I grew up with Bible stories, and the thing about growing up with Bible stories is you never forget them.
When I first considered cutting off my hair, I thought of Samson. The last major figure of the Book of Judges, Samson — or Shimshon, as my Hebrew-speaking family called him — was known for his super-human strength. He fist-fought a lion. He toppled a pagan temple by shattering its two central pillars with his bare hands. The secret to his power? His hair. It was shorn in the middle of the night, and Samson awoke weak and mortal.
As far back as my earliest memories, I had long hair. It grew smooth and thick, and in the summer it would turn that certain shade of brown when brick reflects evening light. People said my hair was pretty. People said I was lucky. I always thought it was strange to accept compliments for something I hadn’t earned.
Like a lot of young girls, I critiqued my appearance mercilessly. I never felt skinny enough, my nose wasn’t the kind of nose that Disney stars had and in seventh grade a boy named Peter told me I had a big butt, which made a few popular kids laugh. But my hair was one thing I never wished away, and that was comforting.
In high school I talked about shaving my head, but I wouldn’t, because I didn’t have a buzzer and because I feared my mom’s reaction and because it was something I desired for a future self more than for a current one. I thought one day I’d be the kind of woman who could shave her head and look more beautiful for it, just like I thought one day I’d live in a studio in New York and be a writer with a capital W. I didn’t believe I was her yet.
So when I really thought about cutting my hair short, sometime around my 22nd birthday, I was not only afraid of abandoning the one physical attribute that made me feel safe, I was terrified of who I might be: the person I had dreamt of becoming.
However, I quickly broke in my new identity of woman-with-short-hair. It felt natural, as though my outer shell finally reflected a mental self-portrait I’d drawn long before. More confident in my body, I felt more confident in my opinions and actions. And the change was liberating, relieving. If the power of my hair was in its femininity, its prettiness, its gendered coherence, then stripping myself of it revealed that power as a flimsy one, a conditional one. Anything my long (gone) hair expressed, I’d have to construct from something or somewhere else. There, I found possibility.
In the following years, I played with various lengths and styles of short hair, buzzing a part of my head one day if I felt like it, buzzing it all the next if I felt like that. I reveled in the feeling of detachment. I let myself wear harder clothes and smile less — although I still smile a lot because, quite frankly, it feels good. The sexiest I’ve ever felt is in boots and Carhartts and a knife in my pocket, flipping it open to cut twine or an apple to share. I could be tough and I could be shameless and I allowed myself to be those things because I believed in their authenticity, my authenticity. My hair, or lack of it, was like armor: a mark of gender norms cast aside that said, “Yeah, so what if I don’t seem like a girl to you? I wasn’t even trying.”
But what next? Was I fated to keep my hair short forever, or else return to a former self? Had my liberation — a misnomer, of course — turned into its own default, a symbol? I started to miss braiding my hair into rope, hanging slack down my back, and I started to wonder if my rejection of femininity was not a lack of identification with it, but rather a learned disdain for it. The idea that feminine isn’t tough, that feminine isn’t doing, deciding, figuring shit out for yourself, that feminine can’t be contradictory and compatible at the same time.
It occurred to me one day, sometime around my 25th birthday, that I was more afraid to grow out my hair than I had been to shave it. I clung to the assumptions others made of me as a woman-with-short-hair — bold, risk-taking, “a strong woman.” I wanted them to be true, and they felt true. Then what was I so reluctant to lose?
I’ve taken this question as a challenge. I’d like to know who I am, who I can be, with long hair. I don’t want to depend on my aesthetic to define me, and I definitely don’t want it to trap me.
It’s been six months since I last cut my hair. I can pull it into a ponytail now. Small, but undeniably a ponytail. I am learning how to use bobby pins for the first time, and in some strange way, I’m enjoying the novel vulnerability of asking friends how to do my hair. Strong doesn’t mean knowing everything. Strong doesn’t mean unyielding to change.
Every day, this challenge becomes a little more comfortable. I’m not sure what I’ll discover, but I do know the secret to my power isn’t in my hair. I am not Samson. My story is still being written.
