On The Identity of Hair

Blonde-haired Woman Standing Between Green Plants by Tim Mossholder - sourced from Pexels

I'm on my way to get my hair done, so I'm obviously thinking about beauty standards. By the time I post this I will have my hair cut, styled, and colored like Brigitte Bardot, who pretty often competes for the title of "Most Beautiful Woman Ever." I've always loved her thick, messy curls and the bangs that hand in her bedroom-sleepy eyes, so I'm trying it all on for size. I don't know if my obsession is because I really love her hair or I just want to have the acclaim she had--it's always hard to tell innate desire from societal influence, I think. At least it has been for me.

My hair has always been a bit of a contentious subject for me. When I was a baby through early adolescence I had bright blonde curls, and when my mom put me in pageants my hair was of course something that was paid close attention. When I was about five a jealous friend took some scissors and cut the front pieces of my hair into micro bangs (now that I think about it, I realize the story I've always been told is that she was jealous, when given our ages she may very well have just been mischievous without any concern her actions were detrimental in some way). I wasn't allowed to compete in pageants for several weeks, until my mother and godmother (who was my pageant coach) determined my bangs were at a flattering length.

As I got older my hair, like many blondes, darkened into a light ashy brown with a few blonde highlights, and my mother continued to call this dirty blonde. My identity was somehow tied to light hair, to a color that did not belong to me any longer, but that I was taught to cling to. No reason was given for why my darker hair was less acceptable.

In high school I hid behind my hair. My body felt too big, not small enough to fit into Abercrombie or American Eagle, too soft for my teenage years. I let me hair grow to below my ass--I could (and often accidentally did) sit on it easily. I also took excellent care of it, so it looked beautiful. But it was all anyone would say about my appearance. I had terrible acne and I was a weird kid, buried in books and fantasies and not really understanding the world around me. My hair was my own, and when I decided to let myself out of the cage I had built around myself I cut it. I donated the hair to one of the charities that turns it into wigs, but the amount of people who tried to talk me out of it was absurd. They would all miss the beauty of such amazing hair, and they tried to convince me that I would too. They didn't understand that it was, unconsciously for me, a way to protect myself from the world. When I was heading to college I was ready to open myself up to the world a little bit, and I couldn't do that if I was hiding behind a wall.

In college I inevitably came to understand what my hair truly was, but almost as soon as I started embracing my brunette identity I decided to dye it. No one around me was a redhead and I loved the idea of standing out so spectacularly, so red it was for four long years. I went to a salon first, until my stylist turned it purple when I asked for a brighter shade, and then I started doing it myself with henna. Again, my personality was tied to my hair--my blog in college was even named after it. When I decided I didn't want to hide myself behind that anymore, I tried everything to get it out. Once again my hair became a metaphor for my life. At the time I was stuck in my hometown after graduating college, not sure what to do with my life, and I could not get the henna out. Henna dyes your hair in a very different way than traditional dye, and it's a bitch to get out even a small amount. Four years' worth of build up proved impossible to remove, so I had to let it grow and cut it all off.

I didn't cut the last of it off until I moved to New York. My first week in my new apartment I found a hair salon and told the stylist to chop it to my earlobes. Once again I was leaving a part of myself behind and showing it externally through my hair. But this time my hair was less tied to my overall identity. It grew long, it got cut short again, it got layers, it got razored, it got blunt cut again. Sometimes I had bangs, sometimes I let them grow out. I let my desires dictate my hair, not my perceived identity.

I first started my journey to blonde a year ago, and I don't know if the decision came from a place of questioning my identity or not. I had just come back from living with my parents for a few months after a layoff, and my boyfriend moved from long distance to living in the same state for the first time, so I had a new job, new apartment, new roommates, and a new relationship dynamic just a few months before I took the bleach plunge. A few months ago someone commented that my brown was starting to grow back in and I got internally defensive, but I later wondered why. I am a brunette, I'm just cosplaying as a blonde right now.

This year of blonde has been an incredibly difficult one for me, both personally and professionally, so I don't know what that says for my blonde identity. Maybe it says nothing. Maybe I've outgrown seeing my hair as an external indicator of my internal self. Maybe I'm trying on a new identity to see how it fits me. Maybe I'm finding my desires to still be a part of my identity, and maybe I'm finding I'm just doing this for fun. I haven't figured it out yet. I'm not sure it's important enough to do so, honestly. After all, it's just hair.