this story originally appeared in the philippine daily inquirer on September 18, 2001.
“Mukha kang natipos!”
That was what my mom said the first time she saw me with my latest haircut. She stared at me in disbelief, touched my hair as if to make sure she wasn’t just imagining it, and hit me on the head for “not valuing her opinion anymore.”
I had my haircut on the first day of school, two days after I had it cut by my tita. She had her own parlor in her younger days and has long considered herself retired. But when my mom and I visited her, I asked her to cut my hair. She used to do it when I was a little girl, and until my fourth year in high school, I did not dare trust anyone else with my hair.
After discovering that I liked the style of this gay hairdresser, I outgrew my dear tita and followed this gay who moved from parlor to parlor.
When I started college and stayed in Quezon City, I found Barbie at David’s Salon, liked her style and availed myself of her services every time I went there. Since I moved to Prince David condominium, I tried HairBytes for a change, and though it costs much more than David’s Salon, I keep coming back because I fell in love with how my new hairdresser, Martin, does my hair.
I decided I wanted my hair even shorter than how it was after my tita cut it. But my mom has this ability to read my mind when I least want her to, and she warned me not to dare do anything with my hair. When we spent our summer vacation in the United States, I kept bugging her about red highlights and she swore we’d get into a fight if I ever did. I didn’t risk it, but instead ended up with this washable red hair color spray, that for a time I used every day. Right after she left the condo, I went to Hairbytes with my allowance in my pocket.
My mom visits me in the condo during weekends. That week, she came on a Friday night, and upon seeing my hair, she was furious until Sunday night. I didn’t think I could stand it, but I did, and after what I went through with my mom, I knew I could survive anything. “Mukha kang cancer patient na nagki-chemo! Ba’t hinayaan mong maputpot ang buhok mo? Para kang may palong ng manok,” my mom would say, sometimes with a disdainful laugh, and looking like she was staring at an alien. My favorite though, was when she shook her head reproachfully and said, “Grabe. ibang iba ka na talaga. Nagpunta ka lang ng States, ang laki na nang ipinagbago mo.”
I couldn’t help but snap. For heaven’s sake, I just cut my hair! Why was she reacting as if I had turned into this bad girl all of a sudden? Her reaction couldn’t have been worse if I had gotten a part of my body pierced or tattooed. Not that I have anything against body piercing or tattoos, but it’s just that all I did was cut my hair really short, the shortest ever in my whole life, and it seemed like something extremely inconsiderate, even rebellious. Surprisingly, my mom said that she would have liked it better if I had gotten highlights instead of this “horrible” haircut.
I couldn’t see what was so horrible about my hair. I liked it. It was different from all the other hairstyles I had. I went from straight to layered to short to permed to super-short. I went through more or less 10 different styles since my first year in college and loved every single one of them, although all not instantly. I haven’t been able to grow my hair past chin level since then, even if there were times when I decided I would. Ironically, just when I had decided that I wanted to grow my hair long, I would get a haircut a few days afterwards.
I am currently sporting a short, layered cut that requires me to use gel or mousse for a wet-sometimes rumpled when I feel like it-look. I’ve always wanted something low maintenance, and that’s probably the reason I keep my hair short. Interestingly, my friends have noted that I do something different with my hair every time I go through a crisis. There could be a correlation, but the way I see it, it’s more an assertion of an I-don’t-care attitude, which is, yes, probably my way of coping during a crisis.
It may be a defense mechanism, or my subconscious craving for attention (Uy, bagong hair!) or just a reflection of who I am. In some sense, my mom was right about my rebelliousness. I’m pretty much a good girl (even my parents, relatives, teachers and friends will tell you that) and one of the few ways I get to express my independence and rebelliousness is through my hair.
Actually, I express myself through my hair, whether it be because of a crisis or because I just want a change in my life. It may be shallow, trying to change something in my life by changing my hair, but more than the superficial, changing hairstyles is like a concrete, visible expression of moving on.
Since I started college, I never stuck to a hairstyle for long. Constantly changing it is like being on a quest, a journey, where I am still looking for something that I want to live with, for, by and through for a long time. Maybe just like my constantly evolving self, so are my hairstyles constantly changing.
A friend once told me that I had a very strong individual streak which is concretely manifested in the kind of hairstyles I wear, among others. But more than not caring about what other people think, it is also about caring for myself. Having a haircut is taking a risk and having faith, not knowing if your hairdresser will be able to copy the style from that magazine you’re holding. For me, it’s about not caring about how it turns out and knowing beforehand that you’ll like it, however horrible it might be.
Maybe I am deluding myself into believing that my hair right now looks good on me. Maybe my friends have been polite enough not to tell me that it’s terrible, and one of them may just be candid enough to say that I look like one of those Koreans studying in McDonalds Katipunan at night. But hey, what matters is I like it and I feel good about it. God knows what I’ll do next to my hair (I’ve been seriously considering going bald) but until then, I’m just letting me, or rather, it (my hair) be.
