Hair and Presentation

[Sam W]

Hi Raffles,

Ugh, how frustrating! I will say that some people really do seem to hang their gendering of people on, like, one feature, which can be super annoying if you're trying to signal your gender in other ways. With keeping your hair short, are you worried about the validity in terms of your own feelings about your gender? Or is it more that if you grow it out, you're worried people will point to that as "proof" you aren't how you say you are?

[Raffles]

A little bit of both, I think. A part of me says that I should be happier and never want long hair again if I were really agender (which I know isn't true). The other part of me is definitely worried that people will be even less willing to see me as an agender person if I have long hair again.

[Mo]

One thing that can be so hard about trying to create gender (or lack-of-gender) cues through presentation is that there's no way to know what cues any particular person will notice or focus on, or how they will interpret them. One person might have a very different read on your gender depending on how long your hair is or how it's styled, while another might be making assumptions about your gender based on other factors entirely. I think if someone's determined to disrespect your identity and look for "proof" that you're making it up (or whatever gross thing they're going to say), they will do it no matter what your hair looks like. People like that will latch onto something like hair or clothes as an excuse to be jerks, but they're just excuses; in the end if you change your hair they'll just choose something else to point to as a "reason" to invalidate your identity.
Is there a way to wear your hair that feels best or most affirming to you, aside from how anyone else reacts to it?

[Raffles]

That's a very good point.

I think part of the problem is that I'm not sure what I want to look like. I really don't think I'll know what I want until after I have it, which is time consuming. I'm trying to enjoy experimentation, but I'd really love to get to a point where I feel like I'm affirming my own identity through my presentation, if that makes sense.

[Alexa]

Hey Raffles,

I hear that. I feel like I'm always chasing the appearance I think I want for myself -- and once I settle on an aesthetic, I've already outgrown it and have to keep evolving. Every time you learn something about your presentation -- even when it's something you don't like -- you're a little bit closer! I hope you find that overall, you get closer to something that feels like an authentic presentation with time.

Do you feel you're closer now than you have been in the past? Not just the immediate past, but over the course of your whole self-discovery journey thus far?

[Raffles]

Looking back, it's kind of funny. Up until about 7th grade, I was a super happy kid and happy with how I presented. I identified as "tomboy," wore exclusively t-shirts and boy's shorts/pants. I had long hair that I rarely brushed, but insisted that it stay long. As I got to later middle school and high school, I felt a lot of pressure to conform and wanted to be feminine.

I'm pretty lost now in terms of what I want to look like, and it doesn't really help that my wardrobe is mostly from high school. I feel incredibly guilty about buying clothes and feel weird about buying clothes without first being able to try them on because pandemic.

So I guess I'm not all the much closer? I think that trying to change it has made me realize how far away I am and how confused I am, if that makes sense. I think a lot of my presentation preferences are complicated by how I am perceived because my dysphoria is pretty much entirely social.

[Sam W]

I feel you on the feeling weird about getting new clothes thing. I only just got rid of the last thing in my wardrobe that was from a high school (which I have not been in for over a decade) a few months ago. I wonder if it might help to think of new clothes as an investment in your well-being, since (ideally) they'd help you be perceived correctly by others and feel more at home in your own presentation.

This may sound a little silly, but sometimes using things like Pinterest to collect images can help you figure out what styles or clothes you're interested in trying. It's a low-stakes way of window shopping and noticing patterns in what you like.

[Raffles]

Well, it’s been almost two years, and I’m revisiting this topic. I still currently have short hair, but I’m thinking about letting it grow back out for a few reasons. The first is that I my realization from earlier is still true. Very few people gender me correctly even with short hair and button down/masculine clothing. Secondly, I don’t have the money to keep getting it trimmed every 6 weeks now. I moved back home, and the prices here are higher. I also haven’t found a stylist that I click with like the one I had a school. Finally, part of the problem with short hair is that it is queer coded. Now that I’m trying to go back in the closet, the things that used to bring me euphoria make me anxious, like when people ask me for my pronouns based on appearance. I’m hopeful that when I grow it back it, people won’t ask anymore and I don’t have to worry about it as much. I know that, if I do choose to come out, people will be even less likely to see me as valid because of my appearance, but I guess I can always cut it again later.

[Sam W]

Hi Raffles,

It sounds like you've really weighed the pros and cons of keeping the short hair. I agree that letting it stay long might help if you need to be in the closet for a bit; you're right that, weird as it is, people see short hair on anyone they perceive as a woman as being queer-coded. And, like you said, this is a change that really can be temporary, since hair can be cut again if you're in a place in your life where it's once again a source of euphoria more than it is a source of anxiety.

[Raffles]

Sorry, just venting ahead.
Today I got a trim to get my layers evened out, and there’s a good chance that I’m beginning to have another episode of alopecia. I know it’s just hair and I’m lucky that there’s no (physical) pain, but I’m still upset. I’m angry that I may never have the hair I want, and I’m sad that my choice about my hair can be derailed by my immune system at any time. It feels like the things that used to give me euphoria are being taken away from me one at a time like the universe is telling me that I don’t deserve to identify as agender (which I know is stupid and it’s just bad luck, but that’s what it feels like).

[Heather]

Raffles: I'm really sorry that you're going through this, and I also have some understanding of how this can feel.

"Gender euphoria" is always a tricky term for me -- as I suspect it is for a lot of agender people -- because it's really a *lack* of gendering anything or me that makes me feel good around this, you know? But since I have yet to be able to think up anything better, I'll say that for me, something that long made me feel very good around gender was my physical prowess. When I had the ability to do and teach boxing, and before that, bodybuilding -- ways of being tough and strong in my body that felt like a certain kind of more androgynous swagger, it gave me a good feeling that little else ever has around this.

So, when my body effectively starting breaking down, and I couldn't do those things (and at a certain point, even walking was off the table for close to a year), and then on the other side of surgery and recovery, when I could do some things, but not things like boxing, and having the body I had when I could? OOF. It was, and sometimes still is, a really punch in the gut. I hear you with the anger, and also with feeling like you don't get to have the sense of gender identity you want.

I would suggest you let yourself have these feelings, and without doing comparisons, or diminishing how you are feeling by thinking about how it isn't as bad as it could be. You're allowed to be upset about this. <3

[Raffles]

I agree that gender euphoria is a difficult term. For me, the ideal would be living a life where I don’t have to think or feel anything about gender at all. In that case, it’s not euphoria really. Gender free I guess? I’m not sure if that’s an attainable goal, though.

Thank you for being vulnerable and sharing your experience. I’m sorry that those health things happened. That sounds really hard.

[Heather]

YES. I am so right there with you with that want to not have gender have to do with anything. I also agree with you that as a goal, though, it's...unlikely. I mean, goodness, our worlds are all so mired in gender, plus so many people *do* feel gender, and for a lot of them, it's a big part of who they are. This is one of the reasons I intensely value my relationships and interactions with other agender people: not a lot of people share this way of not-feeling about and with gender.

Thanks for your compassionate words. <3 Bodies, they just are so MUCH, and so much is so tangled with them!