Hairy tale

[liv]

[Sort of a response to Hel Gurney's Hair, very rough, I want to write some of this down and I don't know if I'll ever knock it into a shape I'm contented with.]

The first three years I had blonde curls. I wasn't a cute child, and very far from pretty, but I had a cherub's hair. People don't believe my baby pictures are me because of it.

According to custom, I had my first haircut at three. I can't remember if it was traumatic, or exciting, or just one more among the incomprehensible experiences young children are put through. After that my hair grew back brunette and straightish. Not enough curl to be wavy, not enough straight to be neat or manageable. A friend called the colour "dark mouse" once.

For the next ten years, I was dragged to the hairdresser every six weeks. Literally kicking and screaming, I fought and fought against having my hair cut in the style of a respectable little boy. I was respectable enough that I stopped making a scene when we got to the hairdresser, but not boy enough to meekly accept being taken for one after being shorn.

(Diana has short hair, and she's a princess. So what if she's a tall willowy English rose with a team of world-class stylists at her beck and call? Surely dumpy plain tomboyish bookish pre-adolescent me could still aspire to... No.)

Just a few times we were too busy for the scheduled haircuts. Just a few pictures of me where my mop of hair falls into my eyes and over my neck. Precious stolen weeks when I could just begin to see myself in the mirror. All the more misery when it had to be cut back to "respectable".

I reached 12, the age of religious majority. Old enough that it was unseemly for mother and daughter to physically fight over my hairstyle. We still argued over it, an ongoing bone of contention through my awkward teens. It grew out straggly, messy, shapeless, short-back-and-sides never meant to be expanded. My mother wasn't wrong that it looked dreadful. Once my father ventured "nicely styled, it might look nice long". There was a row, and there was the knowledge that the one singular time my parents broke their united front it was over my too-long too-unruly not-worth-the-effort hair.

Some particularly bitter fight when my mother failed to understand the soul-deep horror of being fourteen. As a peace-offering, I agreed to one more haircut. Somehow I ended up with a short bob, still toolongtooimpracticaltoodrippytoogirly for my mother, still devastatingly too short for me.

Five years before I let a blade near it again. Small mercy, the bob grew out the "right" shape for long hair. I couldn't style it, I could barely keep it brushed and untangled. To other girls my age I was too irredeemably "sad", too unfeminine, to be party to hairstyling games. My mother had no advice but "cut it short again, it'll be so much easier to manage".

My grandmother bought me a luxury Mason-Pearson hairbrush and tried to pass on her experience of managing long hair. Mine was totally unlike her fine, straight, groomable glory. And her decades out of date styles cast me further out of the circle of "proper" girls. I was grateful for my one ally all the same.

A "gift" of a grown-up session with a stylist for my first formal dance. My hairdresser called colleagues and other customers over to mock my hair, by now below my waist, never styled, never trimmed. She threatened and cajoled to cut it all off, the condition was so bad it was hardly worth keeping. Still respectable, I didn't weep or curse, I politely negotiated for the sacrifice a mere 18 inches of split ends. What remained they piled up on my head in an elaborate sculpture of artificial curls, held up with hairspray and all kinds of strange devices. I held the tears in while the party lasted, and when I came home Granny and my sister sat up with me til 4 am, patiently unwinding all the tangles and combing out the glue-hard hairspray.

It was years again before I could brush it without pangs of absence, my inexpert strokes aborted too soon. I dyed it magenta once, and for one brief night I tasted what it is to be beautiful. Then notorious for a week, nobody had thought I was bold enough for vivid colours. Then the dye faded to a reddish sheen, and I didn't have a whole afternoon to spare to redo it for such a brief moment.

I fell in love with a woman with hair like liquid poetry. She initiated me into the mysteries of long hair that is also thick, not-quite-curly but making its ethnic history known. Taught me patience rather than roughness to work out tangles and alchemical tricks to reduce their occurrence. Helped me bind my hair so tight it still looked freshly dressed after a day of rushing and a night of dancing. If I couldn't reach beautiful hair I at least managed competent.

I cut it again to celebrate my doctoral graduation. Professionally dyed a shade of auburn to make my eyes green and match my inner self. Straightened and tidied, almost pretty. And eighteen precious hard-won inches too short again.

angelofthenorth offered to trim my again uncut and ungoverned hair ahead of my wedding. I trust her, even after all these years of people wielding scissors to cut me away from who I am. And she made it neat without taking away much of my mess, my styleless guileless hair that is after all my own. Then she invented a style formal enough to get married but simple enough for me to feel like me, dressed up but not some elaborate doll-bride.

Since then it's grown back thicker and stronger, for the first time I've been able to grow it past the tops of my thighs. If all this tangle makes me feminine, well, I suppose I shall have to live with that. There are other versions of the truth, but I won't sacrifice my long hair to be able to tell them.

Comments

[kaberett]

♥

(I must have a rummage and see if I can find any of Hel's other poems online; they're a fantastic slam poet. -- ah, here's their publications page, with links, though some of them are just for purchase.)

[liv]

Thank you for linking to those! I wouldn't have guessed from the hair poem that it was written by a slam poet, but of course people can be versatile. I wonder if Hel's slam crowd overlaps with my brother's.

[rmc28]

I'm so sorry your mother didn't respect your bodily autonomy.

(Also: wow, tops of thighs?!? Mine never made it beyond the small of my back.)

[liv]

I don't think it was so much not respecting my bodily autonomy as, I made it pretty hard to tell the difference between things I actually cared about and instances of just being oppositional and throwing tantrums for basically no reason.

I thought my hair wouldn't grow beyond my hips, but that at least is long enough that I don't feel miserable. Only the past year I've been able to grow it longer than that; I think angelofthenorth's really minimal trim did actually help to make the ends healthier without taking so much off that the advantage was lost by the time it grew back again. Now it's thigh length when it's wet and combed out, almost but not quite long enough to sit on when it's plaited and a bit fuzzy.

[batdina]

my hair, left to its own devices, grows to my knees in all of its curly, frizzy, out of control glory. I mostly let it do what it will.

which is to say, I too had a parent who used to give me a pixie cut every six weeks while I cried and wailed and said things one ought not say to a parental unit when only 10 years old.

based on the picture you shared of your hair post-wedding, I think we are twins separated at birth. Except that I'm almost entirely grey at this point.

and now I'm off to read that poem.

[liv]

Wow, I'm surprisingly delighted to have discovered someone with not only similar hair but similar experiences. My hair is partly this way because of somewhat mixed heritage, but also isn't very like any of my close relatives' hair.

[403]

Oh, I like that!

I haven't had a haircut since I was 8, for reasons like yours plus the fact that I hate it when anyone else touches my scalp. It's not clear which came first.

I seem to be congenitally scruffy, and my hair certainly falls under that umbrella. Right now, it's reached steady state around hip-length, and I don't fight its tendency to frizz.

[liv]

Yay, thank you for the supportive comment! When I stopped cutting my hair at 12 I swore I was never having any more haircuts ever, but for me every five years or so may actually be better than literally never. Yay scruffy frizzy hip-length hair, too.

[angelofthenorth]

Um wow. I feel honoured.

[liv]

:-) That's partly why I wrote this. When you were actually trimming my hair would have been a bad time to try to explain all this background, so now it's in a blog post. And yes, this is why I wouldn't let jack cut my hair even though I trust him in general.

[ptc24]

I grew my hair in the holiday between my first and second year at university. I remember the feeling of looking in the mirror and actually seeing someone who looked like me looking back. The odd thing was, before I did it, all there was was a dissatisfaction with the way I looked, and it seemed like a plausible experiment.

I was rummaging through some boxes, and found some photos of short-haired me shortly before growing it out. With my nephew, then about 9 months old or so. Strange... like looking at another person. I talked about this with Mum, and that's not what she sees at all.

[liv]

Nice. It's good that you were able to think of that experiment and that it worked. But yay for looking like yourself, it does make so much difference!

I'm pretty sure that if I'd been male all of this stuff would have been a lot worse; as it was my mother has a passionate belief that short hair is best, but at least the rest of society somewhat backed me up in my desire to have long hair. My brother had far worse fights than I did over growing his hair, and I am not sure I would have had the determination to persist with that much opposition.

[naath]

Annoyingly my hair stubbornly refuses to grow beyond bra strap length; although on the plus side it is fine and straight and very easy to care for as long as I'm content with "long and fine and straight" (it won't hold a curl).

My Father had it all cut off once. Cue wailing and gnashing of teef. I think it's been more than a decade now since anyone got near it with scissors.

[liv]

Yes, having all your hair cut off is really horrible! I'm glad you've been able to stay away from the horrible hairdressers since then. Manageable hair that won't grow as long as you'd like it is a mixed blessing, certainly.

[cxcvi]

Remind me, when I finally get around to writing the update I kinda need to write, that I now have two things to talk about, inspired by you?

(Edit: Icon)

[liv]

It'd be nice to hear from you and I'm always happy for responses to any of my posts. Thanks for commenting to let me know you've read this!

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

This resonates with me. My mum usually made me, as a child, have a short haircut called a pageboy, because it was "easy to take care of". I resented it, because it was too short and even had "boy" in the name - although actually looking at your photo yours was more boyish - and I envied girls with long hair that they could sit on. Since my teens when I was allowed to grow it, I've always had longish hair (varying between shoulder length and nearly waist length, but it doesn't seem to go longer than that).
I'm vicariously enjoying Bethany having long pretty little-girl hair. If she wants it short when she's older then she can, but it'll be sad.

[liv]

Before I wrote this post, I wasn't expecting to find so many people able to relate to it! I definitely envied other girls with long hair, as well as being frozen out of playing with hair as a social activity.

It's nice that you are able to enjoy having a daughter with long pretty hair, and also that she's allowed to express her own opinion about it when she's old enough to have an opinion.

[forestofglory]

What a story! *hugs*

I've always had long hair. I was born with black hair, but it fell out and very blonde hair grew in. It's gotten darker over the years and now I don't think anyone would call it blonde. We I was a kid I just wore it loose and it was always a tangle.

My hair was short once, in middle school I had it cut to my ears. It looked terrible, so I let it grow after that.

I'm not sure when I started braiding it up everyday. I remember it being hard to braid my own hair at 1st-- and I've never been good at getting it to go strait down my back. It still likes to get all wispy on me -- I suppose I could braid it more tightly, but that would hurt.

I'm impressed at how long your hair is -- mine only goes to mid back and doesn't seem to want to get any longer. (Also one side grows faster than the other.)

[liv]

Thanks for hugs! And yay fellow braider! Like you I have rather wispy, escape-prone hair and I don't really like to bind it tight enough to prevent that, but at least since I was going out with D I know how to if I want it to stay perfectly neat all day.

Braiding my own took some learning, yeah. I think doseybat helped me get the hang of it properly (lots of people use a method that involves bringing your arms up above your head, and I wanted it long enough that I can't really reach to do that). Even now, for normal days when I'm not particularly public-facing I tend to do it a bit lopsided, cos it's quicker that way.

I'm lucky that it will grow long enough to satisfy me, and I'm still a bit jealous of the few people I know who can manage knee-length hair or even longer. (One of my best friends married a woman who has hair nearly as long as her, and when they were dating he tricked her into a wind tunnel with her hair loose, but she still married him anyway!)

[ceb]

I <3 my hair. Mine's long because that keeps the curls from getting too curly. At this length it's kinda wavy with occasional ringlets, but if I cut it short there'd be no chance of a cool-looking short haircut, I'd be a mass of curls and it would look stupid.

I imagine I could get mine to grow longer if I got a hairdresser to sort out the split ends, but I find hairdrying (in particular) of hair soul-crushingly depressing, especially when done by someone else. It just feels like an amazing waste of life.

[liv]

Yay, you have excellent hair. And yay finding a length that works with its natural tendencies.

I never use a hairdryer; I completely agree it takes up way too much time! So I just leave my hair wet until it dries on its own; I'm not that bothered by going about my day with wet hair. Part of the reason I avoid hairdressers is because they take up so much time and money, as well as because I don't trust them not to cut off half my hair no matter how much I tell them that I really truly do want to keep it long.

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

Hairdryers damage your hair anyway. I don't think there's any justification for using them unless you're in a hurry to have dry hair. You can always get a cut without a blow-dry at the hairdresser if you want, which is cheaper too (although doesn't address the trust issue you mention).

[rysmiel]

It depends on your environment. One really does not want to go outside in well-subzero temperatures with non-dry hair; it can freeze and break off in lumps.

[liv]

Eek, that can happen?! That is most certainly a good reason for hairdryers, and yet another reason I really really hope the Gulf Stream stabilizes so we don't have to deal with a climate appropriate to the latitude.

[liv]

Well, that's true, but to be fair, washing my hair with shampoo and conditioner every five days damages my hair too, and never ever removing the split ends because I'm afraid of hairdressers hacking half of it off also damages my hair, so I can't claim to be super-virtuous by not bothering with hairdryers.

For me the blow-drying part isn't the awful bit of a professional haircut; I appreciate they need to dry it quickly so they can see what the finished style will look like. And whenever I have gone to a hairdresser they've charged me a big premium because my hair is so long. I haven't been able to find anyone to do it for less than £60 even if I go for the basic no-frills options. Blow-dry or not isn't the big thing that makes a difference. I don't object in principle because it does take a lot longer to cut my hair than a customer with a more standard length, but I also have better things to spend my money on (booooks!)

[redbird]

I'm sorry you had to go through that with your mother, and general lack of support for wearing your hair the way you wanted.

Like you, I don't think of myself as very feminine, or have a lot of feminine signifiers, but having my hair long matters: the last time I had it cut short, my reaction was that it looked perfectly nice, but it didn't look like me.

This post is also a reminder that we almost never know the whole story: I've been admiring your hair as long as I've known you, and wouldn't have guessed that you'd had so much trouble with it. (I miss when mine would go down past my waist, though in those days I cut it so it wouldn't get caught in the waistband of my clothes.)

[liv]

Thank you! It's really nice that you admire my hair and that you take an interest in me telling stories about it. And yes, you totally get it about long hair being an end in itself, not a way to be more feminine.

[khalinche]

This is so very beautifully written.

[liv]

Oh gosh, you liking it is the biggest compliment I've received in ages. Thank you so much! I don't want to do that annoying coy / self-deprecating thing of refusing a compliment but I honestly can only see flaws in this, I very nearly didn't publish it at all.

[ephemera]

I remember having endless stress with my parents over my hair but in the other direction (they wanted me to keep it long, and I wanted it short - there's the time they hauled me to the hairdessert late the night before some major event because I'd hacked at it with nail scissors - although I think mostly I wanted it to be not!red and compared to Sarah Fergusson...) These days I keep my hair very long, and haven't let anyone else near it with scissors for decades because I don't trust them! (I trim myself, though, for keeping the split ends to a minimum - either just snip-snipping when I see them, or just a cm or two off all over from two bunches pulled forward)

[blue_mai]

what different hair-childhoods we had :)
mine was always short, as is traditional. there is a common thing of Chinese children not being very gender-defined (not universal, of course) and I was the kind of tomboy people took to be a boy and not minding at all. plus I was wearing clothes from the wrong decade and wrong part of the world anyway. none of these things caused me any pre-pubescent angst, and I took them on as part of my identity and pride, in many ways. my dad was a worse hairdresser than my mum, and my sister also had a go. I remember going to school with my middle sister the day after big sister had cut both our hair - she would only have been early teens so just playing dress-up with big dolls I suppose - matching very short on top, with odd longer straight sides. I didn't like it, but I soon forgot to feel self-conscious about it.
at secondary I started to grow it, you might remember. it just kept growing and with a uniform skirt I was recognised as a girl. and then I cut it (I think my mum cut it, or maybe sister) short around the ears, and all of a sudden I was mistaken for a boy again despite the uniform... then it was a shoulder-bob with an undercut (which my mum shaved in, bizarrely), then I grew it out again in 6th form.
and for several years it did have a tendency to reflect the "gayness" of my lifestyle, yes that's right I never really shook off the conditioning of short hair and lesbianism... despite trying to resist with my teenage long hair. well, it was up around my chin a couple of times, not much shorter than that.
since then, long hair has been more or less part of my life. not super long - if it's below my breasts I consider it rather long. it's settled to something that is really easy to manage - the last few years I've rarely brushed it (last year I only brushed it for your wedding - have since bought a new brush!) and it doesn't tangle. I forget about it. I cut it when the split ends get too tangly - 3 inches went on Sunday last. it's long enough to do myself or to get J or anyone to do very quickly. I did mention it to a couple of people I saw that day, but of course no-one notices.

every so often I think about cutting it short. I've never had it properly short as an adult. J doesn't think it'd suit. the thing that stops me is thinking about the bother of looking after it - as it is I basically never have a bad hair day (unless I've not been able to wash it) and I don't check it in the mirror. it's easier this way...

cold wet hair gives me a miserable headache these days. I don't use a hair dryer unless I'm desperate but this winter I did a handful of times.

[kathrid.livejournal.com]

My hair story got more combative as it went on.

Early life I didn't really pay attention to my hair. It was straight, blond and fine. If slept on when wet it would stick up stubbornly despite anything I did to make it stay down.

I think I was 13 - or maybe late 12 - second year of secondary school anyway, when I first didn't get my hair cut during the holidays. No actual decision. Just forgot about it. Hence some bemusement when my school objected to it's length at the back. So I got the back cut. Not the front, because no one had said anything about it. I'm stubborn and contrary like that. Didn't actually want my hair longer, but when people kicked up an unnecessary fuss my instinct was non-compliance as far as I could get away with it.

And so it went on. Almost every term the school whinged, and I continued to grow my hair as long as possible as a protest against unreasonable behaviour. And the front, originally fringe-length, became a centre parted blond wave. By 18 it was basically the same length as the back, my teachers were complaining of a 'curtain effect' and I felt that they were stupid not to let me grow it long enough to be worth tying back, since it would actually get neater that way.

Curiously, my mum rarely expressed an objection during my teens, but commenced when I went to uni. Unfortunately I had found I liked having long hair, consequently felt quite flattered when mistaken for a woman and generally felt like growing it way past the collar length the school allowed. Eventually mum decided to blame it on Amelia, which means one of the more amusing negative effects of our recent breakup is her renewing her campaign to get my hair cut with incredibly unsubtle hinting. She seemed genuinely surprised when I reminded her I liked it this way as well.

[kathrid.livejournal.com]

By the way, I've always thought your long hair to be lovely.