Pixie

There she was: Keira Knightley circa 2005 wearing her hair in a pixie cut on the pages of my Celebrity Style Guide I'd bought at my school's Scholastic Book Fair.

Growing up, Keira Knightley was my hero. I wanted nothing more than to go on swashbuckling adventures like she did in Pirates of the Caribbean, and maybe meet my Will Turner someday. Keira Knightley was cool, dignified, and conscientious. I even loved her because like me, her name began with a 'K'. Everything she did, I wanted to do to. She was my first celebrity role model.

So when I saw Keira Knightley wearing her hair in a choppy pixie cut, I had to follow suit like the dutiful Keira Knightley fan club member I was.

My mom took me to see her local hairstylist who, like Keira Knightley, also came from the United Kingdom. "You got it, luv! Keira's such a style icon," she told me. Snip snip snip. In a little over an hour, practically all of my chest-length hair lay upon the salon floor. All that remained was some bangs and short locks above my ears.

I proudly wore a pixie cut from the 3rd grade until I graduated from middle school. (When I was 9 to 14 years old.) And yeah - it was the best. Shampooing my hair took all of five minutes, and I barely had to brush it in the morning. When I ran cross country in the 7th and 8th grades, there was no need to worry about a ponytail flapping in my face. For someone with the energy and personality of Satsuki from the Studio Ghibli film My Neighbor Totoro, a pixie was perfect for me.

I wish I could say having a pixie cut as a tween came with no flaws, but that's not true. There were flaws. Two, to be exact. A little flaw and a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad flaw.

The little flaw: I had to go to the salon more than the average person in order to trim my neck hairs that, if kept unchecked, quickly grew into an 80's bully mullet.

The very bad flaw: Strangers often mistook me for a boy.

Now, keep in mind - this was the early 2010's. Asking people for their pronouns was not a mainstream thing yet, and genderqueer expression through fashion, while very much alive, was not as widespread as it is today. On top of that, I was in the early stages of puberty. My chest was flatter than a pancake (there's still nothing much there today), and as for my fashion sense, I typically dressed somewhere between Sporty Spice and Y2K Avril Lavigne. Not quite a tomboy, but not the girliest of girls either.

Fortunately, I never got mistaken for a boy in school. Because my parents sent me to a Catholic middle school with a dress code, people knew I was a girl due to the skirt I was required to wear. It was outside of school, where I could dress however I wanted, the lines got blurred for strangers.

The first time it happened, I was in Boscov's shopping with my mom and grandmother. They were farther ahead of me, and I was wandering up and down the aisles alone. A male clerk approached.

"Excuse me mister, are you finding everything alright?"

Mister??? I looked around, trying to see if he was talking to someone else around me. Nope. He addressed me. Embarrassed, I gave the man a curt nod and scurried away to my mother before he could ask what size boxers I wore.

Another time, my mom and I were exiting a Men's Wearhouse to drop off a rental tux my dad had worn for some formal event. I waved to one of the lady employees while turning a corner, and behind me I heard a big fat, "have a good day, sir!"

These interactions (typically in retail stores) were humiliating, but by no means did they make me want to grow my hair out and start wearing dresses. They were minor inconveniences. Nobody stood in the way of my Keira Knightley-approved hairdo.

But there is one interaction I had with a stranger which stands out above all the rest. And it happened, of all places, at Girl Scout Camp.

It was during the fall, at a big Girl Scout Jamboree where my school's troop and a bunch of other troops from New Jersey gathered. We were busy crafting pins to trade for a ceremony later that evening. At this particular event, we were not required to wear our Girl Scout vests. Probably smart not to wear them anyways: we were working with glue and messy glitter.

I got up from my troop's picnic table to use the bathroom. Despite it being a Girl Scout camp where really only women wandered around the premises, there was a men's bathroom in the public hut where we could do our business.

The women's room was for the most part empty, save for a tiny girl washing her hands at a sink. She literally looked like Abigail Breslin's character from Little Miss Sunshine. Same ponytailed sandy blonde hair, buck teeth, round face, and huge glasses framing her beady little eyes.

As soon as I walked through the door, the little girl swiveled her head in my direction. She froze.

"Hey! What are you doing in here!?"

Like a pet dog charging and barking at a guest entering their house, Little Miss Sunshine swiftly approached me. It was kind of terrifying, seeing this small, cute thing so angry.

"Get out of here! Get out!!!"

She started pushing on my forearm, trying to heave me out of the bathroom. It was like watching a hobbit try to move a brick wall.

"What's the matter?" I asked, "Why are you pushing me?"

"You're not supposed to be in here!" she screamed.

A friend of mine, Marissa, from my school's troop exited one of the stalls. Perfect timing.

"Woah, woah, woah!" Marissa ran over to Little Miss Sunshine and tugged her away from me.

"What are you doing?" she asked the girl. The little bespectacled rage machine pointed at me.

"He's a boy! He's not supposed to be in the girl's room!"

Marissa and I exchanged a glance. I can only imagine how differently this situation would go down in 2021, or if I actually was a boy, given peoples' new tolerance for trans bathroom rights, queerness, and more gender neutral restrooms. If this situation happened today, the girl might get labelled a mini Karen.

Anyways, Marissa just shook her head and said, "She's a girl. I know her."

As Marissa and the girl continued, I escaped to one of the stalls and locked the door.

"No he's not!" Little Miss Sunshine protested, "he has short hair!"

"Girls can have short hair, too," Marissa said.

I heard the little girl give a huff, then saw her feet pivot in the opposite direction from under the stall door. Marissa walked forwards.

"You alright, Katy?" she asked. I said I was fine, although inside I was quaking in my own skin. Getting yelled at by that tiny girl felt like surviving an attack from an angry squirrel.

I took my sweet time in the bathroom, since I was afraid what would happen when returning to my troop's picnic table. Would Little Miss Sunshine escalate the situation? Would she try to have me kicked out of Girl Scout camp for my unintentional likeness to Will Byers from Stranger Things? God only knew.

Fortunately, all Little Miss Sunshine did when I exited the bathroom was give me a death stare from her troop's picnic table. I rejoined my troop on the opposite side of the craft space, and that was the end of that story.

Looking back, I don't blame the little girl for her mistake. Perhaps I was the first young woman with short hair she'd ever met. After watching Game of Thrones in high school and seeing tween-aged Arya Stark get away with disguising herself as a boy for three seasons, it's understandable Little Miss Sunshine would peg me for a dude.

I'd like to think after our encounter in the bathroom, Little Miss Sunshine learned a valuable life lesson and grew up to become a gender rights activist, or at least a feminist. Maybe she chopped off her ponytail and now wears her hair short, too.

A few years after the encounter, I outgrew my pixie...or rather, my hair grew past my ears and I didn't bother to cut it. If anything, the quarrel with Little Miss Sunshine taught me how important it is to not judge people by their appearances. Who cares if a guy wants to wear a skirt or a girl likes putting on boxers? Looks are just looks, and they never have to be the same.

Little Miss Sunshine taught me looks don't equate to gender. You should know the person's gender identity before you go and criticize them for it. (Not that we should criticize people for their gender...it's just a construct!) It's why asking people for their pronouns is so important and should not be stigmatized. Better to ask and get it right than wrong and attack someone while they're just trying to take a leak in the bathroom!

Finally, the Little Miss Sunshine incident made me realize that if someone dislikes you for your authentic self, there will always be someone out who understands your situation and willing to defend you. Doesn't matter if you're a boy who likes other boys and your homophobic father is grilling you for it, if you're a girl who'd rather play on the football team than join a sorority, or a non-binary person just trying to go about your life in peace...there's a Marissa waiting in the bathroom stall for you, ready to come to your aid when the going gets tough.

It may be because I've lived in NYC for five years, but these days it feels like more women wear their hair short. And not just queer women, but also cisgender and heterosexual women. There's something very "girlboss" about it.

Maybe I'll chop my hair off again someday. If I do it now, while I'm in my 20's, perhaps it won't be so much of a social shock for myself and those around me. No matter what happens, I'm proud of tween me for being authentic and wearing the hairstyle she wanted to wear. She's got more guts than I do.

For all the flack she endured because she looked like a boy, I think it's safe to say she truly is Keira Knightley's #1 fangirl.

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Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this story, please consider dropping it a heart and sharing. Tips are greatly appreciated. If you'd like to see more photos of my beautiful hair and how long it grew since I was a tween, check out my Instagram account: @katyisaladybug.

Until the next story,

-Katy :)