ENBODYMENT

Up until my twenty-eighth year of life, it never once occurred to me that maybe I have the right to like the way I look.

I was a tomboyish kid who spent summers in gym shorts and t-shirts; then a high school nobody constantly torn between the Old Navy graphic tees I felt most comfortable in versus the slim-fit Hollister and American Eagle tops I saw my far more popular classmates wearing; then an undergrad who almost had a panic attack when my friend tried to get me to borrow her lacy blouse on my twenty-first birthday; and then a young adult who craved androgyny but for some reason could never quite make it work.

Truth be told, I don’t think I understood enough about my body to be able to enjoy it. All I knew was my “boring” shoulder-length hair, small chest, and generally unremarkable physique, all convincing me on a daily basis that I don’t look special now, I won’t look special ever, and I wouldn’t want to anyways because heaven forbid anyone makes a Big Deal about my appearance. I knew I wanted to make changes, but as someone who’d also developed generalized anxiety on top of long-engrained self-consciousness, I was deeply afraid of those changes being perceived by anyone else.

So I started with “private” things. First, more out of a combination of laziness and depression than anything else, I stopped shaving my legs. Shaving takes time and energy and I was sharing a bathroom with three other people, and it’s not like I wanted to show off my legs anyway. I spent most of my summers inside and wore jeans or sweats if I did go out, because hiding felt easier than keeping up with body hair that just kept growing back.

Then, I stopped shaving my underarms. The more I thought about the logic I was using for my legs, the more I began to question the choices I made for the rest of my body. Did I actually need to shave there, or was I only doing it because I’d always done it? Who was I doing it for? What would happen if I chose not to? (Nothing, it turns out, except having one less thing to worry about.)

Both of these decisions made sense to me and I was comfortable with them internally, but I was also still self-conscious about my general appearance. I was a girl who didn’t shave things that girls are supposed to shave, and who lacked the confidence to not give a shit about outside perception. I continued agonizing over what I wore around what people and in which spaces, because something still didn’t feel quite right.

Finally, a new-but-old thought drifted into focus.

For almost half a decade, I’d kind of wanted to cut my hair short—as in short-short, as in a pixie cut or something like it. I had no attachment at all to the shoulder-length I’d had for most of my life and was sick of all the brushing and blow-drying and straightening and styling that came with it, but I was so wrapped up in the potential consequences of such a dramatic and visible change that I hadn’t yet been brave enough to sincerely entertain the thought.

Sometime in early 2019 I reached out to a female friend who had short hair and spilled about my own anxieties, and her response was simple: Go for it! She pointed out that if I’d been considering the change for this long then there was probably solid significance to it, assured me I’d look great, and even recommended her own stylist, which voided all of my decision fatigue and most if not all of my excuses not to proceed.

I got the haircut on May 10, 2019, and met my true self for the very first time.

With 90% of my hair gone, the way I saw both my body and my wardrobe changed instantly. The androgynous and masc-of-center looks I’d been craving for my entire adult life were suddenly right there in the mirror staring back at me, rather than being satisfactory from my feet to my shoulders but stopping where the end of my hair started. My style made so much more sense. I spent an entire afternoon trying on every single piece of clothing I owned, and I smiled. I took more selfies than I ever have before.

This look was mine, and I felt like it had been waiting for me my whole life, hiding behind layers of apprehension about appearance and judgment and paralyzing fear of the unknown.

I was excited. Rather than ignoring my hair altogether, I felt a new motivation to participate and customize and embrace it. After finding a local queer- and trans-owned salon, I changed my hairstyle every single month—parting it this way, using this product, layering here, buzzing a little there, going shorter and shorter and basking in the freedom and catharsis of finally knowing what I wanted.

As I settled into my “new” body I eventually began identifying as non-binary, experimented with she/they pronouns, and now have landed on they/them. I wear men’s clothes to work, have a different trans pride shirt for every day of the week, and find myself looking forward to formal events for the first time in my life, because I can throw on pants and a tie instead of poring through the women’s section for the least feminine outfit on the rack. I no longer feel like an impostor trying desperately to blend in with the women around me; I simply feel like an attractive person.

I often wonder what the last few years of my life would’ve looked like if I had continued to resist cutting my hair, because that one simple but terrifying act helped introduce to the world a much happier and healthier version of me.

Through that haircut, I’ve learned that my deepest internal instincts are often worth listening to.

I’ve learned that you never know what personal revelation is trying to claw its way into the light.

And I’ve learned that hair always grows back.

(Which is why I get mine trimmed every four weeks.)