Long Blonde Hair

I hate it when you tell me that I looked so pretty with my long blonde hair
and I hate it when you double check my ID, smile and say, you changed your hair
and I hate that I keep this ID because I feel like it proves that I can fit in, in your world of long blonde hair

the long blonde hair in that picture looked good on me, but it never fit… I tried to deny my long blonde hair by dyeing it, starting at the age of 13. I have had every color hair except orange and silver…
and I never even knew my natural hair color until the past year. And then I finally went to school and thought I could get away from the assumptions made when you have long blonde hair (even though at the time my hair was short, although still blonde). And then on one of the first days of school I talk to someone and they tell me “yea, I used to have long blonde hair too…”

my long blonde hair was a symbol, a symbol of subscribing to the patriarchal structure of beauty that had been handed down to me in the form of seventeen magazine and books on beauty by bobbi brown. It was a mindset of lack of intelligence given in the form of joke books on “dumb blondes” and reinforced whenever I did something and someone called me a dumb blonde. and most of all my long blonde hair was a symbol of a mindset and an attitude that I didn’t agree with. When people looked at me with that long blonde hair they saw a White Anglo Saxon Protestant (WASP). They saw mainstream American teenager bumming around at malls and never stopping to think about the larger issues in the world… and they see straight, good girl…

and so one day I looked at my self in the mirror and realized that I was none of these things (except white…), and maybe I am a coward and I should have stood up and earned respect with my long blonde hair, but instead I got a pair of scissors and made my hair fit who I am…

and so when you tell me that I was so hot two years ago, what happened. and when you look at my ID and comment, while smirking on my hair cut. and when I remember that I keep that ID in my wallet as a passport into your world… it rips apart a very conscience decision that I made years ago…