Not cutting it

A story about hair, belonging and coming back to ourselves.

I had a conversation over Voxer with two dear friends not long ago about beauty, identity and not fitting in.

Their stories, not mine to tell, were beautiful, powerful and, in parts, painful in the way that makes you want to go back to that point in time and hug someone so hard—even if you didn’t know them then.

Our chat circled around the topics of of appearance, self-esteem and belonging.

In all of my burning and blow-drying, I tried to conform to the look the world wanted. I grew up learning that the hair on my head was a burden. That the fullness of it was easier to laugh at than to love.

—Rachel Marie Kang, Let There Be Art

I’m finally reading the extraordinary Let There Be Art, by Rachel Marie Kang (find her at The Black Letter and

The Fallow House

on Substack), on the recommendation of writer

Sue Fulmore

(find her latest piece at Fathom today,

Ekstasis

and her newsletter, A Capacity For Wings).

I’m listening to Rachel’s beautiful words on Audible, and hearing them somehow makes them all the more poignant. “… easier to laugh at than to love.”

Those six words, following her painful recollection of a visit to the beauty salon where her hair was chemically relaxed, spun me back to my own primary school days. Oh, the power of story to take you into that of the writer’s, whilst taking you back to chapters of your own.

I was constantly teased throughout my childhood for the thick, brown curls that stubbornly refused to be controlled by the hairdressers who, bewildered, approached cutting as more of a taming exercise.

My mother had curls, but not like mine.

At that stage, I had no information about my birth family, or from whom I’d inherited my hair. All I knew was that I longed for summer-blonde, straight hair, like my Swedish neighbour Ulrika’s, or my best friend Loretta’s, which she swung in a tidy plait, secured by pretty plastic bobbles, top and bottom. Or brunette and mirror-shiny like my Italian classmate, Samantha’s.

This was the era of Charlie’s Angels (the first time around), and the Farrah Flick. But nothing about my hair remotely said, “Hi, Charlie!” .

Not a flick in sight. But a pretty good Blue Steel (anyone?)

In the playground, I got left out of games of kiss chase and, one Valentine’s Day, the boys addressed a card to all the girls in the class, except me (how ridiculous does that sound now, and that I even remember it?).

I stuffed the teasing down, never telling my parents—or my brother (and I told him a lot). I did confide in my older, half-German cousin, who henna-ed her hair, wore syrupy, cherry-flavoured lip gloss and read Jackie magazine (making her the height of maturity and cool).

She was the kindest, and went as far as to get a friend of hers, with naturally curly hair, to reassure me that, one day, I’d love my curls.

Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.

―St Teresa of Calcutta

Later attempts to blend in involved iffy experiments with Glints, a wash-in, wash-out home hair colour that every Eighties schoolgirl used (resulting in burgundy tidemarks our yellow bath tub).

The introduction of super-sticky, extra firm hold styling sprays and wet gel offered further opportunities for control. I plastered these on and combed them through until my hair stuck to my scalp like PVA glue; the odd rebellious, crispy curl still breaking free.

It wasn’t until my late teens, on a visit to Italy with my best friend from sixth form college, that I saw girls with hair just like mine. Then, in Barcelona, I found the perfect comb that separated my curls, without triggering a static storm, at a street stall next to the Metro. It cost next to nothing, but what it did for my soul was priceless.

I took notes from those Italian and Spanish girls, observing how they left their curls wild and free, sometimes pinning back a piece from each side to keep them off their face, but without controlling or hiding their natural texture.

By the time, in my early twenties, when I had been reunited with my birth father, and all the family in Italy, I’d let my hair grow long and the curls, uncontrolled, fall in their natural form.

With it came a feeling of lightness, freedom and such relief.

With my nonna and one of her sisters— two beautiful women, inside and out.

Ironically, working in London as a magazine and newspaper journalist, I fell into writing on health and beauty, when I was called on to interview a hair care expert. And, even then, I only felt truly confident doing interviews and going to press events when my hair was blow-dried perfectly straight. “There’s so much of it!” stylists would exclaim. I got used to salon receptionists blocking out ‘double time’ in the appointment book, or scrawling in the word ‘RESTYLE’ in pencil. I saw ‘REINVENT’.

The longing to belong runs deep.

Rachel’s words in Let There Be Art bring deep comfort. They make me want to go back and scoop up that eight year old girl in the bathroom, struggling with the brown Kirby grips that pinched her scalp and just got lost in her hair when all she wanted to do was stop her curls sticking out.

To stop herself sticking out.

It’s taken years for any visit to the hairdressers to feel less fraught. To not sense that my hair texture, thickness—the too-much-ness of it—was a problem to be solved.

These days, I almost always go curly. Once in a while, I’ll use a dryer/styling brush in-one to smooth it out, or a waving wand to coax it into chunky waves (which last approximately nine minutes). At the salon, I always ask for it to be blow-dried straight. It’s fun for a change, and I could never get the same result myself.

But I’m as sure as I can be that it’s no longer about fitting in. And, if anything, I don’t feel myself now when it’s perfectly smooth. After a few days of having “Charlie’s Angels hair”, I wash it and the curls bounce back. I almost feel relief.

How has this taken decades?

Finding ourselves—coming back to ourselves—can take time.

With love to everyone at the end of this, the week of International Women’s Day—including my own beautiful girl, whose curls I let grow long and free from the start.