Unbraided and Chopped: Reflecting on Womanhood, Race, and Self-acceptance
Written by Elena Shand
I recently conducted a survey where I asked several women, “is there something that can be taken away from you that could make you feel less like a woman?”
Some answered their fertility, but the most popular answer by an overwhelming margin was their hair.
When I thought about my own answer, I realized that my hair was not on my list. But why? Was it because I had a hard time conforming to gender roles? Or perhaps it was because I have such a complicated relationship with my hair that it is easier to leave it all unsaid and unaddressed.
I’m a little weird so I always map out my life by phases. Cross fit and weightlifting will be picked up at 22. Years 26-29 will be when I get good at running and it will be my marathon and half marathon phase. I’ll be a professor in my fifties. And when I feel satisfied where I am in life, I will cut off my hair to usher in the stage of feeling pride and satisfaction with who I am.
The problem with thinking of yourself in a future tense is that it leaves little to no room to be proud of yourself in the present. When I came back from my year abroad, I realized my moment to chew it over with a twix was over and it would be a lot harder to exercise self-love when everything is uncertain.
I went to college in Napa Valley, California and then went abroad to Spain for a year. So how was I was expected to be happy with living in Worcester, Massachusetts??? Not even Boston! Lame Worcester! I no longer had a community of friends at my disposal. I no longer had my own space. I had to readjust to living with my parents, who are stuck on a version of myself five years younger than my present age. And to top it all off, I had to cope with the realization that I spent four years earning a degree in a field I no longer wanted to pursue (still figuring that part out). Oh, and I was working as an accountant at the worst job of my life; even worse than when I worked in the school cafeteria.
When I got back home in June I didn’t know who I was, but I had some semblance of an idea of who I wanted to be and what I wanted to look like. Since I couldn’t control several variables of my life, I decided to focus on the things I could control. Even if I wasn’t in a place where I was satisfied and proud of my life I could at least incorporate more things I could be proud of. After an honest conversation with myself, I realized that my hair, before I cut it, was holding me back in so many ways. I hated that when I wore my hair in braids people would ask if it was all mine. According to Ariana if you bought it it's yours, but I couldn’t shake the feelings of shame when I had to say, “no, not all of it,” I hated when people asked how long my real hair was, because it made me feel like an imposter in my own body. What does real mean anyway?
People's choices of favorite questions to ask a black girl in braids also include:
How long did it take? I never understood why they needed to know.
Can I touch it? How about we don’t do that…
Is it heavy? How long does it last? Do you wash it? Remember when teachers would tell you that there is no such thing as a stupid question? Well, they lied to you.
I dreaded wash days. I hated how much time I felt that my hair stole from me living my life. I remember thinking toxic thoughts as a child, like wanting to marry a man that wasn’t black so that I wouldn’t have to deal with my child's hair. (I don’t think this now and if this horrible thought has ever crossed your mind, I just want to let you know that you are beautiful as a person and that your hair, no matter the texture, only adds to that beauty.) I remember hating when I had to explain to my friends why I had to wrap my hair at night or how often I’d conveniently “forget” to pack my head scarf because I hated feeling so different.
I remember feeling that God had done me dirty by dealing me an awful card of being black, tall, and curvy. Constantly aware of how much space I was taking up and wanting to shrink and fit in.
Representation is so important, but I didn’t have a lot of it in the spaces I grew up in. So I want to say thank you to shows like This is Us, Grown-ish, and Dear White People for representing and showing the depth and magnitude of black beauty.
I am still recovering from the trauma associated with being told that my natural state isn’t professional. Having to manage my hair, my temperament, my speech, and my existence if I wanted to get anywhere in life. Children need space to grow, but that is so hard to do when you feel like the world you inhabit was not made for you.
I had experienced so much personal growth in the past year and I didn’t want my hair to limit that. I needed my growth to continue. There is this line from the song Alaska by Maggie Rogers that says, “Cut my hair so I could rock back and forth without thinking of you”. That’s what I wanted needed for myself. I needed to rock back and forth through my day to day without thinking about my complex relationship with my hair and trying to satiate society's needs and demands before my own. My hair always had been an area where I felt restricted. My lack of knowledge of how to do my hair and other aspects of my life made very few hairstyles sustainable. Wash days were something I just needed to get through, but I don’t think our intricate bodies should ever be something we are nonchalant about. I don’t think we should have to “deal” with them or that they should be something we “put up with”. There is so much subliminal hate woven into statements like that where we dismiss our bodies and try to pass them off as anything other than ethereal.
How can I love myself when I address so many parts of me with derogatory speech? So I started from the top, with my hair, in my journey of physical self love. Loving ourselves is multifaceted and I struggle with the internal and emotional components of self-love on a daily basis. But I believe that being deliberate in our external expressions and liking what we see on the outside makes the internal battle that much easier.
Before I cut it, I ran the idea past a few of my friends and family. I showed them pictures of what I wanted on Pinterest. No one blatantly told me not to do it, but I got a lot of “I can’t really see it, but I am sure you’ll pull it off.” It wasn’t exactly the reassurance I was looking for, but in their doubt I was able to confirm that this was absolutely something I wanted to do.
I have a lot of anxiety and I hate doing things alone, so when the date for my hair appointment came and my sister backed out at the last minute, it took everything in me not to cancel my appointment. In retrospect, I think it was metaphorical. Like going to the appointment alone, this journey with my hair was for one passenger only.
I watched a lot of “big chop” videos on Youtube where there would be lots of tears when the hair started to fall towards the ground. I didn’t know how I was going to react, but there were no tears for me. In fact, I smiled and I felt free and ready to look in the mirror. Being ready to look in the mirror was huge for me because I had spent my whole life avoiding my reflection. I would look in the mirror out of necessity, to make sure I didn’t look like a crazy person. I didn’t want to cross paths with someone I hated. Nor did I know how to look at someone I disliked that much in the eye.
I didn’t like mirrors, I dreaded selfies, and I felt no need to look at the camera after a photo was taken to see if I liked it, because the answer was always the same. I stared at my hair on the ground, the hair that had been with me for so long and through so much and I was able to let go of the negative things attached to it. I was ready for what was next. For the first time in my life, I couldn’t wait to look in the mirror. When I washed my hands I looked up. I looked at my reflection in the car windows. I could look myself right in the eye, see my inner child, and tell her that I was ready to address her.
The first week was rough. Lets just summarize that week by saying I have seen better times. Showing my family was easy and some of my close friends too, but I did not account for how hard going out into the world would be. Would the cute train conductor still flirt with me? Have I made a huge mistake? I’m well aware of the relationship society has with women. We are comfortable when women cling tightly to their stereotypical gender roles. We like our women soft, fragile, small, nurturing, polite, lack opinions, emotional, submissive, and beautiful meaning thin or slim thick with long beautiful hair. I berated myself for willingly stepping further away from the stereotypical gender roles and standard of beauty for a woman.
I was already subconscious about how much space I took up and often felt that my race put me at a “disadvantage” and now I chose to have short hair! At work I got a lot of “what did you do to your hair?” “Why did you do this?” “Do you regret it?” “Does this haircut mean you’re a lesbian?” “I hope you get used to it.” There were a lot of other hurtful comments but we left that sort of negativity in 2019. Again, I found myself unsure. I knew that I needed to do this, I wanted my short hair, but why was I getting the opposite feedback from society? But then I realized let them think what they want. Even if I haven’t quite got the hang of how to style it, I only have reasons to be proud of myself. I wanted something big and I did it! I stopped caring, not in an unhealthy way, but a liberating way.
I fought back societies opinions with a little mantra I told myself whenever I would start to doubt:
“Short hair doesn’t make me more masculine. Short hair doesn’t make me less feminine. Short hair doesn’t make me look like a lesbian. Even if it did, there wouldn’t be anything wrong with that. Cutting my hair wasn’t a mistake. My short hair doesn’t take away from my beauty, it adds to it. I did this for myself. Tbh, why are we making such a big deal about hair in the first place? My beauty does not have an inverse relationship with anything. My beauty does not have an inverse relationship with anything. My beauty does not have an inverse relationship with anything.”
As soon as I allowed myself to believe these words I started to wear my hair better. Yes, I got the hang of styling it, but more so I got more confidence. It seemed that the more I liked me, the more I liked my hair, and the more people only had positive things to say about the cut. I may still be uncertain about many many things, but my hair isn’t one of them. Self-love may be a lifelong challenge, but my hair is no longer on my list of one of the things I hate. Whether I am contemplating another drastic hair change, non-sensible career path, or life decision, beauty is so much more than physical appearance. And our beauty does not have an inverse relationship with anything.
Elena is a visionary. She is intentional about using words to showcase her unique perspective and shine a light on both the beauty and pain too often left in the dark. She believes boundaries were made to be pushed, is always searching for new experiences, and fearlessly questions and challenges our current constructs to evaluate how to better move forward. At any given time, you’ll probably find her in a new country, making Spotify playlists, or at Target.