Hair

the non-musical

As a toddler, I had the classic bowl-cut. I think all of us 90s babies did. The bowl cut, the striped t-shirt, the blue fisherman sweater, the overalls. A look which then matures into a nice, one-size-fits-most elementary school version of Keens, quarter socks, knee-length shorts, and a “Life is Good” t-shirt, usually in orange. As a young child, these are the days of freedom; disliking one’s own appearance is a possibility not yet entertained.

The conventional wisdom is that self-consciousness around image starts to emerge in the adolescent years. But for me, that wasn’t totally true. About as soon as I became capable of understanding complete sentences, I began to encounter the fact that people mistook me for a boy, a brother, a son. I had “athletic” style at best, “boy clothes” by most people’s standards. And yes, I had a bowl cut long after most had grown out or been shorn.

Each time a stranger would call me a boy, I would feel like the world around me had frozen, and a movie villain was pointing a dramatic, accusatory finger at me, even if it was just a well-meaning Lowe’s employee. I would hold in the emotion until after my mom had paid and we were out of sight, and then release my sobs. My mom would hold me tight, and explain with a kindness that if I wanted people to perceive me as a girl, I might need to change something—my clothes and hair length being the two obvious starting points. But in the stubborn way that the very young know themselves, I was at an impasse: I didn’t actually want to change my short hair or basketball shorts. I wanted to be like Romana Quimby, quirky and comfortable as could be, the visual manifestation of “my mother lets me dress myself!” But still obviously a girl. So I would carry on with my same look, at the grocery store or at Fashion Square Mall with my mother on Saturday mornings, until someone mistook me for a boy again and the process would start all over.

When you’re a sensitive child, you internalize tiny moments more than anyone realizes. You hold onto a tone, a glance, a comment for longer than is helpful, and it molds who you are over time. From a young age you learn that to fit in you should be attractive, to be attractive as a girl you should go in the far opposite direction of being a boy. So when someone calls you a boy, it’s not a simple misunderstanding, it’s loaded with the personal failure to be an attractive girl, to fit in.

Years passed and this need to fit in overtook some of my obstinance. I grew my hair out into the classic soccer player ponytail. Catholic school uniforms saved me from too many fashion gaffes, and in high school, I adopted the passable new uniform of skinny jeans and a sweatshirt. Before college, I went shopping for the “going out tops” obligatory for freshman girls. After college, I mostly wore running clothes at home and work pants at work.

When I was 27, in the middle of a move (and a drive) across the country, I decided to chop off my hair, which fell below my shoulders at the time. Change to go with the change. I was moving back home and I needed to return a different me. I razored a 3-length on top, 1 on the sides.

My sister and my mom both have short hair; they cut theirs right after high school. We’re not a particularly radical or alternative bunch, the three of us. We just…like having short hair. The glorious, light, easy-drying, no-thinkingness of it. I spoke to my sister about her hair the other day; she’s been curious to shave one side of her head, but worries it will look incongruous with her largely Ann Taylor Loft wardrobe. My sister lives in Wisconsin and has a husband and two young children. While on the phone with me, she also happened to be wading exasperatedly through bags and bags of used baby clothes a friend had dropped off. “When I shop for Zoe (her daughter), the girls’ section is always either pink or frilly,” she said. “Once I found her a blue shirt with a whale on it, and I thought, perfect. But whenever I put her in it, people think she’s a boy.” Zoe is only 8 months old. A light blue shirt with a whale on it.

I did not make the decision to cut my hair impulsively. I knowingly chose to hand in my social capital of conventionally feminine hair in exchange for the day-to-day ease, and a look that felt more…ugh, authentic. I thought back on times that male baristas had flirted with me, the (admittedly very few) times I had not paid for a drink at a bar. I remembered the confidence these interactions left me with. I knew short hair might render me starkly exempted from those moments in the future. And in a way, that prediction has mostly come true.

What I failed to anticipate was how, in cutting my hair short, my gender would become a total mystery to people. More gender-sensitive folks will use “they” when forced to guess my pronouns (I still use she/her.) People frequently call me “sir” as I walked into their stores. “Hello Sir. Oh! Ma’am!” they’ll anxiously correct themselves once they, I’m not sure, get a better look at me? “Can I help you with anything, sir?” they’ll ask. I’ll start to answer, and in hearing my voice, they’ll turn bright red, and lose their train of thought while trying to answer me.

In these situations, I’ll feel like someone who has momentarily had infamy thrust upon them. I’m leaving work on Friday and stopping to pick up three groceries, and suddenly, a small circumference of people has to witness a woman with short hair being called a man, and a cashier furiously embarrassed by it all.

My sense of humor and appreciation for nuance shield me from taking debilitating offense at these mistakes. A lot of people who look like me do use they/them pronouns. From the back, it’s possible I might perceive myself as a man. I’m 5’8”, usually in black pants and a winter coat. I don’t desire to chew anyone out for an honest mistake. It’s just that in cutting my hair (and changing little else), I have come into contact with the sides of the box that encase the definition of “woman” to a lot of society. A box whose edges I also encountered at a much younger age, when the complexity swirling around the experience was instead reduced to the honesty of a child’s emotional reaction to it. Women aren’t afforded simplicity in their appearance choices. Whether you’re a mom dressing your baby girl, or a woman in your late twenties dressing for work, the choices all carry some deeper meaning, some weightier consequence or reward.

So where can I go from here? I’m still in my same toddler conundrum: be comfortable or risk being called out. Because the reality is, everyone in Virginia still says “sir” and “ma’am” for some godforsaken reason. To every man who asks me “Can I help you with anything, sir?” I will now reply, “No thank you, ma’am.” And if I don’t think that would go over well, I’ll just yell “I’m a woman!” back, and let the peculiarity of the need for that statement hang in the air. And then maybe 1-5 people will learn that a woman can look like me. I’m mostly kidding.

But no really, of course all you can ever do is try to change something or change your reaction to it. I’ve been paying attention to the counterintuitive nature of, well, most things lately. You know, the study that shows that most people say they’d prefer not to be spoken to on the train. But then if you actually do speak to them on a train and then ask, they’ll report having had a better train ride. So maybe this is just another example. It sucks to be misgendered, to remember your nice long normal hair, and know that years of awkward middle length stand between you and that conventional safety. But maybe it’s forcing me to work on being more ok with myself. There must be a reason I’m walking around with my short hair, and maybe every time I’m pricked with discomfort, I’m forced to strengthen the foundation around my decisions. Maybe that counterintuitive process really does have some overall benefit I just have to trust in.

I often think of a scene in one of my favorite TV shows in which a woman goes into the men’s bathroom to avoid the women’s line. “That’s the men’s bathroom!” a man (of course) yells at her. “Uh….DUH!” she retorts, and continues to walk right in. This is the kind of energy I want to have. I know that I’m a woman, I just want to skip the bathroom line, and I don’t need anyone’s input, thank you. Because inside, the exact same toilet awaits us all, right? Or some moral close to that.

Caveat:

I know I’m not the most oppressed demographic, I hope that’s no one’s take away from this. I also know that the choices I make about my appearance are, well, choices. And I don’t even stand out that much. I just live in a conventional town, y’all.

Addendum:

I’ve never actually seen the entirety of Hair, the musical. I once watched the first few minutes of it, after hilariously misremembering a colleague’s movie suggestion, which was actually Blow Dry (you understand.) After a few shocking verses about “a home for fleas” and other things I’m not sure I can respectfully publish on Substack, I sent him a bewildered text, to which he responded that no, he had not recommended Hair. I’m glad to know his one movie recommendation to me of our friendship wasn’t Hair, but I love the confluence of events that can make you truly question what you thought you knew about a person, if only for a few disorienting minutes.