I had most of my hair cut off today and, predictably, it is making me Feel Things.
It would be neither original nor particularly interesting for me to observe that hair can become tangled up with identity – mostly because people who don’t know you very well will assess you based on your hair (among other factors), but also because it is a daily part of how we shape our presentation for outside eyes. When we look in the mirror to discern whether we look okay, oftentimes we’re looking at our hair.
Mine had become heavy and useless, like a knit blanket in summer. I wore it up every day, fashioned it into fluffy shapes to keep it out of my face. Where once it had felt regal and feminine, it now merely got in my way. When I explained this to my hairdresser, he nodded gravely and said, “It’s time.” And then he took out his scissors and snipped off hair that had taken years upon years to grow.
The other important reason for this change is that I want to look queerer – which is a strange idea, when you think of it. I am queer at all times, queer in every outfit and every iteration. A rose is a rose is a rose; a bi girl is a bi girl is a bi girl. But flagging has always been an important part of queer culture, and it is important to me, too. Single bisexuals are more-or-less floating in space, sexual identity-wise, in that people are less likely during those unpartnered interludes to incorrectly infer that you are straight or gay; partnered bisexuals, on the other hand, tend to get hammered down into ill-fitting descriptors, like a star-shaped block that a toddler tries to wedge into a square-shaped hole. I’ve dated people all across the gender spectrum, and every time, I felt it: the narrowing of perceptions around me, the “Aha, we’ve finally got her figured out,” the winnowing away of my multisexual truth.