Short hair: why it took me 30+ years to do it
My (fraught) relationship with my hair through the ages. And the reasons I shaved most of it off. With... old pics
Hi! This is Leyla from A Day Well Spent, a newsletter seeking pathways to more purposeful living.
Here’s what landed in subscriber inboxes the past couple of weeks:
I got to interview my friend and colleague — food journalist and BBC Radio 4's The Food Programme presenter — the indomitable Sheila Dillon
part daydream, part recommendation crowd sourcing and part getting to know each other better — Sunday’s reflections were about travel
this is my breakfast for most of the year - I love how people are already making this!
why I think creativity has a branding problem and sharing the ways in which we express our everyday creativity
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Today’s post is quite a personal one; it’s about my hair and the relationship I’ve had with it over the years (fraught) and the reasons I finally cut it all off five years ago.
It also includes pictures of me that no one beyond my family and Facebook friends have ever seen HA-HA.
As always, thank you for being here and I hope you enjoy today’s post!
I renewed my passport last week and finally replaced a hideous 10 year old photo with one that I actually recognise and identify with, it is finally me.
In this new photo, I have super short back and sides (I always ask for a bit of skin to show – it should feel like stroking a Siamese cat) with length on top that whorls into my natural curls.
This is my current hairstyle and the only one most people outside of my friends and family have ever seen, including those who only know me from being on TV. But until fairly recently, I looked quite different.
My hairstyle today is one of my features I love the most; I have finally ‘arrived’ when it comes to my hair. It is naturally thick and curly and I now embrace and I’m grateful for both these characteristics. But this wasn’t always the case.
Today it has the freedom to behave how it’s meant to, accurately represents my personality and identity and I regularly get compliments about it (pretty much always from women, more on that below). Before arriving at this point, I don’t recall one statement of note about my hair in recent times.
But it’s taken over three decades and a lot of soul searching to get here. I fought a hard battle with those curls for years and endured long hair when all I really wanted to do was cut it all off.
This style I have today I have only had for 5 years; prior to that and for most of my life, I have quite strongly resented my hair.
How things are today
My current hairstyle can be fairly described as androgynous and it’s a look I sometimes like to go for with regards to how I dress too, depending on my mood. Much of my wardrobe is from the men’s section and truth be told, as a straight cis woman, I get a kick from knowing I can’t be fully deciphered at first glance.
If I’m in baggy jeans with no make-up on or earrings in, it’s not unheard of for me to be referred to as ‘sir’. This has in fact happened twice in one day before, coming back from the airport – it must have been a long travel day. I don’t at all mind the confusion in isolation. To be fair, I do look exactly like my brother from the back.
But otherwise, why am I lazily being mistaken for a guy — just because you can see some of my scalp and I’m not wearing a dress? A neat demonstration of the engrained preconceptions we have about what a woman is ‘supposed’ to look like. Another gift from the patriarchy.
Exhibit A, a comment under my Instagram post:
Or sometimes people assume that a woman with a fade who isn’t wearing a flowery dress must be queer. I have previously been asked by another woman at a party if my ‘girlfriend’ was going to be coming along. I’m still unsure if she was hitting on me or not.
But what was my hair like prior to cutting it all off? And why did I do it?
The journey of my hair and my relationship with it
Ages 16 to the current day with pictures (LOL why am I sharing these)
There are a number of reasons I finally decided to cut off most of my hair: