While my decision in the moment felt impulsive and wrong, as I reflect, it was neither of those things. This was something I’d been considering for a while, but I always feared I’d lose much more than my hair. I feared I’d lose community, desirability, and sense of self. Could I survive that? I received more compliments on my locs than any hairstyle I had previously. My hair was the longest it had ever been, so I was afraid that without them and without long hair, I would no longer feel attractive. And as a woman, what value would I have if men didn’t find me desirable? I didn’t want to go back. Who would I be without that external validation?
The moments leading up were the most nerve racking. Growing up, a girl cutting off her hair was grounds for severe punishment. So even at 22, as I was home alone, looking in the mirror, I just felt like a bad little kid playing with scissors and causing problems. It wasn’t an intentional decision to wait until my parents left. Only about 30 seconds prior to cutting my hair did even I know what would follow. But if I wasn’t alone, my fear of eventually having to reveal myself and face judgment soon after probably would have deterred me from pulling the trigger. I told no one about my plans. This way, no one could stop me or plant fear or doubt in my mind. No one could suggest that I was simply a hysterical and emotional woman having a mental breakdown and making a huge mistake. I could make this decision and then I could sit with myself for an entire day as if the only feelings that existed or mattered in the world were my own. I could truly reflect on how I felt without having to sift through others' reactions and eventually, hopefully, find my own.
That night, I was also having the worst period cramps of my life. I had been rolling around my bed in pain the entire day feeling sorry for myself - feeling so out of control. But after a while, my wallowing turned into anger. I felt helpless, not just in my attempts to relieve my physical pain in that moment, but in countless other areas of my life as well.
I graduated college in May of that same year, but there was no job lined up waiting for me. I moved back home with my parents, and I had no motivation. I imagined the few job applications I submitted were sitting at the bottom of a black hole. My social life had been virtually non-existent and most attempts at making new connections fizzled out before they even began. My bank account was holding on for dear life, and my mountains of student loan debt were breathing down my neck. However, my situation could have been much much worse. I was grateful for the support I’d been given while I figured things out, but I was also objectively far from where I wanted to be and from what I knew I was capable of.
Day after day would pass, and I felt I had done nothing of significance to move my life forward. I’d been grasping desperately for something in my life that I felt was in my control. Something I could feel secure about and something I was sure wouldn’t reject me or let me down. Something I didn’t need permission or approval for and didn’t require the money I didn’t have. Something that didn’t depend upon me being on a list, invited, picked, or chosen. I could just do it and not worry about who it would affect or who would question me or disapprove. No processing or reviewing time delay. I could greenlight it for myself and see immediate results.
So, I cut my locs.
Kind of contradictory but funny meme via @softcore_trauma on instagram
As someone who cries on average once every two weeks, I expected I’d be extremely emotional after cutting off 6 years worth of loc growth. But I actually didn’t get emotional at all. Instead, I felt free, physically and mentally lighter, empowered, and more like myself. I found that once I shared my decision with other people, their reactions were much more intense than my own. I had more mental space to think about things that mattered more to me, and it took much less time to get ready and wash my hair. It felt like my hair was baggage that I didn’t even need. Now that I’d let it go, I could go much farther, much faster, and look cute while doing it! Because yes I think it looks really cute :).
Now I want to emphasize that while I’m happy with my decision, it was far from an easy one to make and sit with. After I initially cut my hair myself, I got it cut a lot lower and dyed professionally. I sat in the salon and watched more and more of my hair fall to the floor. For some reason, this time felt a bit different. The scissors were in somebody else’s hands. I felt extremely exposed as two bald spots at the front of my hair I didn’t previously know existed were revealed to me. I wondered if I’d just made a huge mistake. I couldn’t turn back. The results were shocking, and I couldn’t hide from them. I wasn’t initially sure if I liked it. I thought I might feel ugly for the rest of my life and in turn, no one would accept me. But I had to trust that the Universe had provided me with everything I needed to thrive in this world, and that there was nothing I could do to change that, especially not cutting my hair and making decisions in general that in the moment felt scary, but genuinely felt authentic to me. I had to trust that the world was not ending, but a new and more exciting one was being formed.
Even now, there are times where I’ve felt I wasn’t pretty or enough without long hair. I wanted my long hair back to hide and shield myself when feelings of insecurity arose. In times where I was more desperate to be liked and feeling less confident in myself, I thought the more feminine I presented, the better my chances were of being accepted. When I first started my locs, I would constantly be retwisting, manipulating, pulling, poking, and prodding at myself to appease all the different systems of oppression. I had the audacity to be born with barely any curves and short, kinky hair, so in turn, I was born in debt. Two strikes. I could only attempt to improve my social credit by getting my hair as long and as straight as I could and wearing the tightest and most uncomfortable clothes I could find. And since the patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism are best friends that never go anywhere without each other (a joke about intersectionality lol), these tight clothes must be expensive and not worn more than once and a new hair appointment must be booked every week. The list of demands for black women living in this world is much longer than this, but this essay is about hair. So, when I was 16, I felt the most accessible way for a black girl with no money for hair appointments or weave to abide by these demands while also damaging my hair as little as possible would be to start locs and grow them long. So that’s what I did.
Overtime, I realized that the money, time, and energy I had spent stressing about my hair were actually finite resources that were being poorly invested as I saw very little return. I was fed up with this narrative that “pretty hurts” and that femininity equaled discomfort, pain, and tension. I always felt like I owed the world “femininity”, but interestingly, the world owed me nothing back. This psychological debt was holding me back. What our current society has defined as femininity was and still is corrupted and it was time to get back to the basics.
Now, my hair doesn’t flow in the wind, my skin is not clear, my legs are not shaved, but I have never felt more beautiful, more free, or more at peace. I feel the most beautiful when I’m comfortable and when I don’t feel like I HAVE to put in so much effort externally to be seen as beautiful. The “work” that I think it takes to be beautiful is largely internal, and that work is then reflected outwardly.
In addition to cutting my hair low, I also asked the barber to dye my hair pink. Even though I am a pretty reserved person, I’ve always loved bright colors. I love the idea of making a statement without having to open your mouth. Quiet confidence. But a bright color like this would also force me to be seen when I wanted to hide or blend in. I thought to myself, who was I to wear such a bold hairstyle, to make such a bold decision, to live a bold life, to take up any space in this world that had not been predetermined for me. All my life, I heard people express that having bright colored hair was “ghetto” and “unprofessional”. School dress codes required “natural” hair colors or you’d be punished. God forbid you wanted to express yourself AND be treated with respect because expressing ourselves in this world is “distracting”. And they’re actually right about that. Authentic expression distracts us from turning into robot slaves to capitalism.
Lately, I’ve been more into taking risks and being vulnerable. I’ve been asking myself different questions like:
What would happen if I do the things I’m terrified of but have felt called to do?
What would happen if I sat with myself in difficult times instead of looking to other things to fill my internal voids?
What would happen if I got rid of all the things that provided me with external validation and fed my ego?
What would happen if I turned into someone that people that used to know me would never recognize?
While finding out the answers to these questions has been uncomfortable, I have been stripping off layer after layer of societal conditioning and meeting more and more of myself in the process. I’ve been figuring out what really matters to me, and trying to make decisions that align with my new found values. I want a non traditional, dynamic, creative, and nourishing life where I could be my most authentic self and that was celebrated. I am making more space for the things that really matter to me in life, but that means getting rid of the traditional things that have in the past provided me with comfort, security, and validation. That means grieving a lot of relationships and opportunities that don’t care to know or support the real me. The hard part about that is, I have nothing to fall back on. Even though my hair could grow back, cutting it felt permanent.
A lot of times when I’ve taken big leaps, it initially feels like I landed in cold water, not on the other side. I’ve felt stupid and I’ve felt like a loser - like there were some instructions that I didn’t follow or like everyone told me not to jump and I didn’t listen and now they’re all laughing and telling me I told you so. Sometimes I want to turn around and swim back to what I know is safe because the alternative is I might drown looking for something I’m not even sure exists. But I’m fighting against these thoughts and these urges everyday. We have to acknowledge these fears and act anyway - resist caving, giving up, and turning around and swimming back to the shore. The quicker we do, the higher the potential is for transformation and for finding a fulfilling life on the other side. Charting unknown territory and being vulnerable can feel like we’re literally dying, and consequentially, many of us avoid it.
“Take your life into your own hands and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.” - From the book The Artists Way by Julia Cameron
We might microdose vulnerability, always reserving the option to retreat back to what’s comfortable. But if I wanted a life where I didn’t feel like I had to hide, I’d have to stop hiding.
After cutting my hair and being happy with my decision, I started thinking about other decisions I’ve made or wanted to make that I previously deemed “crazy”, and started to think that they might not have been that crazy after all either. Maybe women who trust themselves are not actually hysterical and emotionally unstable creatures that need other people to make decisions for them. Who knew? Societal conditioning tells women not to follow our intuition and to serve everyone but ourselves. But I’m starting to trust myself and my decisions, and that’s a big deal for me.
I was tired of feeling like a helpless victim to my own life as opposed to an active participant. I’m in my early 20’s, and I have so many questions about life that no one can answer but me. Cutting my hair did not solve all of my problems, but it did help me build more trust in myself, more courage, and more confidence in my decision making. I hope I will look back on this time in my life and be proud of the risks I took, the foundation I laid, the decisions I made, and the grace I gave myself in the process. The life I envision for myself, I’m going to have it and I’m having it now, choosing it now and everyday, making choices that align with that vision. I know that cutting my hair alone will not change my life contrary to the popular quote, but maybe a series of small choices, small leaps similar to this one that feel authentic to me and who I want to be even though it’s scary, will lead me to living a life that I want, that I created, that I’m glad to be apart of, and to quote a poem from adrienne maree brown’s book Emergent Strategy,
“...a life I don’t regret.
A life that will resonate with my ancestors,
and with as many generations forward as I can
imagine.”
Hope that answers any questions! Thanks for reading and please let me know your thoughts!
The videos and articles below go more in depth about different experiences around cutting your hair.
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