she took me by the hand as she always did, and I trusted her. I was used to her tall body, leading me the ways through life and unknown places. every step she took, I took with her. but this time it lead us astray. it parted us, not physically but in our minds and in the way we both feel about ourselves.
we took a step inside a moist room, smelling of shampoo and hairspray, which was filled by the flicking noises of scissors and the barking of blow dryers. I was lifted into a huge chair and a plastic cloth was wrapped around my neck. the familiar reflection in the mirror was me: big eyes, filled with fear and expectation, a bulbous nose and cherry cheeks, red and fresh from the walk in cold air.
she instructed the woman with the scissors in her hand and the woman started to cut. I smiled at her, as I have learned to do. be nice and good. because until then, I had not realized what the sentence meant that was now passed on me. children have no voice in the world of grown ups and so it was too late for me to start screaming.
merciless, the hairdresser started cutting it off. everything. all my beatiful hazel hair. she took, as my mother had instructed her, all the girlishness away from me: snap, snap, snap … and down it fell. I got a strange feeling in my stomach, the beginning of grief, as I saw my curls falling down, one after the other. but the worst part was yet to come.
after this unbelievable woman had finished the work of Satan – and his work it surely was – I had to look up, into the mirror. a boy was looking back at me. a boy with my eyes and my cheeks and my nose. hello stranger!
I needed years and years and decades to forgive my mum, and actually, I think I have never really done so. after a while I started wrapping myself in scarves and neckties and pretended that they were the hair that had formerly protected my neck from feeling cold. I felt bereft of my femininity, my girlhood. I was a fucking boy in a skirt! – but why?
because my mum says long hair is old-fashioned.
because she has hers cut short as well.
because she wants me to be like her, an extension of her.
because she and my dad think that girls who look like boys look cute.
because they presume that they are always right and know everything better.
because how I feel about my body does not count.
because my body does not belong to me.
because other people decide what should be done to this „thing“ that is supposed to be my body, me, myself.
I think this was about the time when I started to feel fat and had fantasies about cutting the fat out of my body with scissors. the fat on my thighs and arms and stomach. all should have been cut out with scissors. like my hair. like my femininity. like the girl I wanted to be.
the hair grew back, after some time. time during which I missed looking like all the princesses in fairy tailes, and the princesses in my class, whose mothers did not force them to look like princes! honestly, which prince would love and embrace a princess that looked like him? it was a real dilemma.
during that time I stopped trusting the decisions of adults. because sometimes, their decisions might be pretty stupid, even if they mean well. sometimes they just mean well for themselves. because washing, combing, drying and braiding the hair of a little princess is just a waste of time …
