haircut

Earlier this summer I went and got my first professional hair cut. Ever since I was very little my mother cut my hair, and since I went off to college I’ve had a friend do it for me.

I actually had quite a bit of hair when I initially started school, it was long and quite frizzy; the volume was exacerbated by the extreme New Orleans humidity. One night in late February, I decided I wanted to get rid of all my hair. I had wanted short hair since childhood but had never mustered up enough courage to just cut it all off. My friend agreed that she would help me shave my head, much to the dismay of all our other friends. So after procuring clippers I locked us in my room, took a shot of tequila, and told her to go at it. Just as she was about to shear my untamed mane, our quiet and mild mannered friend knocked on the door. She had been violently shaken from a nap and urged by the others to “save me” from certain disaster.

“Please, just let me in.”

“No, go away, I want short hair and you can’t stop me!”

“I won’t stop you, I just want to help you.”

My friend and I agreed that we didn’t actually know what we were doing and that a little bit of guidance couldn’t hurt.

Long story short, my quiet artistic friend gave me a wonderful (and short) haircut and has been cutting my hair ever since.

i was skeptical at the time

UNTIL, earlier this summer, when I got my first professional haircut. #dejavu #backtothestory

Right. So I decided that a men’s haircut might help me pass more easily, and looked around until I found a nice little barber shop in Uptown. (My friend suggested Supercuts while we were driving around getting frustrated at our attempt to find a suitable establishment, and I had to explain to her that that is where white people go to get mediocre haircuts.)

I knew this little barber shop was perfect as soon as I saw it. My friend and I walked in and the short balding barber told us he would be with us in just a minute. As he finished barbering his current customer I looked up “men’s hipster haircuts” on my phone so that I could show him what I wanted.

When I sat down in the hair-cutting chair I asked him for a “typical men’s haircut, but longer on top, like this.” As he draped the smock over me and ran a comb through my locks I began to look around. What I saw made me mildly terrified. I had been so distracted by the prospect of looking good that I had failed to notice the abundant right-wing propaganda that covered the walls. Pictures of Bush, Rush Limbaugh quotes, and a cartoon that read, “You’re going to vote for Obama? Do you have your head up your ass?” were taped to the mirror directly in front of me, framing my nervous twinge of a feigned smile.

Oh dear god.

I was certain for a minute that he was just going to slit my throat with one of his razors.

And I couldn’t help but wonder, was I passing??

Was he perceiving me as male?

Or as a lesbian?

Or maybe just a masculine girl??

When he asked me how I wanted my sideburns done I thought I was in the clear. Sideburns are just a guy thing…right?

it's a guy thing

I said I didn’t know how I wanted them done, whichever would look better. #rookiemistake

He stopped cutting my hair, tilted his head, and looked at me; “Are you going for a real feminine look?”

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Fail.

There was my answer. I was not passing.

“Oh, uh, no no.” I tried not to sound embarrassed.

I mean, I should have known that he would be able to tell, since he was going to see my (hairless) neck and face up close.

Later on in the haircut, he asked me if I wanted him to touch up the back, and after I replied yes please, he told me ok, but he usually didn’t do that for women.

As he grabbed his straight razor he added “Don’t move or I’ll cutchya!”

Hahaha…. #rushlimbaughwouldlikethat

When he was finished he told me that there was only one other woman whom he also gave a touch-up in the back, except that she had a flat-top. “A real flat top!” he exclaimed in amazement.

He said that she had several kids and was very “athletic.” (ha)

He was actually a very nice man, and he gave me the best damn haircut I ever had in my life! Which is why I went back a second time…

When I went back for my second haircut, there were two other barbers as well; a woman barber cutting someone’s hair, and an elderly man reading the newspaper. So, I sat down in the same chair and asked the same barber for the same haircut. My barber and the old man were making cracks at one another as he began to cut my hair.

He remembered me from the last time, and so I told him how well the first haircut had worked out for me. To this, the elderly man commented jokingly, “Hey you cut his hair once and he came back a second time?? He’s a brave young man.” #youhavenoidea

The elderly man and woman barber referred to me as “him” and “young man” several times after that, and I could tell my barber was starting to feel awkward. I was feeling the familiar twinge of nervous-awkwardness myself, because although I like passing as male (duh), what I absolutely do not enjoy, is when I am passing and something happens to make someone “realize” my biological gender, because then they either:

1. Apologize profusely.

2. Avoid talking to me because they feel embarrassed/awkward/disgusted.

3. Start to treat me differently/extremely nicely, because they feel bad.

4. Make some weird comment about how they couldn’t tell because my hair is so short or something like that, basically implying that it is my fault because I don’t present myself in a way that makes my biological gender obvious. For example...

Over Christmas break, before I had come out to anyone at home, I went down to the gas station to purchase lottery tickets to give to my grandmother as a Christmas gift. When I got up to the front of the line the cashier was finishing up a conversation with a police officer, and when I told him I would like to purchase some lottery tickets he said "You better get out of my face! How old are you??" Shock overshadowed the anger I should have felt and so I answered "19..." I handed him my license.
"You don't look nineteen. Are you a man or a woman?" and then, as he actually looked at my ID, "Oh, well, I couldn't tell, uh, you know..."
The policeman butted in, trying to make up for this man's rudeness; "it's just the short hair, don't worry about it..."
"Yeah, you should grow your hair out because, you know, how is anyone supposed to tell?" replied the RUDEST CASHIER I HAVE EVER HAD THE DISPLEASURE OF INTERACTING WITH.
Right...
There were so many things wrong with this situation, I don't know if I even want to get into it. He was basically telling me that I needed to conform to gender stereotypes regardless of how I would like to present myself so that others could have the ease of immediately judging me based on my outside appearance.

SO ANYWAY, I was getting anxious along with my barber, because I really wasn’t in the mood to go to awkward-town.

to awkward town! 

i think we're already there.

Unfortunately, my haircut was finished much more quickly that before and didn’t turn out nearly as good as the first one. As I got up to leave, he leaned in and said “you really should consider the flat-top, it’s something that looks good on a lot of women.”

I have encountered many situations similar to this, and when I think back on them I wonder, what should I have done?

Should I have explained what was going on to my barber? I mean, I don’t feel the need to come out to every random person I encounter each day. Actually Mr. Deli man you can call me SIR and while you’re at it I’d like that sliced extra thin thank you throw in some potato salad as well have a nice day.

I’m still not entirely sure, but I do hope that as I continue transitioning it will become easier and easier to go stealth with strangers and those who I don’t feel the need to pour my heart and soul out to. I would like to continue to see the same barber, and so I’ll just have to see how it goes once I start showing up with facial hair.