Haircut After Coming Out as Queer | Personal Essay
How a String of Major Haircuts Helped 1 Writer Reclaim Her Identity After Coming Out
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At first, there were your standard hesitations — "What does it even look like under there? What if I have a weirdly-shaped head?" And, of course: "What if I just don't feel right with a buzzcut?"
Still, the draw of a shaved head — and the "Who gives a f*ck?" feeling that comes with it — prevailed. "My girlfriend was the one who shaved my head. I was nervous at first, but now I really love it. I'm sure I'll grow my hair out at some point again, but it's been fun to explore this side of myself. It feels like a further extension of queerness because there is something about walking around with a shaved head that draws a little bit more attention. There's also a lineage of men in my family who have crew cuts, and I don't have a crew cut, but there is a shared toughness of a shaved cut that has a strong connection to my family."
For so many people, hair can hold such a firm grip on someone's sense of self and identity — and frankly, one (or five) haircuts can't change that. But the journey can always evolve.
"If I could, I would go back to that young person and dare them to be brave enough to live the outward identity that I wanted."
"I look back to my younger self who's path was maybe more authentically in touch with what I wanted, and I feel now that I'm the closest to that place than I've ever been in my life — to that true, initial expression of who I am and what I want the world to see me as. If I could, I would go back to that young person and dare them to be brave enough to live the outward identity that I wanted. So don't wear makeup in high school if you don't want to and so what if you have short, shaggy hair?"
She added, "I would have encouraged myself to continue living this physical and style aesthetic that I felt aligned with, because you can still have love that way. A lot of my fear was that, if I didn't present how society wanted me to that I wouldn't have love, I wouldn't have community, I wouldn't have acceptance. Now I know that you can have all that — and so much more."
Genevieve Hudson is the author of Boys of Alabama and lives in Portland, Oregon.