Things have never been that easy with my hair.

Since I was a child, I had a complicated time with being a female. I did not play with girls because they made fun of me for not being girly ; but I did not like boys, because they were brutal. But more than anything since I read my first stories of adventures and women becoming badass, I wanted to be that androgynous short-haired person I saw in my dreams.

My hair is of dark blonde, and is now quite short, with a white sided bang on the top and an inch on the sides. For years I was afraid to cut it but now I’m not coming back from then. I had all, bob, pixie, side-cut, boyish. But I want more. I want to buzz like only boys and butches would.

I dream for this day when I would fearlessly sit on the chair of a barber and ask them to boldly push their clippers in my soft, and straight-but-not-rigid mane, to turn it in a short stubble, very close on the back and sides, and just a bit longer on the top. Short enough to be icky under my hands, enough to show just a little bit of the skin of my skull. Not too much, just a little bit.

I hope they would be woman, who would also have short hair. That I would talk to her, tell her my fear to be blamed and shamed for my masculine wish to go there. That she would reassure me, tell my I’ll be more beautiful this way. I so want to hear it from someone one day, just to say to me “you are handsome as a boy with short hair”. I would tell her that I feel being too fat to sport this look, to be as androgynous as I wish, that I have too round a face, and she would listen and deny and convince me to go there anyway.

I would close my eyes as she pushes the clippers on the back on my neck. Maybe I would cry a little out of joy and stress as being so true to myself. Maybe she would see me cry and ask if it is okay and I would say yes.

The locks on my lap falling over, shedding one by one, sheared with my girlishness. Nothing would be left to hide my only face and I would dream that clippers could cut out the rest: the fat, the blobs I hate so much on my chest. Buzzing then slowly on the top of my head, where in any salon no hairdresser ever dared to run them. The sound, oh the sound of it in the chair of a barber, having my hair cut like a man, and in a man’s way. No trimmers, no fancies, just clippers and a comb guide and a bit of snip-snip at the end to blurr the difference between the top and the rest.

I’ve watch it so much, read it so much without having the right to have it this way.

No hairdresser has never cut my hair like a barber; and no matter how short you cut, it is frustrating that in their hands you still feel female.

I dream that getting out of the barbershop not only with the haircut but with the body I feel like mine. I dream that I’d be strong enough to go on and to face my loved ones and their difficulties to accept. Most of all I dream that the mirror of the barbershop will one day find another one who would look at me and say “You are handsome this way.”

Note from author: This is a very personnal auto-fiction with a lot of feels as I write it. Please respect my work and my own personae. English is my second language, please have tolerance for grammar mistakes.