One bad haircut humiliated me as a child.
A reflection on the meaning of hair
This essay is part of my May monthly theme on the body. Today I share with you what’s called a pillar post, which means it fuses personal anecdote with research. Fair warning: this is a longer read. I wrote about hair, because I realized how intimate a bad haircut story can be for many of us, and then I started thinking about why hair matters so much and how it has been used throughout history and in many cultures to represent something significant: spiritual, social, economic. This piece is what I learned and what I wanted to share with you. If you want more details, you can visit my footnotes for original articles.
A bad haircut was one more reason for me to get picked on.
I recently came upon my second grade school photo. Every time I see it, I shudder. My first thought: "I look like a boy." Because that's what I was told back then, in 1988—a short haircut meant I looked like a boy. And I didn't want to. I wanted to keep my long, thick locks, their ends naturally spiraling in loose curls, because I wanted to feel feminine and look like a girl.
But I didn't have a choice about the haircut. At the time, my mom had been brushing my long, thick hair, and she did so impatiently—which meant rigorously and painful to me. I cried a lot. I screamed a lot, too.
My mom grumbled every time she brushed my hair. "You have a giant bird's nest back here! It's too hard to brush. I can't get this knot out, you know."1 Eventually, she abdicated the job and told me, "I'm taking you to get your hair cut."
We trudged to some generic salon, like Great Clips or Famous Hair, I don't remember. Somewhere I'd never been and wasn't familiar with. The hairdresser plopped me in her chair, smoothed the cape after fastening it around my neck, and frowned. "You need to take better care of her hair," she told my mom.
My mom deflected this to me. "See?" she said to me. "I told you that you needed to brush your hair better!"
The hairdresser continued to shame me via my mom, or however it went. But the point is that I was never directly addressed, since I was a child. And, since I was a child, naturally it was my fault that led to this disaster.
"I can't get this knot out, so I'm going to have to cut it off," the hairdresser finally said. And I lost it. I mean, I bawled and snot was coming out of both nostrils, and my mom was, of course, horrified. This was a public place, after all, and I was supposed to be poised. That's what I was told all the time.
The result was a horrific chop at the nape of my neck. If you glance at my second grade photo, you might think, "Hey, there's a way to make a short haircut look cute. At least even it out a bit. Maybe a pixie would have been nice." But no. It was a statement, I think, of the perception of my willful behavior. My bangs are uneven, there are wily tufts poking out of the back of my head. It looks like a mullet gone wrong.
To make matters worse, I had Coke-bottle glasses, crooked teeth (braces hadn't happened yet), and everyone made fun of me at school, anyway. Here was just one more excuse to point out what a weirdo I was.
The symbolic nature of hair
After I posted this short story on Substack Notes, other “bad haircut” stories flooded the comments section. I wondered why hair matters so much to us—why the grey strands clustered at my temples bother me, why my husband often jokes about the day he decided to Bic his head and embrace baldness. Hair means something to each of us, of course, and to lose it often feels both terrifying and humiliating.
This is why I associate my second grade photo with a strong memory of that awful haircut. It’s why many of us feel mildly off or even embarrassed when we can’t quite tame our hair the way we like. It’s why everyone knows what “I’m having a bad hair day” means, even if it isn’t really about hair.
Throughout history, hair has been used in storytelling (think Rapunzel) and art (Medusa) as a metaphor for good and evil. Hair is religiously symbolic, too: Catholic monks used to shave the crowns of their heads as a sign of their vow to chastity and commitment to humility, because voluptuous locks were viewed as vain. In the Old Testament of the Bible, Samson’s hair represented his strength, and after Delilah chopped it off, he became weak. Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt wore wigs to signify their regal status.2
Some women cover their hair or heads with hijabs, chapel veils, and Amish kapps. Men who wear yarmulkes want to reflect their Jewish identity. Concealing the hair is considered a way to demonstrate one’s reverence for God and as a reminder that the metaphorical, spiritual veil thinly separates the temporal from the eternal, as if to say, I am small in this vast world.
Culturally, thick and shiny hair denotes health and fecundity, while thinning strands and bald patches communicate aging or disease. Biologically, we grow hair during puberty. In midlife and thereafter, it falls out.
Our hair is a reflection of who we are or who we want to be—identity.
“Hair has been used symbolically to humiliate, enable sacrifice, terrify, endow strength, and profess love,” writes Michelle Quirk.3 The placement of our hair separates humans from other animals, which is why atrocious acts of hair shaming have been used to dehumanize and debase, as with the Jewish people in Nazi concentration camps. Scalping was used by some Indigenous tribes in North America (and was adopted by European colonists) to display military conquests during tribal warfare. As a weapon of political oppression and social control, Black slaves in the U.S. often received punishment in the form of a shaved head. In the case of those who serve in the U.S. military, a uniform hairstyle (like “high and tight”) depersonalizes each member and signifies conformity.4
Today, hairstyles reflect our personalities and project an image of either who we are or what we’d like to be known for. Consider the experiences of many with blond hair versus people with darker hair. I’ve always been a brunette, and in high school, teenage boys flocked to my best friend Amy, often approaching me to inquire, “Where’s your blonde friend?” Blondes are viewed as fun and carefree but also are stereotyped as “dumb” or “ditzy.” Brunettes tend to convey sophistication and maturity, by contrast.
It’s not likely any of us can avoid the overt or subtle impressions our hair portrays to the outside world, but I’d like to think of the brazen women who bare their bald heads as a declaration that yes, they are contradicting the social norms and expectations for women and yes, bald can be beautiful. Maybe that’s why solidarity with cancer victims often takes place when family and friends engage in an informal hair-shaving ceremony.
Maybe whether or not we have hair—or the hair we want—by allowing it to evolve from light to dark, from curly to straight, from thick to thin, from lush locks to no hair at all, the natural state of our hair becomes a truer reflection of our authentic selves. Human dignity, after all, exists not because of our appearance, but in our inherent sense of self.
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Now that I’m a mom, I can understand the impatience behind an everyday task you wish your kid would do on their own after so many years of doing it for them—like brushing hair. My mom was dealing with her own undiagnosed health issues at the time, which I didn’t know about, and was likely fatigued and in chronic pain then. I want to be clear that my mom loved me in many ways, and this is only a brief snapshot of a memory that deeply wounded me. But in no way do I hold a grudge against my mother or blame her today.
See “The Importance of Hair Throughout History” at https://www.belgraviacentre.com/blog/the-importance-of-hair-throughout-history
See “The Significance of Hair” by Psychology Today at https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-gravity-of-weight/202310/the-significance-of-hair
See “The Weaponization of Hair” by Sylvia R. Karasu from Psychology Today at https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-gravity-of-weight/202311/the-weaponization-of-hair
I relate to both you and your mom. I had my hair kept short as a child because my mom didn’t want to deal with my super thick hair. My childhood photos are atrocious, my daughter is the one who is most humiliated for me.
However, as a mom of kids with special needs and who was also dealing with her own health problems I found as much as I desired to keep my own daughter’s hair long according to her preference, the hair had to be sacrificed at one point.
She inherited my thick locks and she didn’t have the wherewithal to deal with them in the second and third grade. But we managed. I made sure she didn’t have to go through the humiliation and shaming of a bad haircut.
I researched how to achieve a cute bob hairstyle that allowed her to have longer hair around her face and kept it short at the nape of her neck. She still looked cute and very girly but we avoided the humiliation and hard feelings. There are no horrible photos to prolong a bad memory.
My daughter grew out of her neglectful phase regarding her hair and by high school had long lustrous locks that she continues to keep healthy and well kept.
I encourage exasperated moms to find similar solutions so we don’t set our daughters up for humiliation. Hair does matter.
Oh my heart. My heart!!!! Being a child can be so harrowing and our toxic beauty culture makes it even more so. I came of age in the 80's with similar traumas and I want to give that little girl in the photo the biggest hug. What a powerful essay this is, you touched my heart. And my soul.