Cut!
[No. 48]
HOW LONG HAVE YOU HAD YOUR BANGS, AND ARE THEY PART OF YOUR PERSONALITY NOW?
“I’ve had enough, this is my prayer
That I’ll die living just as free as my hair”
Lady Gaga
In 2005, I sat in the chair of a hairstylist in New York and declared, “Short.” I watched as the color drained from his face. Women around me sipped lattes.
“Who cuts their hair three weeks before their wedding?” he tried to reason with me.
I do.
I left feeling great, with a crown like Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby. In Italy, I bleached a few streaks and frolicked, alive and connected. Then, back to black with cancer. New hair, new chapter. These looks are like line breaks on the poem of my life.
I chose these styles as ideals and then grew into them.
More recently, I shaved my head [think Demi in G.I. Jane or Sigourney in Alien 3] days after returning from Austin where, in spite of my flat chest and boy clothes, I decided that I had been called “ma’am” for the last time. In between sets at SXSW, I sat with Nico at an Argentine restaurant. Over a glass of Malbec, I cried a river of tears, telling him how out of sync I felt. When I got home and settled, I got out the clippers. Within a half hour, I was buzzed. Suddenly, I could breathe deeply again.
Hair is one way we tell the world who we are, how we’re feeling. It is playful and authentic [and at times, political]. To be honest, at this point my bangs are from last year’s show. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? On the one hand, I see myself at 80 in Rick Owens ripped tanks [still with a shaved head]. On the other hand, beyond aesthetics, I am devoted to following my instinct, to trusting the moment and being allowed to change my mind.
It feels a little silly to contemplate the topic of [HAIR]. Femininity, masculinity, they’re only social constructs. Yet, we live in a theatrical society, and I want to play. Even imagined communities are communities. So, while we have these flesh vessels, let’s dance. I guess that day in the chair, I pledged allegiance [I proposed] to myself. And the fates accepted. [This feels a good time to tell y’all that fairly recenetly I was signed with the modeling agency Other People’s Children! Check out my profile here.]
WHAT IS YOUR RELATIONSHIP TO YOUR HAIR?
2023 was the hardest year of my life and it’s the longest I’ve ever grown my hair.
My hair feels like a direct reflection of who I am at any given time. I have been balding with a receding hairline when I was drug addicted, and out of my mind. I’ve had a rainbow colored buzz in the middle of the pandemic— the most of an adventure I could experience at that time. And now, my hair, long blond and curly to my shoulder blades, in a feminine body, reflects the most authentic version of all my hairs and all my selves…. But I imagine I always feel that when I am in my hair, otherwise I change it.
My hair is a microcosm for the macrocosm that is the cumulus of me.
“My hair is a microcosm for the macrocosm that is the cumulus of me.” That line rings so true.
Thank you for sharing so fully of yourself and your experience. I so relate to these different chapters in life being marked by what is unfolding on my crown.
Grateful for your presence here, SS. x