It was a cathartic experience shaving off all my hair.
From a young age, I knew I wanted short hair; pixie and buzzed cuts always attracted me. But growing up, I always had to keep it long because my parents loved it even though it was rarely taken care of properly. When I grew old enough to manage it on my own I couldn’t be bothered with the maintenance.
My hair was always dry and frizzy, a lion’s mane of dirty blonde hair in waves and curls that framed my face almost every day. I was complimented plenty for my hair color and compared to Merida from Brave for its form and bullied too for it because of its “unruliness”.
“Bruja” meaning witch in Spanish was the most common taunt I heard growing up and comments that my hair fell off and shed like a dog that can’t bother to be groomed. Despite mixed remarks about it from strangers, friends, and family, I recognized the beauty of my hair, but I never had the confidence I should have growing up.
So in the midst of the pandemic, when the world was in chaos, I started gradually cutting my hair shorter and shorter till I quite literally said “F*ck it” and had my hair stylist buzz it right off in late August of 2021.
It was a thrilling experience, to say the least. Absolutely transformative and cathartic. The freedom I felt was immense and surprising because I did not realize how much I needed to make this change till it happened.
My confidence skyrocketed through the roof and the glow of it radiated outward from that day forward and has remained the same since. I felt and fell 10x more beautiful and feminine with my hair shaved off than I ever did with it long. The complete opposite of what I heard growing up, where long hair defined femininity, that it made up a woman and was of utmost importance for various cultural and spiritual reasons.
I was told that if I cut off all my hair, my sexuality, gender, mannerism, beauty, and mental state would be questioned. That I would not be able to find a male partner in life, I would not be taken seriously in the world and I’d lose a part of what made me beautiful and womanly. All these archaic setbacks were enforced onto me by my family and peers to fit into society’s standards of what made up a female, and what made up the different parts of me as a feminine woman. And by cutting off my hair, I took back control and redefined for myself what it means to be feminine, the fluidity of what it means to be a woman. It wasn’t in my hair, nor was it in my confidence or the various other reasons thrown around to box in what being feminine meant, in shaving off my hair and taking back control, the confidence I grew from that experience made me realize that the only thing that made me feminine is how I defined it.
From that day onward I realized that being feminine had no constraints, it had no bounds and was far from motionless or within the confines of society’s rules.
It was in the relationship I had with myself. And I’ve felt it every day since.