The Weaponizing of Hair

Prologue: It’s 1965. I’m nine years old and have been allowed to wear the thinnest of Beatle Bangs for the past year. The rest of my head is shaved almost military-style. My mother cuts both my and my brother’s hair, using the new razor and trimmer set she bought with Green Stamps. <blockquote> “Hold still,” she says, and she goes about giving me my “trim-up.” “Oh, whoops, I’m sorry, I’m going to have to cut it all off now.” </blockquote> I was too young to understand how she could have slipped up given how little hair actually made it down my forehead. But I was old enough to know that the out-of-fashion crew cut would render me back to the ranks of the decidedly unfashionable boys of my elementary school. So I did what any nine-year old boy would do: I hollered and screamed and shed big whopping tears at my fate for the next few months. And of course I learned later that this had been no accident; my dad had persuaded my mother to give me a crew cut in order to satisfy some grim doctrine of conformity that he somehow believed was fair and just and that I wouldn’t mind or perhaps learn to love. All of that didn’t work, and my mother never slipped up again, which meant I could grow my Beatle bangs back out, and better, I could have actual hair growing on the rest of my “skint” head now. <a href="https://medium.com/counterarts/the-weaponizing-of-hair-f75c855019c2">Read More</a>