“Come here, let me show something.”
I heard this a lot as a kid, and I knew what it meant. My mom and my aunt were talking about hair. They would call me over and show whatever style they were talking about with mine. I probably wanted to do something else. But I had to sit there and wait until they finished with the demonstration. I think this was part of what started me overthinking my hair.
It wasn’t really about the hair, I have no real reason to think about it so much. It’s straight, grows pretty fast, has a good color. I know it was really about myself. My hair has always been an easy way to please people. My mom and aunt liked to play with it. People would comment on it being so dark and long, compliments almost always connected to my hair. I don’t know when my anxieties about myself as a whole started but I never doubted that people really liked my hair.
I would put in high pony tails, a long single braid or two long ones. Sometimes I even let just loose and long. Most of the time, my hair was accessible to the outside world. Like I said, I knew people liked it- I made sure they could touch it even if at times I didn’t want it touched. If it overheated me, got in my way, in any way inconvenienced me — I would just take it. In my head it was a small price to pay for the acceptance. At some point it became one of the very few things I liked about myself. I said before I didn’t know when my anxieties about myself started, but they were very much like the analogy of the frog in slow boiling water. By the point it gets hot enough to burn you don’t notice because it had slowly been building.
Any time I even considered a change for my hair, Amy March would speak up in my head. I would hear the Little Women character declare my hair “Your one beauty!” like she had done to her sister. I was convinced if I did anything I would be like Jo March, in tears and regret over my hair. Couldn’t allow myself that and worse to loose what I was sure was something I wasn’t being teased and bullied for. If I cut it, if I did anything to it, even if I just kept it pulled up for myself, I would loose what little approval I had. I might have been pushed around for reasons that I have never been able to pin point, but they thought my hair was pretty.
Maybe this was why 7th grade was when I first started thinking about cutting it seriously. I was away from most of those kids that had made me feel like it was the only good thing about me. I had new friends, ones who liked my hair but also liked my smile, my talks, myself. They told me my hair was pretty of course, but they also laughed with me, thought I was funny, even if by this point I had trouble believing it about myself. I loved them, still love the ones I still see all the time. I started pulling my hair into buns more saying it was better for a school that was specialized in art. Don’t want it to get into paint, plaster, inks. Even if it would have been fun to make it other colors…
What could I do with it? I couldn’t dye it, all I heard was that dyeing was death to hair. Probably true with older dyes. I couldn’t curl it, it was thin and smooth and held no shape. Updos where complicated, I couldn’t get my mom to spend her morning doing something complicated or do it myself, I was slow enough already. Cutting it was the only option. This was the only way to do something that would change my hair. I was still afraid. My friends liked me…but what if the hair still mattered? My family was always good with me and gave me praise for others things, but what if loosing my hair meant loosing that? My aunt had equally long hair, we were the long haired girls of the family. Would I loose that connection with her? It sounds dumb, but by now over analyzing everything about me was a daily ritual. My hair was one of the constants I didn’t have to worry about. Not sure how I convinced myself, I know part of it was to say I would donate it because it was so long. Midway through 9th grade…I cut it.
The bob reached my shoulders, with some stylish bangs. My friends loved it, they teased my hair had been so long and pretty but they didn’t push me away. My family would tell me that I looked stylish and mature. My grandmother constantly told me I looked like a popular telenovela anti-heroine, quite a praise since I knew she considered the woman one of her favorite characters. My aunt still loved playing with my hair, giving me tips to care for it and even if it was short how to style it nicely. It was the first time I did something to myself for me and it wasn’t a punishment for some perfection I had set up for myself that I could never reach. And no one had screamed I had destroyed my one beauty. Amy March had been wrong.
It might seem like this cleared up everything. But 9th grade was a hard year. the school went through administrative changes that made it seem like I would fail and never be able to follow my dreams. My anxieties about myself resulted in a self destructive attitudes that caused my still best friend to tell me I looked sick and needed to do something. I was in the boiling water by this point, not noticing it was burning me. My hair was a comfort, because even if I had changed it and made it mine, it was still there. I could run my fingers in it, brush it, wash it, just constantly touch it. Funny enough…it was when it started falling that I realized my best friend was right.
The rest of high school was just this. I would let it grow longer, and then have this whole crisis all over again. Deep down, I wanted some magic power. I wanted to be able to be like dolls you could cut their hair and then grow it again. To be able to change it at will depending on my mood. If I felt like short hair I could make it so. When the next day I was all over my long hair I could will it to instantly grow. This is, of course, impossible. But cutting was my go to. My best friend, to this day she is more my sister than just a friend, would always tease me about it. She loves my hair long, but she loves long hair in general. Her love for me is not tied to my hair, but she sometimes jokingly complains she never has known me to love my long hair. And I do I really do. Even when in college I cut it to a 1920’s style bob right up to my cheeks. Or when I did an under cut…and then went all the way and almost buzz cut it all while I was in grad school.
Cutting my hair has become a way for me feel like I have some control over myself. It’s a cliche, but when I need a change I cut my hair. It has helped me slowly realize that the issues where not about the hair but about myself and to work on it. I realize that I still hesitate to do things because I worry about what others will think and will I loose them. Will my friends stop caring about me over something trivial? Will my family be disappointed over a silly choice? Could something that seems so unimportant as whether or not I choose to cut my hair be what ends a relationship? Obviously not. They tease, they joke, but never leave. Even after my aunt passed away suddenly, it had been hard for a time to cut my hair, but having it long also felt like something I couldn’t handle at the moment. I’m not sure what I did then, I think I ended up cutting it again but not extremely short. Either way, I know she wold not have cared as long as it had been what I wanted to do.
In the end, the truth is that is what has mattered to them. To the people who care about me. I wasn’t overthinking my hair all this time, or any time I look in the mirror and consider the pair of scissors I got at the start of this quarantine. Yes it’s hair, but its me. For so long, my hair was the easy out to being liked that it is hard to move away from it. I have now cut it myself, dyed it at home. I still have not had regrets…other than wishing I had cleared up my hair a little to get the color showing more.
Hair has been my refuge to take control of myself in a way that wont hurt me. Hair grows back, if I cut it will come back. If I dye it it will grow into it’s color again. No matter what I do with it, reshaped it, pull it up, let it down, it will be there and in the end of the day I can go back to square one. It’s a comfort for my very anxious self. As I said, I still hesitate. I still want to please and my hair is still the easiest way. But my anxiety meds have made it easier for me to say f*uck it all and take a pair of scissors to it myself.
I will never stop overthinking myself. I don’t think I can fix that, the damage has been done, the water has burned me. But I have realized it was burning and stepped out. Now its a matter of taking care of those wounds. I have the people who love me. People who care and who no matter what my hair does they will still be there because its me and not it that they like…or well, both of us. I can play with it and very happily say “Come here, let me show you something.” myself as I see a new style to try.
