Strands of Identity

Exploring connections between hair and self.

Artwork by @whitingglenn

I’m thinking about when I had red hair and was in love with you. I’m thinking about a cold weekend in Paris where we walked through Pere Lachaise and saw a pair of hands carved from marble reaching out of a grave; one hand belonged to a man and the other a woman. Hand in hand the arms marked the grave as if they were buried together. Two bodies, one love. I’m thinking about how I didn’t really like my hair when it was red. But you did. 

“Samson came to my bed, told me that my hair was red, told me I was beautiful and came into my bed” Samson, Begin to Hope, Regina Spektor, 2006.

As a child my hair was blonde, duckling yellow and just as soft and wispy I’m told. 

I have a snippet of my hair from then. When I hold it in my fingers I wonder how it ever could have belonged to me. There's an innocence to it. I have no memory of having hair that bright, it was too long ago. But I have often wished it would have stayed that way; white, ice blonde. 

Would life have been different then?

A guy from my hometown still occasionally messages me to the effect of “You gorgeous redhead you” Even though my hair is no longer red. Even though I haven’t had red hair for 10 years. Even though he is married. 

My hair started to change colour in Primary School, after nursery where I played Mary in the nativity and Goldilocks in the summer play; after a dance teacher said ballet was not for me. It started to twist into stiff curls which I could not manage and became darker and coarser, shining with oil at the roots while the tips exploded in a frazzled blur.

“Thick and dark hair and altogether reminiscent of a vampire.” Jane Eyre describing Bertha Mason aka the madwoman in the attic. 

I would tie it back into a ponytail where it puffed out and shone like wire. One night an Uncle who was not all there said that he liked my hair, told me I was pretty and asked if he could hold my hand. I lay in bed that night with the blankets pulled over my head, sleepless until morning. 

Cosmetology is the professional skill or practice of beautifying the face, hair, and skin. I like the word. Cosmetology sounds ethereal and reminds me of golden stars and silver planets. I would like to meet a hairdresser that comes from the Pleiades. 

Each time I dyed my hair red it went wrong. It was either too red or too orange, too dark or not dark enough. There were hairdressers who shouted at me. One who threw the freshly mixed dye and stormed off, one who called my Mother afterwards and told her she’d had to have a stiff drink. The truth was I didn’t know what colour dye I was looking for. I didn’t know who I was. 

 “I am back older and poorer, with a botched hair job and a broken heart.” The Instant, by Amy Liptrot.

Before I started colouring my hair, I learned to straighten it. Straightening was the ideal solution because I couldn’t manage the curls. I didn’t know how to style them, I didn’t even know what they were supposed to look like. 

One night at a teenage sleepover a friend produced a pair of brand new GHD straighteners from her backpack and proceeded to straighten my hair by lamplight while 3 other girls watched. I have never forgotten the brittle hiss of my hair as it was clamped between the irons, the crackling glide, the soft scent of burning.

The following days at school, nobody recognized me. I enjoyed this feeling almost as much as I enjoyed feeling my hair have movement, almost as much as I enjoyed being able to put a brush through it without getting stuck. 

“Little Red Riding Hood neither timid nor shy, whilst straightening her locks a wolf she did spy, but far from fainting or running a fever, She started to laugh and pulled out a cleaver.”
Good Hair Day straightening irons, advertising campaign 2008.

As a teen, the state of my hair directly affected my mood. Having straight and neat hair like everybody else made me feel safe, attractive and presentable. If it rained on my straightened hair or I didn’t have time, curls ruined my day.

By the time I reached my twenties I was straightening my hair every morning. 

I could never achieve poker straight hair, the curls were too strong so I settled for smooth hair until the tips where it flicked into spirals. It was a 60’s look, I loved it. I wore black leather skirts and fishnet tights, fluffy fitted cardigans and patent loafers.

The gay boys love it when I slick it down and plaster my lips red. I smell like cheap perfume and cigarette ends.

I was still uncomfortable in my skin but by straightening my curls I felt acceptable; both in the mirror and in public. 

“She can exchange the mechanism by which she can be accessed” Lisa Marchiano on Rapunzel in This Jungian Life Podcast.

I first bleached my hair after a break up in my twenties. 

By now the details are hazy but I remember booking an appointment, going to a pub in the middle of the day and having a shot of brandy before I got in the chair. 

The bleach looked awful and my hair fake but I grew to like it and continued to bleach it year after year. 

A part of me believed that I was meant to be blonde, I took the hair sample from my childhood self as a reference. I felt I needed to take back what was rightfully mine and became obsessed with the colour. I read about ancient methods of bleaching with fascination which included grating solid gold fragments over one’s hair or shaving the heads of fair haired slaves. 

Imagine the scene as she woke, a molten princess rising, her pillow case covered in sparkling ash for the Gods. She wanted so much to look like an angel, she became a devil and made a wig from her captives hair.

When I look at photos of myself with straight blonde hair now, I sometimes wonder who I am looking at. 

She is me but also not me. She is awkward. She cares too much about what people think. She doesn’t think she is good enough. Her appearance defines her. Her hair looks alright, sometimes it even looks great. She looks happy. 

Sometime in my mid twenties I began to sporadically wear my hair in its natural state. 

I learned quite quickly that there was some kind of power to it.

One night I went out to a club where a boy who I dated intermittently for many years took one look and dropped his pint. My friend and I went outside by the canal and howled with laughter, half an hour later he reappeared, walked up to me and dropped his pint again. 

“Your hair looked pretty nice tonight” SMS from Jack around midnight, many moons ago. 

I started to see my hair in a different light but it was not until I reached the age of 30 and moved to another country that I stopped straightening it altogether. I decided when I moved that this would be a new beginning, a time where I would not be shy, a time where I would wear my hair curly.

The many years of bleaching and straightening had taken their toll. At a certain point I took scissors and lopped it off to just below my ears. Then began a long process of natural shampoo, white wine vinegar, rice water washes and anything I could think of to get the curls back. 

Slowly the length started to return, along with the coils. 

Mostly I wear it down and embrace the texture which is a mix of waves, spirals and a lot of frizz. I sleep on silk pillows to stop it getting damaged, I feel my best when it is full.

Sometimes I imagine that my hair is full of stars, just as my head is full of ideas.

There are grey hairs coming through at the front now, their texture is different. At first I pulled them out with tweezers, but now I don’t. I am grateful for each new hair coming into its own. 

I think about how our hair changes with time and all the ways I have styled it throughout my life. What I was trying to say with my hair and how it was perceived by the people around me. 

I think about the stink of peroxide, the stress I used to feel when it started to rain and all the days I would set my alarm almost 2 hours early just so I could wash and straighten my hair to perfection.

Blonde and red and smooth and slick were a part of me once.

I understand that every time I changed my hair I was undergoing some kind of transformation and accepting it in its natural state was perhaps the hardest metamorphosis of them all. 

I’ve started taking hair vitamins. 

Looking after my hair, rather than hating it obviously agrees with it. 

Now I like to think of my hair as a manifestation of my subconscious; Yes it’s messy and it’s wild but it is also who I am.

Epilogue 

It would be impossible to count the hours devoted to our hair in a lifetime. 

To wash, comb, stroke, tie with ribbons, plait and pull. 

Hair changes naturally as our bodies grow stronger or weaker.

Hair is not an organ, its part of the body's outer layer known as the integumentary system. 

Except for the growing cells at the root, hair is dead tissue. 

Scientifically, hair can be considered as a secondary sex characteristic designed to signal health, fertility and attractiveness but symbolically, hair represents our personal life force. 

How we wear our hair is often an outer representation of an inner change and we can use it to tell stories about ourselves.

Hair is always changing as are we, as humans.