruska Roma/Russian Gypsy (they a dark complexion), but was adopted when he was little by a white family and raised Catholic. We've had issues from his side of the family about me not being Catholic/Christian, but we've done our best to brush it off. We get the occasional rude remark from people about us being interracial, but I shut it down in a heartbeat and they don't dare say it again.
We plan on raising our children Catholic and do our best to keep them in touch with their Russian and Romani roots.
Post by persianmaman on Feb 26, 2015 13:54:10 GMT -5
So much wonderful cultural, all in one place, hi new ladies!
beevol, yay, another halfie! My mom's best friend is Persian and Jewish, and I love their get-togethers (though they are even louder than my family, haha).
Post by lovelyplanet on Feb 28, 2015 10:47:23 GMT -5
Hi everyone. I introduced myself on another post but thought I would post here as well. I am East Indian and my husband of almost 10 years is white with Irish and German heritage. We may have grown up in different continents with very different family backgrounds but couldn't be more on the same page when it comes to core values. We have both been very lucky with our respective families and were welcomed on both sides with wide open arms from day 1. Although truth be told H was very apprehensive of his parents' reaction at first. I on the other hand knew my parents would be accepting but maybe not overjoyed. Now when we go to India to visit my parents, my mom is always more concerned about what he wants to eat and do.
We live in a very Jewish town but with an amazing cultural diversity. I am agnostic / atheist as is my family, or my dad at least. H's parents are Catholic and Protestant but didn't bring up their kids in any particular religion. I think I have been inside a church more than my H has.
So we celebrate holidays and festivals from both our cultures without the religious aspect. We are hoping to adopt this year and we plan to introduce our child to both our heritage and culture.
Post by toratoratori on Mar 2, 2015 13:30:19 GMT -5
Welcome, lovelyplanet! I'm jealous of the "very Jewish" town you live in. Please tell me there are delis? Nowhere I've lived - no matter how Jewish - has ever had a good deli!
Welcome, lovelyplanet! I'm jealous of the "very Jewish" town you live in. Please tell me there are delis? Nowhere I've lived - no matter how Jewish - has ever had a good deli!
toratoratori, I am not sure if we have more synagogues or awesome delis here.
Welcome, lovelyplanet! I'm jealous of the "very Jewish" town you live in. Please tell me there are delis? Nowhere I've lived - no matter how Jewish - has ever had a good deli!
toratoratori, I am not sure if we have more synagogues or awesome delis here.
Hello all. I've lurked on this board a bit and figure I might as well intro. I'm 31 and African American, H is 29 and Caucasian. I was raised with more of a religious backround and H could take or leave it at times. We were married in June of 2013 and are expecting our first child this November.
I look forward to engaging in discussions with you on this board.
I've already jumped in a little here, but here's my intro.
I'm 27, and a Reform Jew. DH is 28, and was raised pretty secular with a dash of Methodist. When we were planning our wedding and told his parents it would primarily be a Jewish ceremony, they said "but didn't we baptize you Methodist?" DH responded with "I don't know mom, if you did I was a baby. Did you?" They couldn't really remember. So, that's the background.
To add into the interfaith mix, my mom actually grew up Catholic. For as long as I can remember, she's been as much Jewish as any other member of my family. Reform Judaism doesn't follow matrilineal descent the way Orthodox Judaism does; for us, as long as one parent is Jewish and the child is raised Jewish, the child IS Jewish. But my mom's family's Catholicism has been coming up a bit more recently because one of my (Jewish) aunts is quite opinionated on how we should raise our kids with regards to my ILs celebrating Christmas and Easter, and likes to toss out that my parents did it this way or that way. And I have to say "ok, and that worked for them, and we will figure out what works for us."
It's tiring when everyone has an opinion, and I'm glad we have this board so we can talk about the issues that come up without having family judge!
To add into the interfaith mix, my mom actually grew up Catholic. For as long as I can remember, she's been as much Jewish as any other member of my family. Reform Judaism doesn't follow matrilineal descent the way Orthodox Judaism does; for us, as long as one parent is Jewish and the child is raised Jewish, the child IS Jewish. But my mom's family's Catholicism has been coming up a bit more recently because one of my (Jewish) aunts is quite opinionated on how we should raise our kids with regards to my ILs celebrating Christmas and Easter, and likes to toss out that my parents did it this way or that way. And I have to say "ok, and that worked for them, and we will figure out what works for us."
My new life motto was stolen from Amy Poehler after reading her book. "Good for you, not for me." I can't wait to say it to EVERYONE who has an opinion on whether I'm raising my child "Jewishly" enough.
To add into the interfaith mix, my mom actually grew up Catholic. For as long as I can remember, she's been as much Jewish as any other member of my family. Reform Judaism doesn't follow matrilineal descent the way Orthodox Judaism does; for us, as long as one parent is Jewish and the child is raised Jewish, the child IS Jewish. But my mom's family's Catholicism has been coming up a bit more recently because one of my (Jewish) aunts is quite opinionated on how we should raise our kids with regards to my ILs celebrating Christmas and Easter, and likes to toss out that my parents did it this way or that way. And I have to say "ok, and that worked for them, and we will figure out what works for us."
My new life motto was stolen from Amy Poehler after reading her book. "Good for you, not for me." I can't wait to say it to EVERYONE who has an opinion on whether I'm raising my child "Jewishly" enough.
Post by cupacoffee on Mar 13, 2015 12:54:17 GMT -5
Hi everyone! I am white, husband is black. We have been married 5 years and have 2 kids who are 3.5 and 1.5. #3 is due in Oct. We a're both Catholic, but not religious. I grew up In a smallish new England town that was primarily white. Dh spent most of his early childhood in Africa and then moved to an also primarily white ne town. We now live in NoVa in a diverse area. Our races have never been an issue with anyone and I've never received a single comment about our relationship or children. We sometimes run into cultural differences with his parents, but its all harmless, just frustrating sometimes!
Hi everyone! I am white, husband is black. We have been married 5 years and have 2 kids who are 3.5 and 1.5. #3 is due in Oct. We a're both Catholic, but not religious. I grew up In a smallish new England town that was primarily white. Dh spent most of his early childhood in Africa and then moved to an also primarily white ne town. We now live in NoVa in a diverse area. Our races have never been an issue with anyone and I've never received a single comment about our relationship or children. We sometimes run into cultural differences with his parents, but its all harmless, just frustrating sometimes!
Welcome! I'm glad to hear that you guys haven't gotten any weird looks or comments. I wish it was like that for everyone!
Post by leenziepops on Mar 15, 2015 7:24:00 GMT -5
Haiiiii guise!!! Coming in from my usual hangout June 15. I'm from Australia - before you conjure up the image of blonde surfie chick. Nope sorry I have a Chinese background. DH is Serbian - white and blue eyed oh and big nosed! FTM. Hope to find some fun/interesting threads to contribute to here and get to know about everyone's mixed families
Haiiiii guise!!! Coming in from my usual hangout June 15. I'm from Australia - before you conjure up the image of blonde surfie chick. Nope sorry I have a Chinese background. DH is Serbian - white and blue eyed oh and big nosed! FTM. Hope to find some fun/interesting threads to contribute to here and get to know about everyone's mixed families
'STRAYA!!
One of my friends just moved there and I am endlessly jealous of her Instagram posts.
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