Day 224: A new haircut

04052013

I never knew I could stretch my neck that long!

Yesterday I got a new haircut. I had a few reasons for it:

• short hair is practical when traveling
• short hair is comfortable during the summer
• my hair hadn't been cut in years and the condition of the ends was starting to be poor
• I wanted to challenge myself with something I'm not used to.

Now, the first three deal with practicality and I fully stand by them, and this new cut serves this purpose well. This challenge, though, really did prove to be a challenge!

I wanted my hair cut shorter than it's ever been and also stripped from any particular shape, form or style. I also wanted to test whether this hair type would turn into an afro when short enough. Interestingly enough, this hair type does turn into an afro – but not in the way I imagined it to, and this is where all my reactions start to pour in, lol.

My first thoughts when seeing myself in the mirror with the new cut were “it IS an afro!”, “I look like my father?!”, “I look like a boy”. So the first things I reacted to were 1) the expectations I had set about the new hair, and 2) the loss of femininity, which I will return to. The hairdresser told me that my hair type goes into a “shock” when cut and will “curl up” in a couple of weeks – and so now my hair is somewhat straight, the cut doesn't really look like anything but a bush and I have no choice but to wait for the hair to become “as it's supposed to” - if it ever does. For all I know, my hair could decide to stop growing right now.

So I became resistant to go out because I was afraid of the reactions I would receive because of this hair. I eventually had to, and it was interesting to see how I began interpreting people's gestures according to my negative expectations. For example, a man in the bus glanced at me and after that didn't look at me again – and I interpreted this to mean he had been “checking me out” and was now “avoiding me” because I wasn't “feminine enough”. I realized that with my “feminine” hair I have gotten used to being validated by how men look at me with approval and women with jealousy, which is a pretty destructive pattern now that I've spotted it, because it feeds competition among women and contributes to the expectation that women ought to look a certain way. To use a term I found in a study of masculinity, I now stand here as a “gender traitor”, and that is a position I intend to utilize to stand as an example. With the loss of femininity I also felt like I had lost all of my “sex appeal”, but then I realized I would rather look huggable than fuckable – I'd rather come across as an approachable human being than an image in flesh loaded with symbols, meanings and assumptions.

I also realized that I have attached a whole myriad of words into different types of hair – beautiful, ugly, feminine, masculine, dumb, stupid, embarrassing, pretty, girly, cool – not realizing it is all just hair, dead cells growing from a certain area of my body onto which we have attached all kinds of cultural meanings and symbols that are not actually real. I will discharge these words from their positive and negative connotations so that hair would just be hair to me.

Most interesting about this has been, aside all this social stuff, how this has affected my self-image. As I have been unable to associate this form of hair, this shape that I've become, with anything positive, I've noticed my mind getting confused. All I associate this haircut with are clowns, my father and silly looking boys, and none of these is what I want to attach to my self-image! I want to be feminine and sexy and pretty! So my mind is in the search for a shape that would be “cool”, “pretty” or even comprehendible, because now every time I look into the mirror I kinda flinch, lol, because my hair looks so weird to me, more like a hat than hair. So every now and then I get this visualized image of myself, a shape or a shadow of a kind, that is an attempt to create a self-image. It has been interesting to see how much of myself I define based on how I look, especially around the head area, and how befuddled I get when this mechanism is interrupted. To avoid feeling like I've “lost myself” I've got to remind myself with breath that I am HERE, I am still me, no matter what kind of hair grows out of my head, I am the same underneath it.

[PS. I figured out what I look like: a troll puppet!]

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to doubt my decision to cut my hair and to try and get myself to not walk into the hair salon and to call it off by using excuses and manipulation strategies such as “long hair isn't that inconvenient”, “what if it never grows back?”, “you will never be as pretty as you are now!”, “what if people will dislike me?”.

• I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to try to “turn my head” by thinking “long hair isn't that inconvenient”, trying to get myself to act against what I've concluded to be the best choice from a practical viewpoint.
• I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to think “what if it never grows back?”, here implying that if it doesn't grow back my life is forever ruined because I have assigned hair a position where it defines my value and consequently affects the quality of my life, not realizing that hair is just hair and affects my life in no way whatsoever aside from practical issues – and also trying to manipulate myself into withdrawing from my decision with a scaring tactique.
• I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to think “you will never be as pretty as you are now!”, trying to scare and threaten myself into changing my decision with the belief that “feminine” hair is what makes me pretty and that “prettiness” overall has any value.
• I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to think “what if people will dislike me?”, trying to scare myself to change my decision with worst-case scenarios of social consequences – not realizing that if someone actually chooses to dislike me because of my hair, they aren't really looking at who I am but the image of who they thought/believed/perceived me to be.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to create and build up expectations and images in my mind about what my hair will look like when it's cut to a certain length, not realizing that as I have never had my hair this short I cannot possibly know what it will look like and how the curls will adjust to the change, also not realizing that with these expectations I hinder myself from accepting whatever the end result will be.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to react to the end result by thinking “it's not how I imagined it to be”, not taking into consideration the practical fact that in my imagination my hair was cut even shorter and that in this length what I imagined is not possible.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to make it harder for myself to accept my new haircut as I have held onto ideal images of how it “should” be.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to react to the association I had to my father and how my hair kind of looks similar to his, resisting looking like my father because that means “loss of femininity” and “loss of youth” to me.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to react to the association I had to some memories of teenage boys with afro's / bushy curly hair, resisting looking similar to these boys because to me that means “loss of femininity” and “loss of sex appeal”.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to fear that my hair won't curl up as it's “supposed to” and that it will remain somewhat straight, here reacting to the loss of my curls which I have defined an essential part of my self-image.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to define myself according to my curls, believing and perceiving that if I lost my curls I would no longer be “me” - not realizing that this “me” is only the self-image of me but not who I am in fact.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to want my hair to curl up because that would mean there is a chance that my hair won't remain “ugly” and might turn “pretty”.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to attach certain kinds of hair to negative associations within and as the following words: “ugly”, “embarrassing”, “dumb”, “short”, “boy hair”, “man hair”, “masculine”, “stupid”, “ruined”, “trashy” (also in finnish: “nolo”, “tyhmä”, “pölö”, “ruma”, “miehekäs”, “kynitty”, “homssuinen”, “poikatukka”, “miesten kampaus”, “dorka”).

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to attach certain kinds of hair to positive associations within and as the following words: “pretty”, “nice”, “beautiful”, “attractive”, “feminine”, “girly”, “cool”, “curly”, “flowing”, “thick”, “cute” (in finnish: “nätti”, “kaunis”, “söpö”, “kiva”, “tyttömäinen”, “naisellinen”, “kihara”, “paksu”, “enkelinkihara”, “pukeva”, “ihana”).

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to assign certain forms and shapes of hair specific values which I have used to define myself and others.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to define myself according to what kind of hair I've got through the words and values I associate with it, creating all of my personalities and characters based on the self-image I have built upon my hair.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to define others according to the hair they've got through the words and values I associate with it, creating assumptions and expectations of others based on who they instantly appear to be instead of taking the time to get to know a person to see who they actually are.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to require to build myself a self-image based on what I look like especially around the head area (face, head shape, hair, shoulders) and to get confused when what I looked like did not fit into any category of what I wanted to look like.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to want to look like certain ideals and to fear looking like certain worst-case scenarios – not realizing that what I look like bears no value to myself in fact, and that I will be here all the same no matter what the visual aspect of my hair is.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to give value to the visual aspect of my hair and thus validate the cultural construct of evaluating people according to their hair.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to not realize that what matters to me in fact is how my hair feels and not how it looks like (unless I'm playing the game of “getting approval within society to reach a goal” which I am not at the moment).

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to overlook the fact that this short hair feels really nice and comfortable because I have given more value to others' experience of me than my experience of myself.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to fear that others will react negatively to me because of my hair with judgement, rejection, ignoring, mocking, belittling and name-calling.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to fear that others will only see who they perceive, believe and assume me to be – not realizing that even if this was to happen, it would simply mean that these people I would no longer interact with and that it would not change who I actually am.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to fear the judgement of others because I have been insecure of myself and used the perceived judgement of others as a way to judge myself.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to expect that others will judge me because I already judge myself, and to interpret the behavior of others according to my negative expectations, not realizing that I do not know what the experience of another actually is.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to want and expect validation of my worth in terms of “sex appeal” / “attractiveness” from men as “signs” of appreciation and from women as “signs” of jealousy.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to want to win in the competition among women to be “most attractive” to gain the alpha-position of the dominant female where I would stand as a “winner” and all other women as “losers” in terms of alluring men, finding a partner and continuing one's lineage.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to base my sense of self-worth on this validation I have searched from how men and women react to me and interact with me.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to define my self-worth according to my “level of attractiveness” I have gathered by reading “signs” from the behavior of others.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that in order to “make it” in the competition for a suitable partner I need to look a certain way to get as much positive attention as possible, here believing that the quantity of positive attention assures my “victory”, not realizing that I ought to rather be looking at the quality if what I'm looking for is “suitability”.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to feel like my femininity is “lessened” because of how my hair looks.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to feel like I had lost my “sex appeal” with my hair, believing and perceiving that attractiveness is determined by how I look instead of who I am, and also giving value to the quality “sex appeal” because I fear not attracting a partner and being left alone.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to not see my hair as what it is – dead cells of physical matter the purpose of which is to keep my head warm and comfortable – and to instead perceive my hair to be “more” than just hair by attaching cultural and social symbols, meanings and values to it, not realizing the extent to which these imagined values affect my behavior, application and overall life experience.

I commit myself to embrace my hair as it is within and as the realization that it is just physical matter and NOT who I am, and that it can be re-grown and re-shaped for as long as it still grows, and that when/if it stops growing it is OK because that is how the physical body functions.

I commit myself to consider practicality along with self-expression when and as I make decisions to re-shape my hair, but to also be clear on “self-expression” to not include hidden desires, expectations and self-definitions.

I commit myself to accept my hair as a part of my physical body no matter what it looks like by focusing on how my hair feels like as a touch sensation.

I commit myself to walk myself out of the dependency for external factors to determine myself for me with writing, self-forgiveness and practical application.

I commit myself to take note of the moments where I judge/evaluate/assess another based on how his/her hair looks and to open up these moments either in spoken or written self-forgiveness.

I commit myself to allow myself to enjoy my hair (as well as the rest of my physical body) by focusing on how I experience myself instead of focusing on how others appear to experience me.