My senior year of college, I borrowed some clippers, wore a giant trash bag, and buzzed off my long Afro in a friend’s bathroom.
I didn’t expect to be doing this. I grew up on the Eastside (if you’re new to Seattle, that’s the suburban stretch along I-405), and by the time I was old enough for college, I longed for a radical change in environment, which is how I ended up at Wellesley, a women’s college on the East Coast. There’s a phenomenon there called the “Wellesley chop,” where some students dramatically cut their long hair into a pixie cut. From celebrating coming out to saying a giant “fuck you” to beauty standards and expectations, many students use this “fresh start” as an opportunity to try out different versions of themselves.
My hair was the thing that I felt most connected me to being Black and being a woman. Black women the world over have sat between their mothers’ knees, feeling their hair being pulled into tight, neat cornrows or twists. I still remember the smell of the product my mom used as she pressed my curls straight with a hot comb. I prided myself on how long my hair had gotten, how diligently I’d oiled, conditioned, and cared for it. I felt like a beautiful, femme, Black woman. To sever that connection was to sail into unknown waters.
