I'll just repeat the warning - the weblog below may contain strong language and explicit references. All links within the posts will open in the same separate window.
Someone asked me recently a while back why I have short hair.
It's currently a number 2. It was going to be a number 3 but I couldn't find the number 3 comb. I actually prefer it right down to the wire - there's not much difference between no comb and a number 1 on my hair, because it's so fine. I doubt I'll ever go the shaved head route again. Just the twice. Once for ritual, the other just to re-assert my self-control afterwards. It's not considered to be entirely professional, having hair this short, and I can tell by the somewhat taken-aback reaction from my colleagues when I turn up with a fresh haircut that they don't think it's appropriate, but I have my reasons.
What are they?
It is, at the end of the day, a coping mechanism. "Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says different is selling something." There seems to be a lot of shit in my life. Hel, there's a lot of shit going on in everyone's life. Mine involves a lot of physical pain and stress, and for all that I may well occasionally joke that I'm a gay man trapped in a woman's body, I do have female role models; there are female characters, fictional mainly, to whom I aspire, and the qualities I admire in them are always the same: stoicism, pragmatism, creative problem-solving, the ability to take control when everyone else is falling apart, toughness, idiosyncrasy. I also find that these characters are always treated as individuals first. These aren't women who happen to be tough, these are tough people who happen to be women.
They tend to have short hair at some point or another.
.
Clippered hair is the hair of someone who has better things to do than look in a mirror. Clippered hair is the hair of someone who isn't making an effort to be nice, to be attractive, to bend her principles in order to toe the line of social acceptability. Clippered hair is soft and fuzzy and it's something that feels good to touch - it's like my tattoo. It's there for me to take pleasure in it, not there for other people to admire. Getting the clippers out and shearing away the excess length, the stuff that makes me look sort of cute and tomboyish provides me with a similar relief to that reported by some to be experienced when cutting. Along with the hair go the soft, squishy bits that get tired easily and upset, that have a tendency to be clingy. It helps me to focus on the real necessities at hand, the problems that need to be sorted, not the question of why I'm having to sort them, again, or why there doesn't seem to be anyone around who will help. Those are questions that don't help anyone. They're not going to provide a solution.
And it feels good under my cycle helmet, that short, with the wind blowing across my scalp. Plus it dries quickly and I can make a bottle of shampoo last an entire year.
