My Hair Peace

Whenever I say that I want to cut my hair, people rear back in horror. “Why would you do that?” they ask, as if I told them I was going to join a NXIVM sex cult, or QAnon, or do something that would imply that I had stopped using logic and lost my mind altogether. Even my own daughter yells “NO!” when I mention wanting to cut my tresses. When I ask her why, she says, “Cuz your hair is so pretty, Mama.”

I know I should take this as a compliment, and I do, but…if you’ve ever lost a bunch of weight and had people tell you how gorgeous you NOW look, it can sometimes feel as though they are saying you were hideous before the weight loss.

It feels like people are telling me I will be hideous with short hair. As if my hair is my greatest asset.

I’m actually shocked that my hair even became my greatest asset, because growing up in the 1970’s, it was a literal joke. I had a light brown/orangish yellowy afro atop my round face, and all my peers made fun of it. As a mixed race girl growing up in Beverly Hills, there were not a lot of people around, besides my sister, that looked like me.