Head hair vs. "head" hair

Yesterday was quite an eventful day for me.  I got my first email from someone I didn’t know regarding my blog, I got my hair cut that is a dramatic change (more on that in a sec), and I also read my writing in public for the first time at Rev. Jen’s Anti-Slam.  I was scared shitless at first, but people there were really nice and supportive, so that made it easier.  I was pleased that my writing seemed to amuse them.  I will go back next week and read again.  (The selection will be about my old roommate who was obsessed with Glenn Danzig, her special crotch cloth for showering, and her theories regarding masturbation.)

As for the haircut, I realized as I made a fateful decision to chop off my medium locks and go short that I was only validating my mother’s insistence when I was a child that girls should have short hair.  Of course, from the ages of 5-9, when my mother told the haircutter what to do and I had no say in the matter, this led to much unhappiness.  I wanted nice long hair, like all the other girls.  After the cut, I’d inevitably be crying hysterically because I “looked like a boy” and then my dad would yell at my mom for doing that to me again.  A few months later, the cycle repeats itself.

It seems obvious to me know that young girls want long hair because it is the main way to quickly distinguish boys and girls before puberty, aside from style of clothing.  (And even there my mom thwarted my attempts to look like a girl, buying me the ugliest clothes at Sears.  I swore she bought them in the boys department and would refuse to get dressed in the morning if she gave me certain things to wear.  She swears that Sears only sold dowdy clothes, even in the girls department.)  Otherwise, bodies are pretty much the same.  There is a lot of importance placed on distinguishing yourself by gender.  The opposite sex is clearly yucky and you would not want to be mistaken for them.  Now that I guess I don’t worry about being mistaken for a boy, I was ready to go for the chop.  At least on the top of my head…