Hair Grows Back

"Your haircut is offensive to lesbians!"

-- Tracy Morgan, 30 Rock

Self portrait 8-2-14

"Hey, I am not my hair,
I am not this skin
I am not your expectation, no.
I am not my hair,
I am not this skin
I am a soul that lives within."

-- India Arie, "I Am Not My Hair"

Self portrait 8-2-14

It's no secret that I enjoy a good, short haircut.

And I trust my hair stylist completely.

Usually.

But yesterday she got uncomfortably close to the scalp.

I showed her a picture of the cut I wanted.

It was a photo of a very feminine cropped hairstyle, shot head-on, from the front. Since that was the only view, the sides and the back were not visible, which left them up to my stylist's interpretation.

She got the front right.

I'm trying to look on the bright side.

Otherwise, it's a little military. I look like a new recruit.

Or a skinhead.

Or ... well ... let Leo tell you. These are the words he chose in his cautious, fumbling attempt to delicately render his opinion:

Him: "It looks like a ... um ... what are those one ladies called?"

Me: "Lesbians?"

Him: "Yeah."

It's a good thing hair grows back.

Sure, I dig androgyny and blurring gender lines. I like to have fun mixing up the masculine and feminine elements of my appearance. But this haircut skews a tad too, shall we say Sapphic, for even me.

I could just take the plunge and shave what's left into a Mohawk the way Leo and the rest of his teammates have done for their 3-a-day summer football practices. It could potentially make me the coolest mom in the history of the team -- an ultimate show of support and solidarity and team spirit -- like when lovers shave their heads during their partners' chemotherapy.

Or not.

Shaving my whole head is on my bucket list. But I kind of want to do it when I want to do it, you know, when the moment is right and on my own terms.

Probably I'll just end up wearing my Indians ball cap a lot more often. It'll be baseball season for a few more months. I will support the Tribe and camouflage my skinned head all at the same time.

Meanwhile, I'm taking this opportunity to wear more eye makeup and lip gloss, to kind of try and tip the scales back towards some kind of he/she balance.

That being said, I'm going to go ahead and give my stylist the benefit of the doubt and not get over-excited about this one-time random fuck up.

At not-yet-even 40 years old, she became a grandmother 5 days ago. I suspect that maybe she got a little distracted telling me all about her beautiful new granddaughter.

During my haircut.

Oh, man.

Coloring Outside The Lines

"Whenever she imagined her child, 

grown up without interference from a judgmental world,

she imagined its male and female halves as complementing each other,

and as being secretly, almost magically powerful."

-- Kathleen Winter, Annabel

Self portrait 2-3-14

"When you grow up as a girl, it is like there are faint chalk lines 

traced approximately three inches around your entire body at all times, 

drawn by society and often religion and family and particularly other women, 

who somehow feel invested in how you behave, 

as if your actions reflect directly on all womanhood."

-- M.E. Thomas, 

Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight

"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me:

I am a free human being with an independent will."

-- Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

The very first photograph ever taken of me was in the hospital just after I was born. Its black and white, and in it I look like a just-hatched baby bird that's tumbled from its nest. My mouth is stretched into a grimace, my puffy eyes are jammed shut, my tiny fists are clenched. And stuck somehow onto my fuzzy tuft of spare hair, is a ribbon.

I'm sure my overall angry appearance in this photo was the result of just surviving the rigors of birth and having bright lights shoved in my face, but I like to think I was just really pissed about the ribbon.

I once asked my mother, "Why the ribbon?"

She said, "To show you were a girl."

Hoo, boy.

Fourth grade. Halfway through the school year my family moved and I went to a new school. A girl who would eventually become my best friend asked bluntly, "Are you a boy or a girl?" Having a gender-neutral name didn't help matters. If Mrs. Allison had introduced me as "our new student, Monica," it would have probably eliminated some confusion.

Should have worn a ribbon.

Dinner at a nice restaurant with my family, I was about 12 and sporting a pair of sparkly new birthstone earring studs -- rubies -- and my earlobes were still swollen and stinging from being pierced. (Pierced ears were my mother's idea, natch.) The waiter worked his way around the table taking orders and eventually came to me, asking, "And what will the young man be having?" What was he, blind? Couldn't he see my ruby earrings? Couldn't he see that I'd had metal posts shoved through my tender skin as an outward display of femininity? While my family tee-hee'd and ha-ha'd at the waiter's gaffe, I turned as red as my rubies, burning with the futility of it all.

Should have worn a ribbon.

My natural tendency, my sort of set-point, has always tilted toward the boyish. My face, my body, my hair, my interests. All of it. But I can look like a girl when I want to, or when I have to. I have a whole box of paints and crayons and pencils and brushes and colors for just that purpose. When I have to go to dinner or the theater or someplace "nice," I don't rely on earrings to do the trick. I smear on foundation and shadows and liners and glosses and powders and, as I tell my kids, "turn myself into a girl." I have all the right costume pieces -- the dresses, the shoes, the undergarments. I've even rocked a set of silicone boobs. (They were gross. They just got really sweaty.)

Sometimes I enjoy it. Sometimes I tolerate it. Sometimes it's a monumental pain in the ass.

Mostly, I just like to be who I am and wish we didn't all have to concern ourselves so much about what other people see, or what other people think, or if other people are comfortable when we color outside the lines. Why can't we just color?

Who put the the fucking lines there, anyway?

That guy?

Oh, it's a girl?

Should have worn a ribbon.