My hair has never been my own.
At five years old, I cut myself bangs. Every summer, we visited Pensacola and my grandparents to celebrate mine and my sister's birthday (though our vacation was always over her actual birthday, never mine). I was being watched by my Bà while my parents were out of the house and I made my way to their bathroom, found a pair of scissors, and cut my long hair right off. A sliver of my personality shone through the cracks between the roughly chopped hair above my eyes. My mother was devastated. It took me 10 years to grow it out alongside the repeated retellings out of her mouth.
By the time I was sixteen, my hair had grown down to my waist. The purple hair dye a stylist in Vietnam had slathered over the ends of my hair when I was fourteen had grown out now and all that was left was the dark brown locks that my peers had always tried to convince me were black. We had gone to Vietnam during the winter of 2019, before COVID forced a shutdown on all U.S. travel. My mom, brother, and dad were all getting stick and poke tattoos, and I stood by, too young to join them. Even in a country where I looked more similar to anyone I had ever seen, I felt out of place nonetheless.
My fingers carefully wove my hair into a braid before my race. I would place my tinted sunglasses over top, pulling strands out from my temples to contour my face. The roundness of my cheeks were elongated by the long strands. My teammates marveled at how beautiful and straight it was. The low maintenance of my hair was the object of their desire. They would ask how I got it so smooth and I would say I only washed and conditioned it, prompting a laugh out of jealousy.
My mother would run her hands through it and talk about how jealous she was of my hair and she would say, “don’t ever cut it.”
I sat in my best friend’s light blue Honda CRV, running my hands through it saying, “don’t ever let me cut it.”
At nineteen, I stared at myself in the mirror. My hair– while it grew– it grew slowly, still resting just above my waist. Blanketed over most of my body, contouring around the curves of my torso and shoulders, it hid features I found most harsh about myself. The entirety of my middle school, highschool, and early college years, I hid behind the flowing wall of dark brown fur. During the winter, draped in scarves and hats and coats, the fur would travel up my neck, suffocating me, the sharp ends digging into my shoulders.
Out of fear, I rarely allowed my mind to wonder about the skin underneath, and what freedom might feel like. When the voice rang out in my ears as I stared at the tresses covering my breasts and the birthmark on my left shoulder, I would slide my shirt back over my head and crawl back in bed. Eventually, the desire ran deeper through my veins, traveling up from my heart, into my neck, suffocating me, the sharp ends digging into my shoulders. Then, it was all I could think about.
Are you nervous? My mother asked me the night before my appointment. Are you? I replied. She nodded her head. Are you nervous that I won’t like it? I questioned deeper.
I’m worried that I won’t like it. She replied.
As I sat down in the chair, the stylist immediately ran her hands through my hair. When I told her I was going short, she widened her eyes and looked at my mom. She had insisted on coming to see it cut, and though I didn’t really want her there, I felt the only way she’d believe it was true was if she saw it for herself.
My body couldn’t be hidden any longer. The years of stress, rejection, and heartbreak fell to the ground as I asked her to cut it shorter. The light in my eyes dimmed and I began to see myself for the first time since I was twelve.
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