3 Things I Was Asked When...
I showed up to school with red hair.
1. “When did you decide to do that?”
For some reason this shocked me the most, because it honestly doesn’t matter when I did it, I still have red hair no matter how recently I made this decision. It always baffled me the things people come up with when they have nothing to say. It’s not an offensive question, not at all, but it makes the following conversations kind of awkward when all I have to say is, “uhh, last week.”
2. “What inspired you to do this?”
This one’s actually a fun one because it gives me a reason to bring my my queen MERA from Aquaman. I remember watching the movie and thinking she was fearless and proud to stand up for herself. Secretly though, my biggest inspiration was my mother. She has had red hair for as long as I can remember and while there was a time in my life where her and I did not get along well, I have now learned to accept her for her strengths and flaws. This red hair symbolizes my acceptance of and admiration for my mother.
3. “Did you have to bleach it?”
Lol, it’s kind of funny how scared people are of bleach. I completely understand, as I, until about a month ago, vowed to never let that kind of product touch my hair, but look where we are now. For the record, I did have to bleach it and it did burn, a lot.
Usually I just answer with a quick confirmation and then a run-over of what the experience of having bleach in my hair felt like. Surprisingly, it launches a conversation that leads to admittance of fears and insecurities. I realized through this that hair and appearance really digs into the core of a lot of us.
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Showing up to school with a completely different look made me feel a lot more vulnerable than I expected. For the majority, everyone seemed to love it. I would love to say that even if they didn’t, I wouldn’t mind, but my ego did feed off of all these compliments.
People being genuinely curious about my decision allowed me to reveal a more diverse part of myself I usually never reveal. I usually try to stray away from showing my nerdy side, but talking about Mera’s inspiration allowed me to have one of the most fun conversations I’ve had in a while.
I learned from these two days of everyone slowly finding out I have red hair the true merit of vulnerability. I did allow myself to be open to criticism, which I did receive some of, but I also met and encouraged parts of other people that I probably never would have known beforehand. And all because, I wanted to be a superhero.