1. 1994, Record store in suburban mall, Southeastern Pennsylvania
Green barn jacket, jeans, t-shirt, and a limp little bra, more of a band-aid than anything architectural. Sneakers. I’m looking for Toad the Wet Sprocket’s album Dulcinea. On cassette tape.
“Can I help you, sir?”
The sales guy has long frizzy hair, the kind that acts of its own accord, independent of gravity or conditioner.
“Miss.”
“Sorry?”
“MISS. I am a GIRL.”
He blinks. Mild perturbation flits across a pockmarked face.
The same could serve as a metaphor for the industry employing him.
This might be the moment I decide not to let my mom cut my hair anymore.
2. 2012, Ex-boyfriend’s apartment, Midtown Manhattan
Blew the fuck out of my hair with the hairdryer he keeps on hand. (He’s older.) My hair is almost the sleek mid-length bob it is supposed to be.
“You should pull it up,” says Ex.
I do.
Five hours later, my scalp is throbbing.
My hair remains this way for the duration of our relationship.
3. 2001, Residential neighborhood, Southeastern Pennsylvania
“Run for my dick, bitch!” the guy screams out of his car.
My ponytail swishing over my shoulders, I keep jogging. I do not even want to look directly at a dick, let alone run for one. But my teenage brain is prone to over-analysis. Perhaps this is a case of synecdoche? Do I run for male attention, not the male member per se?
Do I even enjoy running?
I quit the track team.
4. 2013, International airport, Somewhere in Europe
“Fantastic haircut,” the airport lady says.
She points to my passport photo. I smile and thank her.
Ex and I walk towards the bathrooms.
“Maybe you should cut your hair again,” says Ex.
We look at the passport photo: me in college. Saucy English major who’d seen Breathless a few too many times.
“Maybe not,” he decides.
5. 2005, Hair salon, College Town
I have seen Breathless a few too many times. My pixie needs a trim.
My best friend and I have been going, somewhat obsessively, to a salon with a cute, heterosexual male hairdresser. He sits me in the chair, starts trimming, and says something funny.
I laugh.
“Oops,” says Hot Hairdresser.
The look on the receptionist’s face still haunts me.
“Are you trying to tell us something about your sexuality?” asks everyone.
“Why would I wait until senior year?” I ask them back.
6. 2014, Driving from one graduate program to another, East Coast
My mother and my grandmother can’t get over Ex, even though my grandmother claims to have seen it coming. (“He wasn’t an artist.”)
My grandmother is an artist, a textile artist of some more-than-moderate fame in the quilting world. People at quilting shows ask her for photos and signatures. The subject of artistry is one of her favorites.
We have been in the car for four hours. She has not been driving.
“It’s time you cut your hair,” my mother says to me.
“But—” I begin. How to explain? “Guys will think I’ve been through a crazy break-up.”
“That’s ridiculous,” says my grandmother.
She and my mother shake their short-haired heads.
7. 2011, Greenwich, Connecticut
I am a high school English teacher.
Not a single one of my female students has hair that doesn’t reach her bra line.
Not a single one has hair other than sleek and shiny.
In my yearbook photo, now ten years old, my long hair makes me look like a muppet.
My car is worth $4,000.
If I sold it, I could have hair like theirs. Death to all muppets.
Aiming to be a good role model, I opt for a bob.
I buy a high-end hairdryer, loud as my car in the mornings.
8. 1998, My bedroom, Southeastern Pennsylvania
My parents have forbidden me to see Lawrence, my summer orchestra-camp love.
Not because he plays the violin.
Because he can drive.
I cut off all my hair, inaugurating a look my brothers will dub “Rocky the Rodent.”
“Short hair is really brave,” says the guy who introduces me to Belle & Sebastian. He happens to have a car.
9. 2014, MFA program, Manhattan
“Didn’t I see you at that reading?” asks a classmate. A woman.
“That was the other woman with short hair,” I explain.
10. 1994, Reading class, Southeastern Pennsylvania
“I wish I had your hairstyle,” says the teacher.
I look around. She means me.
“Where do you get it cut?” she asks.
“My mom cuts it,” I tell her.
She smiles, shakes her head.
“It’d be perfect for tennis.”
11. 2015, Coffee shop, Manhattan
“When I first started out as an architect, my boss told me to always have younger friends,” says one of my older acquaintances.
“I tried to get in touch with the former director of our alumni organization,” I tell him. “No one had told me he’d died.”
The architect shakes his head.
“Didn’t you used to be blonde?”
12. Last night, Walking, Central Park
“I like your hair,” says my Poet, running his fingers through the inch or so over my scalp.
We both do.
Tags: hair, olivia ciacci, personal history, the butter
Your hair in the author photo is delightful and very femme! I regret (for my sake, but I guess not for yours — although MAYBE, who knows!) not seeing any Muppet hair.
And I am sure that having short hair is a great way of weeding out the wrong men to date.
I’ve been in a new office for a week, and the male admin has remarked at least twice about how my ID picture has long hair and how he misses my long hair THAT HE HAS NEVER SEEN. I’d say something snarky like “my girlfriend likes it short” but that defeats the purpose of NO ONE getting to have opinions about my hair other than me.
Or better yet, “Your mother likes it better this way.”
Although that doesn’t solve the problem of people deciding they need to have and share opinions about your physical appearance which is annoying af.
“having short hair is a great way of weeding out the wrong men to date.”
oh yes, it certainly weeds out the men who will say “are you sure you’re not a lesbian?” after you have messaged them on OkCupid, blatantly flirted, or even kissed them.
*gag*
That’s so bizarre to me because straight guys fetishize and doggedly pursue legit lesbians, too.
right?? logical consistency & straight boys, not found together.
it weeds out a certain kind of asshole, but it also encourages another kind of asshole who feels like they are super radical and ought to get praise/cookies/stickers for being attracted to a hairstyle that is allegedly heinously unfeminine.
Late to the party but yeah. I shaved my head for charity a few years ago and one of the results was a not insignificant number of guys telling me I made “a sexy baldy”. No joke. Those exact words
I haven’t had hair past my chin since high school. Currently my hair is about 1/2 inch long, as it’s growing out from the buzz cut I did earlier this month.
I can’t adequately explain how good short hair makes me feel. It makes my life easier in so many ways (lower maintenance, fewer douches hassling me, etc.).
Tell me your secrets! I have short hair (about 2 inches on top, 1 inch on the sides) and I *love* it, but I have found that douches do not stop hassling me, they just get more aggressive (with a side of homophobia)
Worst/best catcall: “are you gay, darling, or do you want to suck my dick?”
I mean. Is there a third option? Cause don’t get me wrong, I’d gladly swear off all men for the rest of my life just to avoid putting my mouth on any part of your body (I’m bi, YMMV), but I feel like there sort of ought to be a third option.
Bisexuality: the Third Option
IDK, I’m pretty masculine in gender presentation in general, so that seems to do the trick. (I’m also bi, though, so it’s a weird double-edged sword because I do like guys but I’M JUST TOO MANLY FOR MOST HET DUDES.) Also I bike everywhere, so I’m too fast for them to harass.
My hair used to be bobbed. I tried growing it longer, forgetting that I look bad with long hair, and anyway, long hair annoys me. I got an asymmetrical undercut with the bottom half shaved and the top half almost down to the top of my ears. It was great for a few weeks, but now I’m ready to go all Jean Seberg, or even shorter. I can’t wait til my next haircut. I can’t wait to no longer have hair in my face, and I can’t wait to not have to worry nearly as much about styling my hair (which I’m horrible at). Long live women with short hair!
I have grown my hair out into a bob after having it very short for just over four and a half years (short enough that hairdressers get anxious about cutting it that short on a woman, which has been frustrating). I like it, but it’s weird that people are reacting to me as someone feminine for the first time in ages. I get cat calls now and no one ever calls me ‘sir’… it’s weird. I’ll probably cut it all of again in a few months time, but needed the change.
I had short hair for a couple years, but I ended up growing it out mostly because I hated wrestling with hairdressers every two months. No, I do not want those weird whispy flourishes you keep leaving on to make it look “feminine!”
Oh my God, I had a hairdresser give me a perfect haircut and then RUIN it by doing that, ‘to retain a bit of femininity’.
Been there, and I’m sorry you have been, too. This is an excellent way to lose me as a customer!
“My grandmother is an artist, a textile artist of some more-than-moderate fame in the quilting world. ”
SAME THO!? I’ve never met another granddaughter of a renowned art quilter. I wonder if they’re rivals.
Aside from this shared biographical detail, I enjoyed and related to this piece a lot. When I think back on my own hair-self, it also comes back in a bunch of snippets jumping around in time, and it’s also a swirl of strange superficial comments from teachers, customer service figures, female classmates, and ex-lovers. Annoyingly, it’s always been the perception of exes that imprinted ideals and had the most sway. When you first realize this thing on your body is a tool in shaping how people first see you, sexually and professionally, it often doesn’t feel like a tool at first – it feels like something others are shaping for you, others telling you about yourself, and to “win” your hair, you lean into and work within those perceptions accordingly. Hair has so much weird power in our interactions w/ the world from day one — whereas realizing we have our own weird power and agency in our interactions with others, and owning that, takes more time to grow into.
I also really like how this piece ends: simple, sweet, positive, not policing, untangled away from all these past imposed definitions. Yay.
” Hair has so much weird power in our interactions w/ the world from day one…”
…and yet, there will always be folks saying that talking about hair is trivial and superficial >:/
I must wear my hair short. If I don’t, it develops an attitude. It wants to go places. But there are hair factions: one clique wants to go to NYC; the other, to LA. A third wishes for spaceflight. So: monthly trips to Supercuts to visit tattooed stylists who tell me that their boyfriend or father or brother is in jail for something or other. It’s an acquired taste.
this is a good description of why I gotta stay short, too. I usually say it “goes into dandelion mode pretty quick.”
Straighteners changed my life, and they don’t ruin your hair, whatever your mother says.
Loved this!
I cut off my waist length hair in elementary school and got my first pixie. I was mistaken for a boy on more than one occasion, but young me thought it was absolutely hilarious, and definitely one of the pluses of the haircut. Ever since then, I get antsy if I have the same cut for more than a few months. I recently went back to a full pixie for the first time since elementary school. Now I can’t remember why I ever grew it out. I love the feeling of only having an inch or so of hair on the back of my head. I love that it dries fast, that I can faux hawk it, and that the sides are super short. And fortunately, my stylist is just as enthusiastic about experimentally chopping my hair off as I am, bless her.
I also cut off my long hair in elementary school! I was nine year old and demanded to have a buzz cut like my brother. It pissed me off to be mistaken for a boy, though, so I gave up and grew it back out.
Your stylist sounds super cool!
Haha I was imitating my mom’s pixie cut as a kid when I did mine. But I was also a little tomboy and absolutely positive boys got to have more fun than girls (now a devoted Toastie obviously I soon developed my delightful sense of misandry which now guides my path), so being called a boy was never a downside. Plus I was a little shit who thought people’s discomfort at misgendering me was HILARIOUS.
My stylist is amazing! She gives scalp massages and is always down to try something new with me and gives free bang trims and I will follow her to the ends of the earth. Also we discuss plot lines of our favorite comic book shows during my cuts. And there are always dogs running around the salon for petting.
I was the opposite. I had a bowl cut, but I secretly longed for a ponytail.
Senior year in high school, I began growing out my hair. Thirty years later, it’s still long. I have no plans to cut it. My mother disapproves.
My hair has run the gamut from very short to very long. I like it best when it’s above my collar. Many of your vignettes are very familiar to me.
For some reason, I was wearing it long when my children were small. I cut it short about 5 years ago, and my 13 year old still asks me to grow it back out.
ok, folks here who have short hair but had long hair in the past – I have an is-this-just-me? question. Do y’all have recurring dreams in which your hair is long?
Nope? I basically forget I ever had long hair. I chopped off 16 inches (from past my shoulders to pixie) about 2.5 years ago and immediately felt like the correct version of myself, so I’ve never looked back. I can’t even picture what I used to look like. I also don’t dream a lot either, so there’s that.
yep. they’re not wistful dreams though, most of the time i am trying to brush it or get it out of the way.
yup, that’s it, it’s like, “ok, going somewhere, gotta make a ponytail.” [pulls hair back] some kind of strong tactile memory, I guess, even though I don’t miss it at all!
the sense memory is strong! i was still having the occasional long-hair dream even 7 years into having a pixie cut.
Nope. I used to have almost waist length hair until I was 15 or so, and since then I’ve had all kinds of hairstyles, from being completely bald to shoulder length, but I always forget how long hair feels the minute I get a shorter hairstyle.
Not yet. (It’s been nearly 20 years since I went from having waist length hair to a buzz. I’ve had mostly variations on pixies and bobs since then.)
Yes, but mine are anxiety dreams where it’s getting TOO LONG and I MUST CUT IT NOW OR ELSE
I do! I haven’t had long hair in at least ten years, but I’ll still occasionally have dreams where it’s long – neither positive nor negative, really. Sometimes it makes me wish I had long hair again, but really what I want is to be able to have it for a couple hours & then have it be short again (which is a wig, basically, but I don’t want it enough to actually pay for one).
Never. But I think that’s because short hair was the Best Thing I Ever Did for the way I feel about my face.
I did, and they were a major force in me growing my hair back out again.
oh man, I can totally believe that, even knowing I don’t want to grow it out again there’s always a moment of “oh hey, look, I can make hairstyles again! and run my fingers alllll the way through it!”
No dreams yet (just cut mine a month ago), but every now and then I catch myself thinking it must be pinned up and that’s why I can feel the ends on my forehead. And I had weird psychosomatic issues at first with my neck/scalp tensing for a weight that’s not there anymore.
I dated a girl with a faux-hawk in university. I used to joke that as long as her hair was longer than mine (#2 on the sides), I was okay with it.
Then she asked me to help give her one of those half buzz-cut half regular length haircuts. That’s what I get.
I’ve had hair of pretty much every possible length except shaved. Right now it is shoulder-length, and the most hilarious thing is that when I put it in a bun, guys are all “ha ha, sexy librarian,” and when I braid it, I get this weird kinda-quiet “wow… I really like braids.”
Which is weird! Also, who cares about your preferences, dudes?
I get that too. I used to sometimes wear my hair in two braids but then a random man in the store asked me if he could pull them. So I stopped.
I can’t believe I know this but in F*fty Sh*des of Gr*y the dude asks (tells? I haven’t read or seen it) the lady to put her hair in a braid before they do The K*nky S*x St*ff… so unfortunately maybe it’s related to that. Maybe not, though. Maybe they are really into the Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm aesthetic.
I feel much more like myself with longer hair, but when I was a kid I used to think there was an age when you had to start cutting your hair short. Like you hit 40 or so and it was the rule, chop it off.
Then I started taking cello lessons from a woman who had beautiful gray hair down to her lower back. She also had eleven cats, lived in a pink and purple house, and was generally living her best life with zero fucks given as to what people thought about her. Hello, hair role model.
When I was a kid, I honestly thought that grey hair only grew in that particular permed short style that all grandmas of the 80’s had.
I am working toward an asymmetrical cut in which there will be a long piece on one side of my head. I am eventually aiming for this: https://www.flickr.com/photos/hairport_lisbon/904…
But on the way, there will be a lot of variations on this: https://www.flickr.com/photos/hairport_lisbon/851…
Number five TOTALLY HAPPENED TO ME, TOO.
“Oops.”
*shudder*
I … really like my hair? Stylists I talk to think that is excellent, and no one else seems to care, so.
Right now it is half way down my back in a thick braid. I shaved it four years ago in solidarity with a friend’s chemo baldness. It grows fast! Mostly length depends on how much I am willing to fuss with it, and what feels weird to me is that long is less fuss than short – short keeps needing to be but again, while long just IS, and is in a braid and out of my face, and pretty simple. Although i can feel the the urge to whack it all off building up.
right?? logical consistency & straight boys, not found together.
oh man, I can totally believe that, even knowing I don't want to grow it out again there's always a moment of "oh hey, look, I can make hairstyles again! and run my fingers alllll the way through it!"
My mom cut my hair all through my childhood too (although not my sisters’, which seemed the ultimate in unfairness). As soon as I was taller than her, I stopped letting her cut it, just in time for my hair-in-face teen stage. As an adult I’ve gone long and short periodically, and have days when I love and hate either length. Now it’s graying, which opens up all sorts of other hair dimensions. I color it regularly, though not always happily. It’s also thinning, falling out all over the house (another one of menopause’s apparently normal but horrifying effects), making me consider just being fucking done with it, shaving it all off and getting scalp tattoos.
your relationship with your hair can be so personal. i’ve had mostly short hair off and on since sophomore year of high school, partly, at first, because i didn’t have the patience to take care of longer hair, but as some gnarly eating disorders took hold, my hair got thinner, and now i have recovered but may have a lifetime of thyroid and hormone issues that will keep it from growing the way i dream of. it’s not as thin as it used to be, but it still looks scraggly and sad if i grow it much past my shoulders.
other people tell me i look great with short hair – my dad even loves it and gives me a hard time whenever i start growing it out – but i have never, never loved it. i feel ugly and exposed. i think plenty of women look great with pixies but i wonder if they have have some internal flame i’m missing. but i’ve always thought that on a purely aesthetic level, anyone can pull off the pixie, regardless of face shape or whatever, and all the women who tell you they think it looks great on you but they could never pull it off are cowards flaunting the shields they hide behind. i still think a pixie would look better on me if i were thinner. i wish i had a shield to hide behind, too.
i’m working on my health now and hopefully my hair will only get healthier too! but i’ve gotten used to it being short now, as much as i hate it, so even if it never gets thicker, i guess i know how to manage. and i can always wear a pixie like some kind of false bravado if i really need to. i’ve fashioned it into a shield of my own, i guess. and it’s true that it does keep certain types of men from approaching you. i usually figure my death stare does a pretty good job of that, too, but the short hair cuts to the chase a bit faster, though sometimes it brings its own set of problems.