Why I Grew My Hair.

Mama used to brush my hair with a fine-toothed comb right after she made me dry them in the sun. I hated it so much. She didn't let me loosen the knots in my hair while they were still wet because she worried they would break and that would thin them, so when she put the comb through them, and each time it got stuck, she would force the comb through. I would scream and cry, but I knew I had to sit there until she got out all the knots. It was a moral-failing to have hair that didn't allow a comb to pass through them uninterrupted, an old-wives cautionary tale about little girls with difficult hair growing up into difficult women who fought with everyone. She thought she could brush the resistance out of my head and with each passing year the rules for hair-care only increased — oil before bed, papaya on Thursdays, flat beer in the shampoo, yogurt and olive oil on Sunday mornings — but none of that made my hair easier to brush. With each evaluation she got angrier, pulling my hair harder with the comb to force them into compliance. It was hard for her, she was renowned for her hair, how could her daughter, not be?

By the tenth grade, I couldn't take it anymore. I snuck out of the house, took myself to a salon and had all of it chopped off, determined in my resolve to never let them grow out again. So when he asked me to stop cutting my hair and let them grow long, I was startled.

A little bit confronted.

Hair is a complex phenomenon. For millions of people, but especially women, hair has been either a symbol of gender-mandated beauty or a method of oppression. From the colour of one's hair, to the length, the consistency, the practises associated with its care to the rights afforded to people for its maintenance, hair carries a lot of information about a person's life experiences and the society within which they lived. A lot of it is grating and aggravating. In the very personal context of my life, long hair symbolised my mother's control over me and the power she once had over my body. My hair represented everything she didn't want me to be — difficult, wild, unruly — and she was sure that if she got me to commit to beautiful, feminine hair like hers, I would finally become *woman* as we are meant to be. To me, cutting off my hair symbolised taking back the power over my body, maybe not even just from her.

My former partner was obsessed with getting me to grow my hair out. I typically kept them shorter than shoulder length, choosing to cut them myself by tying them into a ponytail and chopping the whole thing off. Very Mulan. Each time I cut my hair, we fought. The fights were long and violent, always culminating in ultimatums and bruises. My haircuts became such a trigger for him that even a trim would send him into a tailspin. I suppose his reasoning was similar to my mother's concerns, the short hair represented a type of woman he did not want me to be, incidentally exactly the type of woman I actually am, and each time I cut them I was telling him that I was recommitting to my ideology of being *difficult*. On my end, I think I kept doing it because I had complete awareness of the abusive nature of this relationship and my decision to stay for so long was weighing on me, cutting my hair represented that even as he tried to destroy me, I wasn't actually losing myself to that relationship. The worse he got, the more things I did to make my hair stand out. I shaved my head. I coloured them blue, silver and red. I refused to comb them. I washed them with harsh soap and hard water instead of shampoo. I think I was worried that losing my difficult hair would become conformity to his patriarchal aspirations.

Fortunately for me, I dropped the man instead.

The current man in my life had never exerted any control over my hair. No matter what I did to them, he loved it. When I went out to buy mismatched silverware and came back with a perm that I definitely got at a salon that was a front for the drug trade, he found it adorable and called me pouffy for a year. When I shaved half my head and cut off everything that required a comb, he found it super hot and fucked me five times that day. When they grew longer than my neck and I tied them up to chop off the ponytail, he called it a brilliant hack and helped me sweep the floor. It was an unprecedented change in my life, to not have my hair be a bone of contention, a constant point of strife. While I always had done whatever I pleased with my hair, it had always been a battle, with him, it was a non-issue. It was as if it had never even occurred to him that he could have a say about my appearance and that is not to praise him for the bare minimum, it's really to demonstrate how mired women's beauty is in the patriarchal standard and control.

So mired that even at 24, I had no idea I could exercise control over my hair without a fight.

That is why his request was so shocking. Not only did he know exactly how I felt about long hair, he had all of the contextual information that should have kept him from thinking this was a good idea. As submissive and slavish as my sexuality is, there is a line I have never crossed and it has to do with liberty. It's not a static line and I don't suppose it is the same for everyone. The freedom to control my hair is liberty *to me* because of my cultural and personal context, but putting on symbols of ownership like collars doesn't infringe upon the same liberty. He knew that.

"Why in the world would you ask that of me?" I questioned his request, "Why would you want me to have long hair?"

I couldn't think of a reason that was good enough. Every thing he could have said in that moment made me angry even to predict. What would he tell me? That was beautiful? No, I cannot conform to this idea of beauty even for someone I love. That he wanted to control my appearance by making me do something I hated? More likely to work but even so the fact that it was about something so sensitive to me was annoying. I was so worried about the answer to this question because it has the potential to change what I thought of him.

"I want to choke you with your hair," he said, "I think it would be hot to make you live with a tool of strangulation growing out of your head."

I did not expect that answer.

Honestly, I loved it. I am completely on board with having my body manipulated to the end of extending my suffering. Also, his reasoning completely disarmed me because it didn't go in a direction I could have predicted. It made me laugh. It made me instantly amenable to his suggestion. It made me wet.

So, it has been eighteen months since I cut my hair. They're long now. He chokes me with them all the time. I love it. It's as hot as it sounds, but hotter somehow, because I know everything that came before this place of utilitarian aesthetic symbolism. The strange thing is, my hair isn't actually difficult anymore. They are soft and smooth, I can get all the knots out without succumbing to frustration or tears. They look exactly like my mom's hair, but that doesn't bring me any joy, what brings me joy is how much I don't care. I don't see any extra beauty in me now that I have long, pretty hair. I don't see any less beauty either. I see nothing except a sex-toy that I have to pile on top of my head when I go to the gym. Maybe the end of oppression isn't power, as much as it is ambivalence.

I am ambivalent.

Until I see him watching a video of a tutorial for French braiding and then, instead of ambivalence, I feel amusement.

"I know what I am doing tonight," he says, looking up from the screen, at me.

"What's that?" I ask, wondering if I will have a panic attack the moment another person tries to brush my hair again.

"I'm going to beat you up and then I'm going to braid your hair," he says.

No panic attack.

Just an attack of arousal.

The night cannot come soon enough.