My Hair Story

I’ve always been fascinated with hair. Since my mother owns a beauty salon, I grew up trying different hair products and doing cool up-dos. My earliest memories of my hair have to do with the static cling it perpetually contained. Since it was so fine when I was little, my hair was flyaway, like I had rubbed a balloon against my head. As I grew, my hair got longer, I kept it pulled back in a tight ponytail. My first “hair experiment” was bangs: I believe it was the first grade and I loved them! …for about three weeks. Then they started to grow in my face, and so I had to clip the pieces back. I spent the good part of two years growing them out. It was a hard lesson to learn, but a valuable one.


I planed my next hair adventures with extra caution, deciding to try perms to force my stick-straight hair into gorgeous kinky, curly, full-bodied hair. Instead, each perm fried my fine, thin hair without mercy, leaving to varying degrees of curliness. I tried curlers, rollers, a bazillion different products and still, my curling quest was largely unfulfilled. I could keep the curl in long enough for a few photographs and maybe a couple hours at the formal dances. Many of the girls I went to school wanted blonde, pin-straight hair, spending hours flat-ironing their hair; all I wanted to do was change it!

I started subtle, turning my blonde hair into a deep golden red. To this day, I love this shade, especially for summer. The following autumn, I went darker with the season change: dark auburn. I loved the dark color, but as my skin gradually lost its tan, it became too dark for me. After deliberating for a bit, I decided that I wanted to try out some funky colors, starting with a handful of blue and purple streaks into freshly dyed-back-to blonde hair.  The process took around three hours to complete, but I was in love. After a few washes, however, my colors bled into the blonde, and while pretty pastels, I decided the next time I would dye it, I would go “all the way.”

Selecting a brilliant purple, I turned heads when I walked downtown State College...there aren’t too many people with crazy colored hair here! Sometimes, I caught people judging what kind of person I was based upon my hair and piercings. But children saw me, they'd gawk and simply beam at me with joy upon seeing my hair color. A child’s response was always the same: full of surprise and wonder. Their parents, however, all had different commentaries, ranging from the overly positive to downright rude. It amazes me how ignorant some can be when addressing those who are visibly different.

No matter, I loved being a violet-head. The color was so rich and it faded beautifully, but by that time, my hair had had it. With so many chemicals, its fragile life had seen the light, and I decided to do what I never had done before: cut it short.

I mean really short. Never once, besides split ends, had I cut my hair. Every inch was a quiet accomplishment, my crown and glory, my Leo-lioness mane. But now, I needed a fresh start. Dyed back to blonde with a short shoulder length cut, I realized something I never had before: I was used to the strange looks I had gotten with vivid hair but I hadn’t realized how badly I had been treated as a blonde woman. I regularly had to hear snide "dumb blonde" jokes and endure street harassment that I had never really noticed before. It started to become a social experiment to see all the little ways my hair color affect how people perceived and treated me. Perhaps the vivid hair made me less vulnerable to objectification. 

I often get the question, “Why do you do that stuff to yourself?” by skeptics of older generations. Here’s my annotated answer:
--Aesthetic reasons: I believe our bodies are the dwelling place for our souls. Accordingly, we should adorn ourselves in the best way to reflect the beauty of our being for others and ourselves. The world would be a boring place otherwise!
--Political reasons: I want to mark that I stand in defiance to many narrow normative ideals that oppress the people of this world through institutionalized mechanisms.  My visible difference serves as a social signal to others who are also different. I hope to spread the word that diversity is good. My hair and body art visually signal to others my alternative viewpoints.
--Feminist reasons: I have created my own beauty standard. It is a form of radical agency for a woman to actively choose her beauty ideals. For much of my life, like many women, I have had to navigate around toxic body challenges. After those ordeals, I think I’ll be selecting my own ideals from now on. This is my version of beauty, always manifesting and evolving.
--Personal reasons: It helps to mark my individuality, and helps to mark different periods in my life. We all must interact in the world, and I want people to know that I value individual expression and creativity; my body is the visual extension of my being.

At some point in my life, I may have to go back to “normal” colors depending on where my career takes me, but so far, I have been fortunate to work for people who recognize my abilities, skills, and character, rather than reject my visual difference. My hair story contains the themes of evolution and fluidity, both of which reflect this period of self-actualization in my life. Our hair helps shape our identity, and I think it’s fitting that my own reflects my adaptable, roll-with-the-punches-type spirit. At the same time, I think it helps to reflect my independence. My hair story cannot be written off as simple rebellion, but rather, it represents my ability to stand out sometimes for more than just the color of my hair.