I GOT MY HAIR CHOPPED!
...above my shoulders, which I never thought in my life I’d choose to do.
I have been attached to my long hair for as long as I can remember.
I always dreamed of growing my hair out as a little girl, but I was forced by my mother to have short hair up until the end of middle school. I spent my childhood years envying the girls who had enough hair to brush passed their shoulders. To flip around. To look “girly.” When I was finally old enough to courageously voice what I wanted to do with my hair, making the decision to keep it long became more of a rebellious act than pure desire. I think my inner child held in so much rage from being stripped of the freedom to express myself in the way that I wanted, and I definitely took that out on my mother.
It’s so confusing as a child of immigrants to grow up being oppressed by not only the system but by your own family. I can’t tell you the amount of times it has triggered me to hear my mother say “put your hair up” or “you look like a bruha” (witch in Tagalog) or “how do you expect to have a man court you looking like that?” once I finally grew out my hair. I was frustrated by her continued attempt to control me even after she started to let me do what I want. But on a deeper level, I detested the way history and being an immigrant in America shaped the way she controlled herself. I knew she always meant well, that in some twisted way it was all “out of love,” to protect me, to make sure I was liked, as I’m sure the way she spoke to me is the way she spoke to herself; but since reading bell hooks’ All About Love, I’ve developed a much deeper understanding of what love is actually supposed to feel like. However, I know my mother has not yet arrived to the same expanded perspective (she may never arrive, nor am I attached to her arriving) and I do my best to remember that—to meet her where she is at in her journey. Still, I always think back to how disheartening it was for me as a little girl (for all little girls) to grow up with so many mixed messages of what it means to be “beautiful” in this world. To be docile to this is to allow internalized oppression and toxic standards of beauty to keep getting passed down to future generations. Therefore, I do my best to stay awake and check myself—first and foremost—in order to play my part in breaking the curse. To keep engaging in the surgical process of decolonizing my mind by staying curious and challenging the narratives that get thrown my way.
Upon entering my third decade of life, I grew tired of my long hair, and I was starving for change. A new story. A signifier to mark a new era. At 30 and 31, as much as I wanted to chop my hair off to a length above my shoulders, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. At first I think it was because short hair traumatized me as a child. I realized over time that in a sense, long hair did too. Because while I always rebelled against my mother’s need to control my appearance, a huge part of me still wanted to please her. Be accepted by her. Gain her approval. I suppose that I’ve held conflicting emotions about my hair my entire life.
Labels can really fuck us up. As Phoebe Waller Bridge passionately stated in an episode of her phenomenal and hilarious show Fleabag (to the hairdresser that she perceived fucked up her sister Claire’s hair): “Hair is everything.” And it is. Because our culture said so. And we have been brainwashed to believe it.
