On the Fringe

The innocence of youth grips us all. I was nine and I knew what I wanted. I wanted to look like my best friends. I wanted a haircut that reflected how I felt.

“I think,” the stylist said, “that if I leave some hair here below your crown it will keep you looking feminine.” I was nine. There was no need in my world to look feminine. I just wanted to be myself. I told her no, I didn’t really want that, I wanted it short, you know, like a boy. I think I remember her laughing, then hesitating, asking if I was sure, and then finally, snipping it off. Clipping, thinning, reshaping to a point of shapelessness, and with it, freedom from the weight of my hair.

Over time, I began to lose grip on the innocence of youth. Ironically, much of this was because of this haircut, which felt so aligned with what I understood of myself. As naive as I was, I began to understand that there were things at work in the world I hadn’t accessed yet. The woman pointing at me at the county fair, instructing her child to “go play the game that boy is playing.” The Silent Generation grandmother gently redirecting me to the “right bathroom.” I knew after I left the salon that my haircut was like a boy’s haircut, but I began to see that to other people, I was a boy. At this age, I’d only known what I’d been told, which was essentially twofold: you are, in fact, a girl; and you can be anything you want. It was a confusing and abrupt dichotomy I suddenly had to live with and especially since, until that point, my gender was not something that had ever occurred to me to have such weight and gravity on my interactions with others. And even more simply, it had been a totally alien concept to me.

Another reality I faced with this choice was the acceptance of upkeep. The length of travel and the cost of an appointment prohibited me from having any luxury like professional maintenance. This left me with only one option, which was to do the maintenance myself.

And because I was nine, the only thing I was allowed to use was a pair of kid-safe scissors.

The result was never good. The result was never the same as the first haircut. But it was essential, nonetheless, for me to feel I was able to express myself this way. I didn’t know what it meant yet but I knew it was important. I knew it was exhausting but I sensed, even then, the action of cutting my own hair was a pivotal encounter with an integral identity. It taught me that even though people say “it’s what’s on the inside that counts,” there’s no escaping the impression of outer appearance. If external presentation is tied to internal truth, this translation renders us into political objects open to interpretation. It was a lot for a nine year old to shoulder, but I’m so thankful I got to learn about it early, even if I couldn’t put words to it yet.

I wonder, in a life now far beyond the time when I stood in the bathroom holding a mirror across from another mirror so I could hazard trimming that part of my crown which dictated my femininity, how many children are going through something painfully similar. How many of them have the words to describe their gender experimentation and how many of them don’t, and are simply trying things out. If there’s a world in the future wherein this type of innocent play can be seen at face-value, and accepted as an exciting forage for selfhood. That they won’t be shamed or corrected, categorized prematurely or altogether dismissed. Can we loosen our grip on the meaning of appearances and let children loose with a pair of kid-safe scissors? It may be a future that’s a long way off, or it may be in our hands already and all we have to do is hand it over to them and say, go wild. You are whoever you think you are, and that’s what matters most.