Beauty and the hair saga
Back when i was in high school, i thought i had two redeeming features: my hair and my eyes. I had long wavy brown hair and my eyes are the same blue they’ve always been. My hair was a point of contention between my mother and my grandma. When i was very small indeed, i had a head full of golden ringlets; my grandma wanted to keep my hair short to encourage the curls. My mom wanted it long and in a pair of braids.
Me? I don’t know that i cared all that much, at that age. But i think even then, i recognized that it was a symbol of the power struggle between different sides of my family. The fight wasn’t really about my hair at all - it was about who had more say in what i looked like… and by extension, what kind of person i was.
When i went off to college, i started dying it red. It looked good on me, but my hair is so thin and fine that it doesn’t like being dyed all that much. It tends to get fried very easily. I learned this the hard way when i was in my mid-20s. One night, i was dying my hair and made the mistake of watching a movie while i waited for the color to kick in. Turns out i got a bit too caught up in the movie and left the dye in my hair for an extra half hour or so. Biiiiiiig mistake.
My hair was so messed up that if it got wet, it would stick together in a clump and make crackling noises if i tried to move it. When i washed my hair, a good handful of conditioner was… a good start. It didn’t take me too long to get fed up with that nonsense.
I decided to cut it all off. And i mean all off. I picked up a wig and a set of electric clippers, went over to my then-boyfriend’s house, and proceeded to buzz off all of my hair. He fully supported me in this, because he was something of a free thinker himself (one of the things that i found attractive about him was his penchant for wearing long black skirts; he wore them well).
Well, this was all done in a very hot June in Atlanta. And y’all? Wigs itch like whoa. So the wig thing didn’t last very long at all. It felt so good to feel the occasional breeze against my scalp, especially when the temperatures got to be in triple digits.
I thought i would get people harassing me for having no hair, but it only ever happened twice. One time, a club acquaintance (who was very much off his gourd drunk at the time) called me a “hairless nazi”. He apologized for it when he was sober, but it still upset me. The other time was some stupid college girls who didn’t bother pointing and gawking at my shorn head. I was in a very pissy mood that day, so i looked them straight in the face and said, “would you point and laugh that way at someone going through chemo?” Their jaws dropped, their faces turned beet red, and i turned and walked away.
But you know what? That same day, i went grocery shopping. Not less than an hour after the two college idiot girls pointed and laughed at me, an older woman stopped me in the cereal aisle and said, “I love your hair. I think you look beautiful.” After that, i felt beautiful. The feeling lasted - not for hours, not for days, but for weeks and months. I felt confident, and i felt beautiful.
I kept my hair buzzed for several years. Oh, i tried to grow it back out several times, but it never lasted all that long. I would always get to one of those awkward growing-out phases and then buzz it all off again. I never regretted doing it - not once.
But, as recent pictures of me will attest, i did eventually end up growing it out. I was too distracted by other Big Life Stuff (the loss of my grandma and being unemployed for several months after being laid off) to even care what my hair was doing.
As of late, i’ve been dealing with self-esteem issues. It’s been creeping up on me in bits and pieces - feeling like i need to adhere to someone else’s standards of beauty. But you know what? Fuck that noise. I think i’m beautiful with buzzed hair, and damnit, i’m going to buzz it all off again. I’m going to reclaim my own notions of attraction and personal beauty. I’m going to take back my own head - what’s in it, and what’s on top of it.
March 29th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Lovely! Both of those pictures above look fantastic, but I have to say I admire you so very much for just claiming your own beauty for yourself.
I know I have a really, really hard time NOT looking at my own body and features through the eyes of others. I often feel hideous looking because I simply assume that’s how others see me. I very rarely look at myself and think “Well, what do I alone think?”
I’m glad to see it’s possible to do that.
March 29th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
I find that so amazing you could shave your hair off so easily, and even enjoy it! I could never do something like that, though now I’m getting the inspiration to try. What could be a greater rebellion to today’s standards of beauty?
Not to mention you won’t have anything preventing people from seeing your beautiful face. Do it!
March 29th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
I had a crazy friend in my 20s who actually shaved her head bald on stage during a music show she was doing at a coffeehouse. She told me she was going to do it, and part of me went, “Yeah, right,” but damn if she didn’t play her first song and then had her friend come up on stage with the razor. Long blonde hair all over the place. It was wild. It looked great on her too, just as it does on you. Go for it! Me, I’m hesitant to do it because of the razor stubble thing, but I’ve been tempted, too, believe me.
March 29th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
I think you’re amazing. There’s this freedom about you that gives me a little inspiration to go for the things I want.
March 29th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
You have always been incredibly beautiful bald, because you carry it so uniquely YOU.
<3
March 29th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
[...] I decided to cut my hair today. Actually, i decided to do it a few days ago, but actually did it today. After the cut, some before and after pictures… [...]
March 29th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Wow, you look good with a shaved head. Right the hell on for defining beauty on your own terms!
March 30th, 2008 at 11:16 am
I had short hair as a child (because my mother had it cut off) and as I grew up and started going to the stylist on my own, I’d always say, “Just do whatever would look nice.” I was, at that point, a fat girl who didn’t think I could make myself look pretty.
Inevitably, stylists would cut my hair short at the sides and make it a bit longer at the top, so you could see how curly it was. They’d always comment that doing so made my face look “thinner.”
After years of this, in high school, I finally decided that it was silly to make my face look thinner when my body wasn’t, and I *wanted* long hair, dammit. My one attempt at growing it out in junior high hadn’t gone so well (I just didn’t know what to do with it) but I was going to try it again.
So now I’m definitely the woman with the very long, dark, wavy/curly hair. And I’m still also the fat woman. But what makes the difference isn’t my hair but that I’m comfortable in it and don’t feel estranged from it. I don’t care if my face looks thinner or fatter under my hair. I like the way my hair feels, and I like the way it looks in the mirror.
Anyway–all of this is by way of saying that I think we all come to a point where we have to own our hair, just like we have to own our body.
March 30th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
I couldn’t cut my hair off. It’s too much a part of me - it would feel like an amputation. But then, I chose to grow it out. Nobody important ever told me I shouldn’t wear it long, or that I shouldn’t cut it all off. And it was the first part of myself that I looked at and realised was beautiful.
I love my hair. It is important to my sense of self. It’s beautiful and it’s mine. But that doesn’t mean other people ought to feel the same. They aren’t me.
March 31st, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Lindsay, you look absolutely gorgeous in both pictures! I miss my very very short hair sometimes because it is so much less effort than longer hair.
It is funny, sometimes comments from random strangers have greater effects than from friends (or maybe that is just my cynical self), because one feels they don’t have an agenda. One of my favourite hair moments was when I had electric blue extensions, and some older lady commented what great colour it was.