Moving Closer Toward Myself
It's a compliment if someone doesn't recognize you cut your hair
I have had so many different hairstyles in my life. Chalk that up to a meandering level of confidence, or just plain boredom. Who knows. But I’ve looked like a lot of different versions of me over the past 43 years.
When I was a toddler, they had me in blunt bangs — the kind that take over half your head so you’re just splitting which half goes forward, and which half goes backward.
And then so many headbands. Those god-awful plastic ones with the tiny teeth that poked bleeding holes into your scalp every time you wore them. The kind that snapped in two every time you took it off.
I hated wearing those headbands, but that was not the point. The point was that I had to wear those headbands.
They called me tender-headed, which in the South is just a way to justify pulling the loving shit out of your kid’s hair and ignoring their screams in the process.
Tender-headed. I hated that term when I was little. It felt like such an insult — probably because it was applied as one. In my moments of pain and forever trying to feel safe during the process of someone manipulating the emaciated strands of hair growing from my rosy scalp, I fielded an unsurmountable number of frustrated and disappointment-tinted tender-headed jabs.
And now, I could not be more proud to wear that moniker. As a 43-year-old woman who has survived abuse, disease, heartbreaks, and just being a goddamn 43-year-old woman, I am honored to be tender-headed. My head and heart feel so many things every moment of my life, and now their tenderness is my superpower.
Yet still, whenever I cut my hair or pull it back into any style other than down, I still feel the headache begin by the mere suggestion that my extra fine hairs stray from their birthplace.
So, yeah. I’m tender-headed through and through.
When I was little and all through grade school, my hair was long. Long, straight, and blonde.
Just like hers used to be. Just like he needed to remember hers to be.
I didn’t have a choice in how I looked because I was the mirror to keep them remembering what it was like before they had me.
The first time I got a haircut beyond a maintenance trim, I had to walk down the street to the local salon and pay for it myself. She cut the family’s hair in the house. It was a great convenience and money-saver; I do it now with our family. The difference is my children will tell me what they want their hair to look like, and I will make it look how they want it.
I was about 13 and had decided I wanted shorter hair. Not short hair. That would have gotten me kicked out of the house. Just shorter than grazing my teenage ass. I wanted shoulder-length hair. I was told no. I pleaded. I was told no. I pleaded further and was told that if I wanted to cut my hair, I’d have to figure out how to do it on my own.
It was a threat. It was an empty one.
But I have always taken my threats fully, and very seriously. So I used my babysitting money to walk down the road one night and pay for a 56-year-old woman with a perm to cut my hair exactly how I wanted it.
The house I grew up in was placed inside a very large curve on Main Street where cars liked to speed instead of slow. The driveway was right next to an overgrown and neglected cypress that made it impossible to see anything on that side. When you pulled out of the driveway in your car, you just closed your eyes and hoped to not be killed.
So many dogs and cats were rescued to then get murdered by that driveway.
And every time I turned right out of that house on foot, there was that same fear of being hit by a car, but also coupled with the chance of stepping on a pipe or being mishandled by a stranger.
We literally lived on the other side of the tracks.
But this particular trek was a means to my ends being chopped off, so I proudly braved it.
I loved my new haircut.
It looked healthier; I looked healthier. I looked happier. I was so excited.
I walked back home; the road darker and scarier now, but the thrill of my new haircut lit the way.
I walked into the house. She looked at me from across the kitchen with such hatred in her eyes.
I had betrayed her, and tarnished the image I had unknowingly promised to uphold for the rest of my life. She shook her head and passed me like a ghost in the hallway.
He rounded the corner and we met for a brief moment in the spot between the kitchen and the living room. He started crying the moment he saw me.
He didn’t speak to me for a week. He wouldn’t look at me.
I hated my haircut.
When I got to college, I started to cut my own hair. It all started sort of accidentally after I went to a salon and told them what I wanted. And they provided me with their version of what I wanted. I was too polite to tell them I looked like a schoolmarm that I lied and tipped them 50% in order to make myself feel less guilty by not liking their gift.
Halfway into a bottle of wine that night, I decided to fix it with kitchen shears.
Having never really cut my own hair except for the scandalous moments I smuggled some junk drawer scissors into my high school bathroom to attempt ponytail layers, I figured I could handle it. Just needed to make the back of my head less marmy.
The other half of the bottle later, I had what was sort of like the beginning of a really cool haircut, but mostly a head shaped of regret. And a hangover to fill it.
If you’ve ever woken up to a completely different version of yourself that you forgot to recall, the bottle of cheap Shiraz wasn’t necessary to bring the pain.
I was able to fix it for the most part and it all ended up being a really great experience. I got to see a jawline I never really paid attention to before. The back of my neck felt cool and free. I learned the shape of my face, I think, for the first time in my life.
Then the upkeep took things down a very Sega Genesis path.
I kept my short hair for several years. Partly because short hair is a bitch to grow out.
Mostly.
Maybe
Probably…
…because it felt rebellious.
I went red for a bit just to prove I wasn’t who anyone thought I was. That upkeep was an even bigger bitch. But she was fun while she lasted.
I went back to long several times and it was nice. Familiar. Easy. I even cut bangs a few times, even though I was always told my face couldn’t handle bangs.
I probably did that to rebel too.
I shaved my head a couple of times and let it morph into pixie.
When I gave birth to my daughter, I had about as much hair as she did.
I have always said that a woman needs to shave her head at least once in her life to feel her worth. When you strip away the strands, you have nothing to hide behind. You have nothing to use. It’s just you. Unapologetically you.
It’s incredibly freeing knowing you have nothing but your skin to get you through a day.
I just cut my long hair for the first time since January 2020. I think the craving for ease and comfort, and an urge to figure out what home meant now, led me to long hair during those years we all stayed at home more.
As I was looking through my camera roll for this piece, I realized my haircut now is exactly the same as it was then. Only then, it was residue from the times I was being rebellious and shaved my head. It was the afterthought of a big idea. The continuation of settling back into something not so reactive.
Yet, it looks exactly the same as it did four years ago. And I had no idea.
Four years filled with a ton of life, a lot of loss, and a massive amount of personal growth somehow led my head back to a place she had been before… even though I took an alternate route to get there.
Cutting my hair this time was different. It reminded me of those important times when I shaved my head because I needed to rebel against something, except I wasn’t rebelling against anything this time.
I was moving into something that was both new and familiar.
This time I didn’t have any stale voices in my head telling me what my face can and can’t handle, or what looks best. I didn’t have anyone I was trying to prove anything to. It was just something I did on my own, just for me.
And, you know what?
No one recognized that I did it. I walked around for days lacking 13 inches of myself, and it went unnoticed.
And you know what else?
I figure that’s the best kind of compliment you can get.
When someone finally steps into themselves, we see that more than we see anything else. Our insides begin to shine more than anything we have on the outside.
A good and fitting haircut means you just look like the most authentic version of you.
Is there a bigger compliment than that?
All these versions of me were me before I knew who I was. I was trying on different costumes to figure out which one felt the best. But once you realize who you are, the hair doesn’t matter so much. It’s no longer your prop. You find what you like and what feels like you, and it’s as simple as that.
So when someone doesn’t recognize you cut your hair, that’s only them telling you that you look like... you.
Maybe all of this short hair business still is some sort of deep-rooted rebellion, but I’d like to think it has nothing to do with that. I’d like to think that all of those times I was rebelling against something, I was really just moving closer toward myself.
Or maybe I’ve just suffered through enough ponytails and headbands to never want to feel that pain again.
Either way, I’m happy to still have a tender head to match my tender heart.
It's so true. I like the short hair. To me, it looks cool. In the end, as you said, it's whatever you want. It's just extra. Either way, I enjoyed how this came together. I've been reading more works, and I keep understanding them. It makes sense. You get me to think and look. That's the writer's job. You did it. You got me to think.
I love a great hair story! Yours is FAB! It’s great to connect.