(on my suspiciously empty side acc because anons are off and i don't need anything remotely personal connected to main)
you seem like someone who may not mind teenagers asking for advice, lol. so:
you mentioned in a post that the hair on your head is shorter than on your arms and legs. made me incredibly jealous. i've been wanting to buzz mine for ages. i keep chickening out. it's already very short and generally non-standard but it feels like a step too far, yk?
i was joking with my parents about a girl i'd just met who turned to me while nobody was looking and did an inquisitive limp wrist gesture at me. i stared at her for a minute, shocked to see such a tiktok-ified (on a young woman) mannerism (i deleted it months ago but it still haunts me) out in real life, and then nodded, because what else was i gonna do? only seen her in passing since. anyway, we were laughing. obviously, the fact that she thought to do it came up. i can't remember the exchange in detail, but my mom was saying something about how you can have short hair and wear, idk, frills and barrettes, and be [trailed off]- or you can wear "boy shorts" (my shorts) and no bra (it was in my own fucking house) and be [trailed off again, i believe]. my dad said something about how my appearance was "not exactly lipstick lesbian". this is nothing against my parents. they're awesome. they're not really the point.
point is, despite being 5'5 and not exactly androgynous in various ways, i pretty regularly get mistaken for male- usually by restaurant staff or other people who have no reason to pay attention or barely glance my way, but it happens often enough to be significant. those who look at me a little longer have so far a) defaulted to they/themming me without asking (or even after asking, when i'd already said i wasn't trans), b) carefully deduced from what i said that i wasn't trans and then gone with it (digging probably much more obviously than they'd intended to) or, c) been too old for all that.
i am not transgender. i was dysphoric, i got over it except for during the nights of all-round bad days, i'm fine now. i am, as far as i can tell, homosexual (family knows this). this isn't exactly something i want to advertise. it's apparently my only option, since the disdain i feel towards all female beauty rituals (and the cuts of 99% of womens' clothing- jesus christ) is too strong to even consider partaking, but i'd really rather i lived in a slightly saner world where i didn't stick out so much.
the hair itself is extremely minor, obviously. it's hair. but it's the last bit of my appearance that is, in any way, decorated. this is not out of a lack of self esteem or something. it's just that the decorating grates on me. even earrings, most of the time, identical to the ones my brothers wear. i mostly like the hair. what i don't like is that it has to be cut every couple of months, and really that's too much time to grow- i have to actively set aside time to wash and style it- when it's grown out a bit i have to keep touching it and thinking about it or it'll get in my eyes. i am so very sick of everything impractical, but it feels like my last line of plausible deniability. if it, my last bit of decoration, is gone (which, note, will not be a win for my facial structure, not that i really care), instead of just odd looks from strangers i'm going to get knowing chuckles from relatives who think i'm... politically identifying into something. even, yk, the homosexual bit, which i never needed to "identify" into. "butches" are women i look up to like nobody else, but i'm not trying to join anyone's ranks. i'm just trying to exist. i'm sending this because i'm almost definitely blowing the consequences out of proportion and you seem like a very intelligent woman who's done already exactly what i'm considering. so, if you read all that, thank you, and thank you again if you're going to respond. your blog is incredible.
Hey, so sorry about how long it’s taken me to respond. I really wanted to make sure I gave this the attention it deserves.
So, you are correct that you’re probably blowing the consequences of this out of proportion, BUT, that really only holds true when you have enough distance and perspective from the act, which you do not have, being in the thick of it currently.
See, when I was younger I was the brash, loud “I don’t give a fuck” teenager. And I tried so, so, SO hard to truly embody that mentality, and maybe I tricked the people around me into thinking I didn’t care but I did. I originally buzzed my hair when the friend cutting my hair kept messing it up and making it shorter and shorter. I laughed it off and grabbed the clippers and we all joked, but I worried what everyone was going to think the next day. Everyone at our small school was already convinced my BFF and I were lesbian witches, a buzzed head would just make me out to be the “pants” in the relationship.
I stopped shaving early on in my first adult relationship and practically dared my boyfriend to say something. I stated I didn’t care what he thought, I wasn’t shaving ever again, but deep down, if he had said it grossed him out, I probably would have shaved. Not right then, but eventually.
Through so many ages and chapters of my life I have raged at the world that I didn’t care what anyone thought, I was going to do the thing regardless. And I always did, even when there was a secret part of me that felt like I’d cave in a heartbeat if even one person smirked the wrong way at me. Because I did care.
And then I turned 40 and I truly stopped caring with a suddenness and totality that, quite frankly, shocked me. All those years I had told myself I didn’t care and then I found myself REALLY AND FUCKING TRULY not caring, and it made all my declarations of “I don’t care!!” seem laughably weak in hindsight.
The point I’m trying to make here is: you just have to do the thing. It’s not going to be easy necessarily, but if you talk yourself out of it, you set a precedence. It’s literally fake it til you make it, and I didn’t get it until I actually finally made it. When I made it, I realized that all the times I set my jaw and stubbornly pushed my way through the fear of judgement, the fear of other peoples assumptions, each time I did that, I was laying the foundation for the next step, and the one after that. I was still anxious and worried, and I’m never going to say those are minor emotions. I remember the social pressure to conform, the whispering cliques and their sneaky looks over their shoulders. I remember how hard it is to buck normalcy and swim against the current. But I also look at my life now and know it would never have been even half this good if I had acquiesced and succumbed to the pressure to look a certain way.
You will always look exactly like you. People will look at you and ascribe different personality traits to you based on their own preconceived notions. There is nothing you can do about that. You may as well be what you want to be. I have been called so many things that I am not, from a lesbian to a boy to a hippie to a fucking Juggalette, none of which I am. And that’s fine. People will think what they think. The best part about fully embracing living the way you want to is that it will draw likeminded people to you. People who look at you and go “I really like that girls buzzed head” and not “that persons buzzed head must mean they’re trans/nb.” You’ll have friends that will rub your fuzzy scalp for good luck and call you their good luck charm. You’ll meet women who admire your bravery in not conforming. One of the things that has always surprised me is the amount of “normal looking” women that confide in me that they wish they could give up shaving, performing femininity, styling their hair, etc, and I always tell them the same thing: you can. It’s not easy, but the choice is always there.
I think other women look at the way I dress and act and think “oh I could NEVER do that, I’d be too scared!” And the secret? I’m scared too. Or I was, at first, and for a long time. I started eschewing femininity in my late teens. It took me another 2+ decades to truly stop caring. The sooner you start though, the sooner you’ll get there.
And again, people will always make their own assumptions about you. They will always perceive you through the lens of their own experiences and you cannot change that and it’s a waste of your time to worry about it. You’ll still worry about it because we’re human, but you have to start practicing not giving a shit. It’s the only way to get to a point where you truly don’t give a shit.
And hey. The cool thing about hair? It grows back. And if you buzz your head and are like “oh my god what have I done?” Wigs exist. If you’ve experienced dysphoria in the past and are worried about buzzing your head resurfacing those feelings, use a wig. I kept a few handy for when I worked at a doctors office and couldn’t rock my wild hairstyles. It can take time to feel comfortable in your natural body with non-conforming looks, and it would be better to use a wig as a temporary crutch than to succumb to feelings of dysphoria.
I know it’s so hard to buck normalcy as a teenager. Everything seems so….consequential. Like every decision you make right now is going to impact you for the rest of your life. That’s not true. I made massive fuckups as late as my 30’s and I have still been able to course correct and make things better. The decisions I made as a teen, especially aesthetic choices, have absolutely zero bearing on my life today. So while I will never minimize your fears (because what you feel is very real, even if it won’t matter in the long run) I will also tell you that the fears I had about acceptance in my teens have faded to the point where I look back and think how bizarre it was that I was so stressed over something that ultimately mattered so little.
High school and our teen years are a Petri dish inside a pressure cooker. It’s a time in your life that is like no other, thankfully. You’ll get older and you’ll meet people who look at you and see you for who you are, not just what they want you to be based on their own perception of you. You’ll meet people who don’t bat an eye at your shaved head and nonconformity. You’ll meet people who also think performing femininity is stupid and a waste of time.
All this to say, do what you truly want to do and don’t worry about what others think. When it comes to you and your body, your opinion is the only one that matters. Anyone who says otherwise can fuck right off into my fist.
P.S. my best friends mom, who is now my son’s grandma, is a butch lesbian and the first woman I knew to shave her head. She did it to support her sister in law going through chemo, but found that she so enjoyed never having to wash her hair that she kept it shaved for years. She always told people she got tired of spending money on shampoo and they’d be like “Ah, of course” and we’d just laugh. I was lucky to have an adult woman like that in my life so that when I shaved my head, I knew it wasn’t THAT weird. I wish every young girl had a woman like her in their life; it would make it so much easier to break the bonds of beauty culture.
