It Will Grow
By Edyn-Mae Stevenson
“Oh, Baby, don’t you miss your long hair?”
I was nine years old, and my grandmother was grasping onto the few inches left on my scalp as if they were a lifeline. I had just donated all of my hair to a foundation that made wigs for kids with cancer, and now the ends of my hair fell lightly against my jaw in a neat little bob. I did not miss my long hair—not even a little bit. But my grandmother did, and she worried to my mother about it.
In a home with four generations of women under one roof, the societal pressures to be beautiful were present from a young age, and hair was a sign of youth and femininity. The matriarchs of my household straightened, dyed, and bleached their hair. They covered up gray, permed away curls, and never ever cut their locks past their shoulders. At nine, I knew that short hair was for boys and long hair was for girls, but somehow lopping all of mine off had just seemed right.
“She’s going to regret that haircut as soon as the excitement wears off,” my grandmother warned, but my mom just smiled and said, “She’s gonna live, and it will grow.”
It did grow, and I spent my early teenage years trying to be okay with having long hair. I tried braids and updos galore. There was an unfortunate “messy-bun” phase that has made for some unspeakable photos, and a particularly long episode involving side bangs…
As much as I hated having long hair, it was something to hide behind—a sort of beauty that was constant even when I hated every other thing about myself.
When my grandmother got sick, the bleached-blonde hair fell away, strand by strand, until it seemed silly to keep trying to hold onto it. My mother helped her shave it off while they both cried. There was a wig—just like the ones my own hair had been woven into when I so proudly donated it at nine years old—that was accidentally destroyed in an incident involving a hot oven, and many hats and scarves, and then there was just a bald head.
And without any hair to hide behind, my grandmother was more beautiful than she had ever been.
There was an intermission where the cancer tricked us for a moment into breathing easy. In that sweet interim, a soft fuzz began to grow on my grandmother’s head that quickly turned into the most beautiful tight gray curls. People stopped us in the grocery store to tell her how lovely her hair was. Everywhere she went, she glowed like an angel with a lovely silver halo.
She was never not beautiful—my grandmother—even on the day she died.
By the time my mother and I took the leap, we’d been talking about it for ages. We were good at talking, but the idea of truly going for it scared me more than I was willing to admit, and it took Anne Hathaway’s legendary on-screen chop for the Les Miserables film, to give us enough courage to finally go for it. If she could do it, so could we. Anyways, it was in memory of Nana. We would live, and it would grow.
And for six years it has grown. And every eight weeks or so, I go back to my hairdresser so she can cut it back to the length it has now been since that day when my mom and I finally lopped off nearly every inch of our hair. I keep it like this because that day when I looked in the mirror, I thought, “this is me. This is the girl that’s been missing since I was nine years old.”
It’s true that there are cons to hair as short as mine. Yes, my femininity is compromised on a daily basis. Yes, I’ve been mistaken for a boy more times than I can count. Yes, there is no hair to hide behind anymore. But taking that plunge and cutting my hair has always been worth it.
So, dye it some bright and wonderful color. Go for the chop or the shave or that pixie cut you’ve always admired. In the end, there’s really no reason not to do it.
In the end, you will live. And it will grow.
Edyn-Mae, @edyn.mae.stevenson is a singer and songwriter with a heart for mental health awareness, and the rest of her story can be found on Spotify (her EP, Apricity, is amazing y’all). When she’s not busy writing about her feelings, she can be found hosting shows at her local Classical radio station or curled up with her human-sized golden retriever and a good book.