BLONDE

“How could you do this to me?! Why do I keep trusting you?? Now nobody will love me!”

Getting a bad hair cut is hard for the best of us, and most everyone has been there at one point or another. That moment where you look in the mirror, yours and your hairstylist’s reflections staring back at you. “I love it!” You say though gritted teeth and watering eyes, while mentally your entire world is imploding, and you go home and cry, vowing to never step foot in public for the next three months.

To anyone going through this life altering tragedy, let me remind you that while any change to your appearance can take some adjusting to, the truth is at the end of the day it is just hair and will grow back.

WRONG!

It’s not “Just hair” it was my identity! And now roughly an inch and a half of it was scattered on my kitchen floor around me, as I cried to the boy I let cut it on a whim as he assures me--

“We’re gonna look back and laugh about this!”

It was like a limb had been jaggedly chopped off. Worse honestly, at least with a missing limb I was likely to gain comfort, or at least pity, and they have such advanced prosthetics these days! From the time I was born nobody was saying “Wow she’s so unique look at those great arms she’s got there. Two of ‘em!” But for as long as I could remember I was the blonde one.

Born to a family of dark haired, olive-skinned greeks, it was what set me apart, made me special. It was my defining feature, quickly became the attribute first used to describe me in conversation to others.

“Oh you know Chloe, blonde, little above average height, outrageously funny, body that’s a wonderland, face that regularly circulates your dreams at night? You’d recognize her.”

I lived in Europe as a very small child, and though I remember very little from the time, my parents have many boxes of photos to make up for memories lost. A curious pattern throughout photos from the Turkey/Greece leg of the trip were several pictures of young toddler me standing with seemingly random families. When I first noticed these and asked what the deal with them was, my parents explained that strangers would often come up to us on the street and ask for photos with me because they had “Never seen one before”. Meaning never seen somebody with my hair colour in real life. As if blondes were purely the things of folklore and bedtime stories. To see someone like me was equated with celebrity, I had no talents or great skills that they knew of, this attention was purely based off of the way that I looked.

I became used to the compliments, the gifts and candy I was given from those transfixed by my ringlets that bounced as I walked. I became aware of how to use my American doll looks to win the affections of others, it was my power and not something that could be entrusted willy-nilly. After a particularly bad haircut done by my father involving duct tape (enough said) the night before my first grade photo day, I began going to the salon with my mum.

I liked going to the salon. Receiving a professional cut and shampoo while being told how thick and healthy my hair was, surrounded by women with tin foil topped heads hoping to look just like me. Stylists would rush up and ask who did my colour, to which I could proudly respond with the kind of unabashed confidence only a child can possess, “It’s natural.”

Technically my paternal grandmother was blonde, at least had been back in the day, but she was now one of those sad saps who got highlights, and in my book that didn’t count. She asked me, when I was nine or ten, if the next time I went to the salon I could bring back a piece of my hair for her to take to her own colourist to replicate. My grandmother had been a career model, and appearance was incredibly important to her. I remember being told how delighted she was to have a blonde grandchild, resembling her in her day. We would practice runway walks down the hallway in her house, always smiling wide, “Not like those girls these days who are so serious”. As I got older it became evident I wouldn’t follow in her steps; my skin began breaking out, I was too short, not thin enough, but that hair...my hair was my golden ticket. When my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer and started chemo, she began pinning the loose pieces of my hair I’d given her in to what was left of her own to cover up the bald spots that were popping up. Here was this physical piece of me that could make even the grimmest of times a little prettier.

As I got older my hair became something, not so much to flaunt, but hide behind. Two face framing curtains I could draw on days when my skin was bad, or when I thought my face wasn’t angular enough. I took dance my first year of high school and the day of my very first class I got in an argument with my teacher when I told her I simply would not wear my hair back. In formal dance like ballet it was customary for hair to be tied back for both practicality and uniformity, or how I think she explained it “Tough Nouggies. Put your hair up.” I was forced to tie my hair back with a provided rubber band that pulled and snagged my beautiful locks in all the wrong ways, mortified in front of my peers.

My hair was incredibly long for the majority of my life. I’ve donated my hair twice, twelve inches both times, and never gone shorter than chin length, so yeah it was long. Not only had it become something to mask insecurities but it also projected an image, I hoped, of femininity. I was strong-willed and assertive, went through a phase of wearing a lot of button ups, but I kept my hair long like a Disney princess. My hair was long and blonde, trying to live vicariously through images of all old pinup bombshells. I may not have been a Marilyn Monroe, or Brigitte Bardot, but we all shared this one commonality and I was never going to take that for granted.

Though my parents had both had light hair as children, unlike them, mine stuck around. Every year my hair felt like a ticking time bomb, everyone was expecting it to fade. Every winter I got a peak at what my future may look like when my hair darkened in the absence of sun, and every spring when it re-lightened was a year triumphed.

There was nothing that bothered me more than others referring to my hair as “dirty blonde”; it felt as though they were attempting to tarnish this feature that so much of my self-esteem relied on. Blonde represented youth and beauty, and I was holding on with both hands clasped.

Being blonde has afforded me privileges my whole life I don’t know that I will ever know the true extent of. What I do know is that the loss of my hair colour horrified me. If only subconsciously I knew this would lead to me being treated differently. Any time I ever did anything wrong I knew my hair would get me out, because it always had. Going pool hopping with friends in high school I never feared getting caught, always thinking “What are they gonna do, arrest a harmless blonde girl?” I realize now those feelings of privilege had much more to do with race than the hue of my hair, but being blonde certainly didn’t hurt.

Deciding to start highlighting my hair was a long and emotional decision. It seems silly to say but it took years of consideration to come to the resolution to finally do it. Growing up I used to do the DIY hack every blonde person ever has done (ask one, I’ll bet you 20 bucks) of drenching your hair in lemon juice and camping out in the blistering sun for a few hours. Supposedly meant to naturally lighten your hair, in my experience you tend to just end up with a sticky mop you’ll be detangling for hours after. Still, operating off of a mix of placebo and relentless hope, each summer I would attempt again.

Getting my hair lightened professionally though...was different. Each winter my hair was getting darker and darker, and resolving to do something about it felt like I was giving up on myself. Like the hope of my hair getting lighter again was coming to the end of it’s fuse. It felt like a forfeit, an admittance of fraud, like I was siding with all the nay sayers who had ever called me a dirty blonde. My pride crumbled at the thought of joining all the other commoners who sought to, through artificial interference, join the high ranks to which I had been naturally born in to. I knew this would be a financial commitment as well, once I crossed over there would be no turning back; every few months I’d be dedicated to getting my roots touched up.

In this respect I was right. Even at my brokest I would find a way to spend hundreds on my hair. It was worth it to me, an investment. Being blonde was who I was, and when I looked in the mirror I saw a faded version of myself. Paying for balayage was my small act towards reconnecting with my truest self.

All of this is what flashes before me after a bad haircut. The time and money. The attention, the praise. Until my late teens I would routinely cry after every haircut. It didn’t necessarily even have to be bad, the mere potential for error, and the act of bestowing trust in a stranger to handle this physical “thing” that had become a pillar of my ego was emotionally exhausting.

Any positive feedback I had ever received, privileges I had been afforded because of my hair, had led me to believe that without it I would be stripped of what made me special. Every morsel of affection and attention I gave to my hair fuelled this idea that I would be less than without it. Other parts of myself were not afforded the same love and devotion, pushed out of frame and forgotten about. We attach ourselves to these finite, ephemeral, trivial “things”, and while that can be logically recognized, in their absence we can still feel so hollow.

The funny thing is when I think of beauty, the family members I looked up to, the girls in school I envied, the boys I fall hopelessly for, each and everyone has had dark chestnut brown hair that reflected light boundlessly. My affinity for my blonde hair had nothing to do with personal taste, and far more to do with an identity that had been carved out for me over a lifetime, and familiarity I was grasping for as my world and self evolved at break neck speed.

I feel disoriented when trying to pinpoint who exactly I am, who I’m becoming. In my times of greatest uncertainty there are few qualities I can ground myself in, the ones that have been with me, that I have faith will stay with me for time to come. To paint an image of myself I reach back to memories of comments on childhood report cards, and other feedback I received in my formative years. I acknowledge that I’ve grown, even if only in ways I haven’t realized yet. I pay tribute to aspects I’ve left behind, and ones that have been along for the ride.

I am intelligent.

I am creative.

Empathetic.

Caring.

Compassionate.

Funny.

Determined.

Courageous.

Strong.

And--

Blonde.