One Queer Journey

Right. So this week I'm house-sitting for my parents, and since the cat hasn't changed much in the year since I've watched her, you won't be getting more adorable cat pictures.

Instead, I decided to spend my week going through the boxes of my stuff that are still at my parents' house (two boxes of stuffed animals, one box of books, two boxes of miscellaneous junk). One of those boxes had a shoebox full of photos (organized by film roll/date and sorted accordingly because it's me). I also found an unused photo album, and since I'm all about downsizing, I decided to junk all the photos that I couldn't fit in the album. That's my childhood reduced to 160 pictures (aside from those photo albums I've already made).

Which meant I spent a few days going through the photos of my childhood (which involved a lot of me taking weird pictures of birthday presents, because that was a thing I loved to do. As if I was going to forget what I'd gotten). And I thought it'd be fun to share my haircut journey. Some of these I look back on and say, "Really, genderqueer, why was this a surprise?"

Back in the day I had fairly blond hair. And since I had two older brothers, my mother LOVED to put me in dresses. I was not as happy about this.

You can't see the full extent of frilly dress-itude in this picture, but I think the bow says an awful lot.

But long hair does not a girly-girl make. My mom may have insisted on dresses for holidays, church, and special occasions, but most of the time I ran around in jeans...or cleats.

Because I played soccer! I loved soccer. My dad was a great coach, I was fairly athletic, and I got to be rough and tumble. I wasn't a good long-distance runner, but I could sprint well and knock people (completely legally) on their butts.

The older I got, the more I resisted the dresses, the more I was a 'tomboy', until eventually....

Listen, I'm not saying it was a great haircut on me, but this was probably sometime in the nineties, so we'll just go with that as the excuse. Also, I'm pretty sure it was the first time my parents (read: my mother) let me pick my own hairstyle. And the hairstylist just sort of went along with me, I think. The details are a little fuzzy.

I don't necessarily think clothes make the man, but they sure do say something about me :)

And yes, in that first picture I was holding Mario Paint. It was the one video game that was MINE and not my brothers' and I was so proud of it (even though it wasn't nearly as fun as all the games my brothers had that I played).

In high school I let my hair grow out again, either because I do sometimes like it long (even if all I do is put it in a ponytail or braid) or because peer pressure indicated long hair was a must to attract the attention of guys (which is what all high schoolers want, right?).

So I let it grow out. And out and out and out. The picture shows the absolute length of my hair (it doesn't grow any longer, because I shed too fast for it go do so. It also shows my hair's tendency to have a SLIGHT wave.

The reason I took this sort of random shot?

Because it was the summer before my freshman year of college, and I once again cut all my hair off. I didn't go as drastically short this time, mostly because I was going through enough changes, I didn't want to look stupid (which I then felt like I looked back with my short hair).

Over the course of college my hair got shorter and shorter and shorter, until a few years after graduation, when I started getting basically the same short hair as I have now (with some variations and different styles over the years).

So here I am. Thanks for joining me on this journey down memory lane!