My Hair

It was all about image (originally published May 2021)

Photo 5186866 / Beautiful Hair © Diman Oshchepkov | Dreamstime.com

I remember my first haircut vividly. I was 3 years old and my parents decided that they didn’t want to deal with my very curly locks any longer. It was a completely traumatic experience for me and my parents had no understanding and very little patience. That was the beginning of my parent’s war against my appearance. Initially, Mom was actually worse about this than Dad. She wore her hair short because it’s very straight, rather thin and has a tendency to get oily if it’s too long. My hair was the opposite of all that, but Mom thought it would be easier to handle. Mom spent a great deal of time every morning wetting, combing and straightening my hair so that it would, sort of, fit her ideal of it. I have a natural “cow lick” on the left side that is more visible with short hair and that was always a source of her embarrassment. Occasionally, my parents would “let me” grow it out longer, but I always had to have it tied up or back in some way. God forbid that it be free in any fashion. “Isn’t that hot on your neck?” my mom would say in the summer when it was longer. It wasn’t for me—in fact it often gave my neck some shade because I have the fairest skin of anyone in my family.

As I got older, my father because obsessed with my hair. He was mortally ashamed of his own hair, which is thick and curly (I inherited mine from him), and for many years maintained the buzz cut from his stint in the army to hide it.

Even when he let the buzz cut go (and it was a big deal in the household, occasioned by an argument between both my parents—I mean what a weird thing to fight about), he still kept it pretty short. He thought that his hair was too feminine (it’s beautiful hair actually) and he wasn’t going to let me wear my hair long either because it reminded him of his own. So, my hair was constantly a bone of contention, a topic of discussion, argument and turmoil. By my teens, my father refused to be in the same room with me, or even speak to me if I wore my hair loose around him.

It didn’t help that I refused to “dress right” either. My mom had tried to “girlify” me to no avail. I always thought it odd that they wanted me to wear feminine clothes, but denied me the full expression of my most female feature, at least for me-my hair. Now I know it had everything to do with sex and freedom. Both of my parents were discomforted by me—my mom by my willfulness and self-assertion. “Yes, you always seemed to know exactly who you were,” she has told me more recently. “You weren’t a bad child, or even a disobedient child, but you were….well…powerful and self-directed. I was afraid you would get hurt by someone for ‘sticking out too much.’” In fact, she was afraid that I would be unacceptable and that might reflect on her in some way, at least at the time. I know this because she actually said things like that to me while she insisted that I put on leotards for church. My father was terrified of my burgeoning sexuality, not least because he was attracted to me. I know this because as I matured, the physical abuse increased—hitting with fists instead of hitting on, sadistic spankings for tiny infractions and weird forced “tickling sessions” instead of…well, you know.

Meanwhile, I tried to come to terms with my hair on my own. During puberty, She (I think of my hair as its own person), was a wild, hot mess. For a few years in high school I wore an Afro as a kind of compromise—She was shorter as my parents preferred, and I had a perm (they are nightmares) so that She was somewhat controlled, but also had some freedom as well. It was the 1970’s after all. The thing is, my hair has steadfastly refused any and all attempts to control Her. Even today, I can get Her in a ponytail for the gym and She will stay put about 15 minutes. She even finds ways of getting out of braids.

When I was doing trance/seidhur work at the Heartland Pagan Festival, my partner would work for hours to get my hair into cornrows. We had to lime Her white in order to get Her to stay put—and then my partner could get Her to stick out all over my head like Medusa’s snakes. It was a task that took about 5 hours to accomplish. She doesn’t want to be colored (I got tested to see if I could use henna and the results were spectacular, if I wanted hot pink hair—which is a little too much even for me) and pouted prodigiously when I got Her permed. She crackles with static in winter and has amazing opinions about humidity. I tell people She is really my brains leaking out all over and surrounding my head in apparent defiance of gravity. She dreads on her own if left alone for 2-3 days. She also doesn’t like to be shampooed in the fashion that’s common for American culture. My Black friends have taught me how to avoid improper lathering, how to oil her when she needs it during winter and generally, to avoid most of the sanitized “white people” products that seem to be geared toward homogenized coifs. Throughout my life, She, my Hair, has been a constant feature of inquiry, amusement, wonder and occasional injury. Lovers admire Her, strangers either love or hate Her (there seems to be no middle ground), She gets caught in all kinds of things, including having caught on fire more than once and, at one point, got tangled in a car engine—a story for another time. She’s how people find me in a crowd. She needs trimming when She gets caught in the car door or seat belt. Once Her cast away tendrils collected in a carpet sufficiently to completely wreck a Kirby vacuum. Another time, She betrayed my presence to the husband of a woman with whom I was having an affair. Both events caused some ruckus. As I approach 61 and She’s given Herself entirely to grey-white, She’s curlier and wilder than ever. My mother has reluctantly admitted that she was wrong about my hair. I don’t ask my father for his opinions. Due to recent happy and rather unexpected events, She has informed me that I am to sing Her praises and let Her be precisely what She has always wanted to be—a FREE expression of joy, love, spiritual power and sexuality. I do know about the magickal lore and wisdom concerning long hair. And yes, I do abide by some of it. There are occasions when I have to explain to Her that She really does need to be tied back for Her own safety and mine—and She has learned to accept a healthy, slight pruning for the sake of Her split ends once a year. But for the most part—I’m going to glory in Her magnificence. It’s about time. Cue Lady Gaga