Their Hair: My Child’s New Androgynous Locks

Few other forms of gender expression are as powerful as the language of hair. Who taught me this? My non-binary preteen.

Shortly after coming out to us as non-binary, C. asked me to book a hair appointment. They wanted to go with a more androgynous look, both through clothing and hair style. In full-on supportive parenting mode, I complied — poised at the intersection of enthusiasm and grief, a mash-up of emotions that is becoming increasingly familiar to me as the parent of a gender queer child.