Locks of Lies
I can’t believe I’m finally doing this.
Looking in the mirror and remembering
A young girl who tried for so long
To fit into a world that always felt so wrong…
A vessel of false expression and fear
That
Has
Finally
Cracked.
Here we go,
It’s time to finally let show…
Who I really am.
I want to live as true as I can
and put to an end
The ignorance of who I know
I’ve always been.
So as he pulls out those shears
And begins to cut off what society had always held so dear…
I can’t help but smile;
So happy to finally let go of my self-denial.
As those locks of lies fall to the earth
I feel a sense of awesome re-birth.
I feel courageous again and I feel bold…
Strengths I know I’ll need as this new chapter unfolds.
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Let’s talk about hair. Well not just hair, but also the way we all choose to express ourselves day in and day out through the clothes that we wear. I get this question a lot, “why did you cut your hair?” I think a lot of people are merely curious, while others want to crack the code of why on earth so many gay women choose to have such short hair. What I’ll do is merely share my personal thoughts about it all. I’m sure it doesn’t reflect all the tomboy gay chicks out there, but based on conversations I’ve had it seems to reflect some of our experiences and reasons for looking the way we do.
Why did I cut my hair short?
Honestly, it all started with me wanting to switch things up a bit and just be myself. Yeah. No gay agenda was present when I got my hair cut. Sorry to disappoint you. I had been considering cutting it really short for awhile before I finally had the nerve to do it. I had really long, thick, curly hair my whole life and had it up in a pony tail or braid most of the time. As a kid, I hated wearing in down. It felt suffocating around my neck and impeded me from doing kid activities as easily as I wanted to. When I got into high school I started wearing it down about 2 times a week to try to tap into a “more feminine” side of myself, and then did the same thing in college. It wasn’t that I hated my hair, but I never could quite find a hairstyle that I really “owned”, ya know? I felt most comfortable with it up in a ponytail.
As it turns out, I had a similar relationship and treatment of my clothes as I did with my hair. Growing up, I always preferred baggie shorts/ jeans and a t-shirt to tight fitting clothes. And I HATED wearing dresses. This was a fact ever since I can remember. I have always been a tomboy, hands down. But I always felt a certain amount of pressure to “grow out of being a tomboy”. I tried wearing more feminine clothes once I got to high school and into college…again, to try to tap into a “more feminine” side of myself. I saw other friends and sisters growing out of the tomboy stage a lot easier than me and I just wanted to do the “right” thing.
But even as I approached the end of my junior year of college, wearing my hair down and being dressed in feminine and close fitting clothes just never felt right. Even as a 21 year old, I preferred my loose T-shirt, jeans, and a pony tail to any other outfit. And when I really stopped and thought about it all…it frustrated me. Why was it so hard to look (or rather, enjoy looking) at least sorta like my female friends or sisters? And then suddenly I had a realization…why does it matter? Why am I trying to like clothes and a hair style that I literally have NEVER liked?
It was around this time that I had a novel idea: “maybe I should try just wearing exactly what I WANT to wear and see what happens. Maybe I should try that short hair cut I’ve been thinking about for awhile. Maybe…maybe I’ll really like it. Maybe it’ll feel like a good fit for me. Maybe I should stop fighting myself over all of this.”
“But I wonder what people will think?”
Gulp.
But I went for it. It honestly felt like a fairly impulsive thing for me to do…well, considering how much I had been tiptoeing away from those ideas my whole life. But it was SO EXCITING all at the same time. I already had a large selection of jeans and loose t-shirts (hey, I never said I was GOOD at trying to be more feminine). So I started wearing those more regularly. Then I went surfing online for a hat. Oh the hats. I already had a couple baseball styled hats. But what I really wanted was a wider rimed hat…I can’t explain why (maybe it was all the Rocket Power I watched as a kid), but I had always REALLY wanted to own a skater styled hat…like Volcom Stone or Hurley. I never felt like that was okay as a kid…partly because I have a memory of one of my brothers telling me I looked stupid in a hat once (funny how those little things can make such an impression on a little kid). I also didn’t really see other chicks around me wearing hats like that. So somewhere along the way I had gotten into my head that it was a stupid and a bad idea. But now here I was, years later as a young adult, and I still really freaking wanted that hat. So I bought one. Then another.
It’s hard to explain the intensity of how I really felt when I started wearing clothes I really liked instead of trying to look like someone I wasn’t. I felt like a kid again, to be honest. It was exciting…like I was exploring life all over again. Only this time, I had the courage to look the way I wanted to. And then the hair. I’ll never forget going to the hair stylist with two of my best friends. In fact, it was around this time of the year…right before Christmas. I was out to both of them and had told them about my new journey to look more like myself…and they were totally excited for me.
I remember just looking at the hair stylist in the mirror. He braided my hair and was about to cut it off, then he said “are you ready?” Yes. I’m ready. Finally.
Seeing that guy cut my hair off was…incredible. I could hardly believe I was doing it. But as he cut my hair and styled it…I found myself looking in the mirror in awe. Not just because my head suddenly felt a lot lighter. But because I felt like I was looking at myself for the first time in that mirror. The real me.
Now, I can’t deny the interesting timing of me finally choosing to cut my hair short, wear “more masculine” clothing, and come out as a gay woman. All were happening around the same time. I’ve thought a lot about it, because for me, my sexuality and how I look are truly two different aspects of who I am. But what believe links the two journeys is summed up in one word: courage.
What gave me the courage to cut my hair is nearly the same kind of courage it took for me to come out to my friends that year. I had gained a new kind of courage. A courage that said “this is who I am…I can no longer hide it. I will no longer hide it.”
Another reason the above idea makes sense is because not all gay chicks dress the way I do or have a short hair cut. There are gay women who blend in so well with their straight counterparts in regards to the way they look that you probably have no idea how many gay people you have truly interacted with. That’s the funny thing about stereotypes. People often look at the people standing out the most (i.e. “boyish” looking gals) and take their characteristics to mold an ironing rod to brand the whole group. Sometimes accurately, many times not.
So what I guess I really want to sum up regarding my experience with all of this is with this statement: Stay true to yourself. Be you. Straight chicks are allowed to have short hair too. Gay chicks are allowed to wear dresses. There shouldn’t be such strong expectations for straight women to wear makeup, tight clothes, and have long/glorious hair (though it is okay if you do all of those things as long as it fits who you are). There also shouldn’t be such strong expectations for gay women to have a pixie cut, wear baggy clothes, and occasionally a suit/bowtie (though it is okay if you do all of those things as long as it fits who you are…I personally love it 😉 ). Society should not get to demand what you should wear, how you should style your hair, or which section of the store you shop for clothes.
When you look in the mirror do you recognize who you are? Do you see something deep within yourself reflecting back? Does it make you smile? If it does, I think you are on the right track.
[I just gave you a snapshot of all positives I experienced with my transition to looking more like myself, but it wasn’t all that easy at times…stay tuned for my next blog as I dive into the ways people reacted]