9 Things I Learned From Having Long Hair
Hair is hot! Having long hair is hot in every sense of the word. I grew it over two years: two sweaty summers, two warm winters without needing a scarf. It was cumbersome, by the end, to have strands of hair swimming in the pools of sweat on my neck. I would tie it up with anything—ribbons, scarves, ties, elastics—to get it to quell into a pile on my head. It was too hot. But it was also hot; there’s no denying that throwing back your hair is one of the top ten classic sultry moves that we as humans have perfected. The fact that people have long hair, and that other people are attracted to that long hair is what keeps our population moving forward. We as a species have continued our bloodlines this way, century after century, so I could walk into a Sephora and spend upwards of sixty American dollars on Olaplex. Of course, it felt great to toss it around, twirl strands, to sift through piles and curl it. You could ask people to feel how soft it was, and get them to come closer to you. This translated, for me, into a sort of ceremonial confidence: the longer my hair grew, the more attention it received, and thereby the more I had to both defend and perform having it.
I was washing my hair wrong! This was a large point of contention in my family, who wondered how I washed my hair in the shower with short hair. They would play charades, mimicking the way I patted my head quickly with soap before rinsing it without scrubbing into my scalp. I would laugh, but they were spot on. I never scrubbed my scalp with short hair; I never felt I needed to. I rarely used conditioners; there was no way on earth it made any sort of difference. With long hair, there is only difference. Washing, which my friends had told me was an event, was an event. I luxuriated in long showers and scrubbing my scalp and finding the right balance of products to bring out the sheen I needed to show.
It all falls out! Someone told me you lose 100 strands of hair a day when you have long hair. I won’t fact check them because that sounds exactly right. In fact, I think I lost more than that on average, just ask my roommate who bought a drain guard unannounced and left it in the shower for me. I knew this, growing up with sisters, and the routine of snaking the drain, but to have long hair is to know this intimately, personally. To clean your own hair is to confront a certain amount of your own mortality--we are literally falling apart before our own eyes, rebuilding ourselves in real time. This too becomes ceremony: grow the hair, lose the hair, find the hair, clean the hair, discard the hair. I couldn’t help but to think of the way our cells were constantly regenerating in this way, largely beneath the surface of our waking consciousness. I felt connected to myself in this new way, suddenly sharply aware and in awe of the capabilities of my body.
It’s more fun to play with than I imagined! As I wrote earlier, hair is hot. One facet of this is the ability hair has to entertain, both others and ourselves. I would braid and unbraid my hair, trying to learn new patterns and plaits from preteens online. At a party over the summer, a stranger braided my hair for hours, both of us having always wanted to do so but never been able. We’d grown up in different countries, though both in cultures where short hair was the custom for boys, long for girls, and had been fascinated by our respective mothers and the women in our lives who could transform themselves through changing their hair. Though we had been in close proximity, there was no comparison to experience, to physically bring things together, one braid at a time.
Getting it caught is the Worst™! You know the sensation of accidentally having your headphones ripped out of your ears? Annoying and a little painful, usually self inflicted? It’s a common occurrence with long hair, one that goes undiscussed by women. I firmly believe that if long hair was the norm for cis het men, getting your hair caught would be a national talking point. There would be products on the market to prevent your hair from getting caught. There would be a NASA research fund into eradicating catches. Men would use it as an opportunity to call out of things, to be late to work. I have NEVER heard a woman complain about this. Why is this? It gets caught under bag and backpack straps, caught in sweaters, yanked by towels, stuck on earrings. I wanted to scream every time it happened and I often did.
Elastics do disappear into thin air! By my own count, I purchased upwards of five hundred, twenty five thousand, and six hundred hair ties. And here I am, writing this, without a single one left.
Hair solidarity exists! If you make the brave choice to have Long Hair™ you unwittingly sign a social contract to allow your hair to be a talking point to strangers. You are also a member of the Long Hair Boys Club and if you happen to be queer like me, you are part of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Hairties. I was surprised at how social scenarios shifted, how people perceived me differently, how I held myself differently. It was a point of commonality and conversation that I enjoyed.
The longer it grew, the more attached I became to it! The question I was asked the most often was: “how long are you going to grow it?” which sometimes was asked in the surreptitious riddle of: “when are you going to cut it?”. And my answer was always the same: when I felt like it. But I never really felt like it. Interestingly, the longer my hair was, the more I liked it. The first time I put it in a bun, I felt like I’d accomplished something. The first time it touched my shoulders, I felt like a new person, as if I was meant to have long hair. I felt I needed a sort of unflappable confidence to wear it long; people were going to look and I needed to give them something to look at.
Cutting it wasn’t defeat! I cried when I cut my hair, like I was giving up on a dream I didn’t know I had. I didn’t tell anyone, I didn’t look in the mirror for days not wanting to face what I’d done. It had grown out brassy and blonde and the split ends would scratch at my neck and curl into the corners of my mouth at night, but it felt like an affable friend asking of my attention, my introspection. I was pulled into wanting something of myself, wanting more of myself, wanting better for myself, and pushed against waves of societal norms and going-back-into-the-office and a new license photo that were difficult to articulate. We often slip through social situations in life without rectifying the gently incorrect assumptions about ourselves at the hands of convention and for the benefit of convenience. Any detour from these unspoken rules forces us to reconsider things, what we know of others and what we know of ourselves. The Albanian hair dresser who chopped my ponytail off said: “Such beautiful hair, yes? But time for something new,” and it was as simple as that. I had learned what having long hair was like, and I was ready for a change. And hey, it’s already starting to grow back.
