I cut off my curls last week. Going this short with my hair has been a progression. It started with a ponytail for most of my life while dreaming of a buzzcut. I distinctly remember the moment I thought to myself that I would like my haircut more with “boy hair.” I was 8.
I didn’t do anything about it until I was 28. While that may imply some giant leap of confidence, it wasn’t. No, I took a big risk and it turned out bad. I cut off my ponytail one night after watching a YouTube video. Yes, really. I didn’t think about hair texture and curls when I was convinced by this girl with thin, straight hair to cut off my ponytail. Bad data, bad outcomes. Or a bad haircut, in this case.
I spent the next year trying to do expensive keratin treatments and get my hair to do anything but collect in a swirl of uncontrollable curls I hated. I couldn’t imagine anything but long hair. My hair felt like an aspect of femininity I needed to be successful. Around my 28th birthday, I cut all of my hair except this tuft of curls in the front. I liked the cut. But it wasn’t until I decided to cut even that tuft off last week that I could feel the sensation of being free.
I had been holding on to that haircut for everyone but me. For a brush stroke of femininity.
People are socialized on what makes a girl or boy and hair is most certainly part of the education. We learn early on that boys have short hair and girls have long hair without anyone telling us. It’s simply implied. The formula for fitting in is a matter of doing what everyone else does, so my hair was long.
But at some point, fitting in with everyone else meant I didn’t like myself. I was choosing my hair and clothes to send some signal of femininity, or at least I thought. I was still getting misgendered as a man in women’s spaces and living with a lot of discomfort every time I walked out of the door. I told myself they were being impolite. They were simply not taking the time to notice me. All of which could be true, but the disdain was inspired by something bigger than that.
I didn’t want to be feminine. By last year, I felt like I was applying brute force to be feminine. Forcing smiles at people who were treating me poorly. Trying to make my voice higher when I spoke to anyone near a stall. I even went so far as to tuck my shirt into my sports bra to try and make my chest more obvious. I was trying to fit in as a girl when I didn’t want to be seen as one, just like I did when I was 8.
But now I’m 40. I am out as a nonbinary person. For me, this identity allows me to embrace the aspects of femininity I like, not just looking the part in the potty. It also means learning the masculine aspects I rejected for so long because I was scared. It’s unlearning the subtle lessons about gender I was taught my whole growing up in the South with military parents.
Unlearning comes with new life lessons, too.
For the first time in my life, I know the only person that has to like me is me. My fears about how I looked or was understood in this world were motivated by something that’s simply not real: the idea that if a person saw my femininity, maybe they wouldn’t hate me for being nonbinary. The truth is more complicated.
People who hate people just hate them – usually for no other reason than the indoctrination of some person they’ve never even met. A story they didn’t live. My haircut didn’t really matter at all.
It is not my responsibility to live in accordance with their ignorance or for their comfort. I don’t have to shrink my joy to make room for hate. Because for so long, yes, I did hide for my safety. But now? I’m free to be me – with hair as short as I want it to be and going pee in whatever potty doesn’t have a line.