It's funny how small things can matter sometimes but hair played a pretty important part of my life growing up. It was the one most physical thing I could to be like other girls and to further separate me from the boy I was never really seen as in the first place but thinking about this in retrospect, it wasn't like I understood any of that when I was a child. I'm not even sure I understand or can explain it now or how anyone understood it way back when but somehow my mother, step-dad and grandparents just did.
From the time I entered kindergarten and began to be treated differently because of my gender, I realized how fundamentally wrong my place in the world was and that others did not see me as I knew myself to be. Having the natural personality, temperament, behaviors and interests typical of other girls, the whole boy thing never jived with me as it just didn't fit with who I was and this was obvious to the whole world the second you got to know me so right off the bat I was seen as other which was fine with me, I
was different but things weren't being interpreted the right way. I wasn't a boy that acted like a girl, I was a girl that had to look like a boy because I had a male body and I was crushed by what we would now recognize as both body and social dysphoria. All I knew was that life hurt and that it just felt really terrible being not enough boy to be seen as one because I wasn't and didn't want to be seen that way but yet not girl enough to be seen as one of them either like I should have been.
Again, this was all without any real concept of what was happening or why things were like they were but by the end of the 2nd grade, I was deeply troubled, very unhappy and more than extremely uncomfortable locked into a physicality to which I did not belong and I honestly don't know or remember what all went down, what was said or how it happened but not having hair like other girls just made me feel naked and exposed and wrong, icky and entirely embarrassed. After some seriously depressive meltdowns and out of control behavior, somehow my family understood and the boy's haircuts stopped forever. What it took for this to happen, I really don't know and I didn't really start thinking about some of my questions until I got way older and my folks were long gone and not around to ask.
By the end of the 3rd grade, my hair was causing problems with school dress codes disregarding the fact that my gender atypicality now had a visual component further setting me apart socially and ostracizing me even more for my differences. It was hard to deal with but I was beginning to feel better about myself and more able to tolerate the world. To my 8/9 year old mind, besides the whole clothes thing that didn't become a bigger issue until I got older, having longer hair was the most physical way I could be like other girls and it became a symbol or my badge to the world that I was not a boy and again, somehow my family understood the importance of this to me in spite of the problems it or the controversy and havoc it caused.
Mid 1960's world did not tolerate boys whose hair did not conform to the prescribed standards. With a lot of involvement from my folks, some schools would tolerate it for a while and others did not. Between that and my quiet, gentle and innocent nature, I was bullied so much that I was considered the disruptive troublemaker so we had to move many times trying to find a school that didn't want me to leave or the environment wasn't so hostile it became dangerous. I was put in therapy in 1965 when I was 10, not to change me or make me normal but rather to help with the way the outside world treated me.
After being in 14 different schools, before I started junior high (7th grade/1967) we moved to a different state hoping for less problems but by this time, my hair was a couple inches below my shoulders and overall, what gender I was had become hard to determine but I was really tired of all the hassles and my folks were determined to put down roots and take a stand so when I was sent home my first day and told not to come back without a haircut, take a stand is what they did. I wasn't privy to all the details or how things worked out but they got a lawyer and threatened to sue the school board and I got sent to another counselor. I missed the first eight days of school and when I did go back, all the teachers and staff at least were aware of how I was allowed in and there was a lot of thinly disguised animosity toward me and of course the other kids were absolutely brutal. Two days later I was expelled proper for fighting a gym teacher that tried to drag me into the boy's locker room/showers. I ended up getting sent to another counselor and somehow that got worked out too so I kept my long hair and spent 7th and 8th grade PE class folding towels in one of the coach's offices instead of having to participate, take showers or go in the boy's locker room. This was a big win for me.
Before I even started high school in 1969, my parents preemptively met with them twice and joked with me that was to warn them I was coming. Humor and teasing about my situation was how they diffused the seriousness of things because I did have so many problems and things were crushingly difficult. I don't remember if they had changed the standards or if exceptions were made for me but in high school, my hair never got me in trouble, not with the school anyway.
By the time I graduated in 1973, I'd been on HRT for a year, had obvious breasts and my hair was to my waist or elbows somewhere and I had kind of a toned down, no makeup hippie chick aesthetic for school being as much as I could get away with because I was still supposed to be a boy but I had been passing and accepted as a girl outside of school for a couple years by then with my hair still being a big part of that as it had always been my biggest flag to the world of who I was. Boys just didn't have hair like that.
With school now over and me living "full time" the rest of my feminine expression was released and there was no way I could have ever passed as a boy even had I wanted to considering I never really did anyway and not only just my hair but now also my body and everything else from not only what I did with my hair to the stereotypical things like clothes and makeup I was no longer restricted from by trying to stay in school found me easily and comfortably blended into the world as just your regular young woman, girl next door.
About six months later, as I said in my earlier post, I cut off to about the length it is now and it's never been shorter than a couple inches than that. With other things filling in and taking its place, it wasn't quite so important but it is still a big part how I see and feel about myself. It was the first real thing I could do to be more female as that little kid nearly 55 years ago before I even knew what that meant or how far it would go.
Writing about and remembering this stuff, sometimes I can't believe my life has been so weird or how I ever managed to grow up like I did? It doesn't seem possible and if I hadn't lived and experienced these things myself, I probably wouldn't believe it either. It's all quite surreal or like some twisted karma of being a grand cosmic mistake for being born as a boy in the first place but being blessed with understanding and intuitive parents to ahead of their time to make up for it. The flying spaghetti monster must have been looking out?
