You tug on a lock of my hair. ‘It’s so thick…how smooth…and look at how lustrous…’ you coo appropriately.
I smile and blush and mutter thanks. And you bet I’m happy. Half my teenage years were spent desperately trying to fluff out my ponytail. When taking a selfie, I always made sure I was hovering half-in, half-out of the frame, so that you couldn’t see my limp hair dangling like some lifeless and very, very skinny rat. And after school was the worst. My school was fairly strict when it came to hair. The principal was firmly convinced that loose hair made a student a drunkard and a druggie, so all the girls had to sport ponytails or braids. And so the minute the bell rang, they’d all be tugging at their hair ties, letting thick waves of hair tumble down. I would watch with painfully evident envy.
Maybe I was stupidly self-conscious, but I hated even talking about hair. If anyone ever mentioned it, no matter whose they were talking about, a hot ball of shame would expand in my stomach, forcing my heart to contract. My friends would braid each other’s hair, but even if someone had offered to braid mine, I would have staunchly refused. Braids are for thick hair, and the less notice paid to mine, the better.
None of my friends mentioned its thinness. I harboured a strong conviction that they thought about it just as much as me, but were too polite to mention it. They talked about its shortness, though, becaue my mother was always ‘trimming’ my hair, ‘a fresh start’ way too often.
I liked short hair, but by ninth grade I was sick to death of it, I guess because it had ceased to be an option. I was tired of every single heroine having ‘thick’ hair. Have you noticed? In books, the heroine whines about the colour of her hair. She complains about how curly it is, how wavy, how straight. She might even howl about its length…but never about its thickness. Thin hair is just ugly. There’s nothing even remoately romantic about it.
Up till sixth grade, when my hair fell in locks and clumps due to an absolutely horrible Vitamin D deficiency that weakened my roots so much that my hair continued to fall in locks and clumps even after I’d gotten the necessary injections – well, even then I’d never felt pretty, not really. I just never imagined feeling otherwise, and I didn’t recognize that for the blessing it was.
Let me put it this way. In third grade, I had long hair. By fifth or maybe fourth, I’d chopped it off so that it was only chin-length. My hair was my choice, a canvas. I experimented freely because I was just so damn sure of myself, my beauty, me. And after sixth grade?
I started Googling ‘what hairstyles suit thin hair’.
Eventually, my mum found some kind of oil that really suited my hair or something. I used to apply it every night, you know? And that affected me in absolutely insignificant ways, like I wouldn’t snapchat at night because I didn’t want anyone to know how rigorously I worked on improving my hair. If it failed, I didn’t want anyone knowing I’d even tried. So there were minor details like that, and one major detail…the oil did wonders for my hair.
It’s thick now. I’ve always had fine hair, so now that there are more than just a few strands, it looks – if I say so myself – pretty nice. And you can bet I’m grateful.
The thing is, though, I’m also a little bitter, because I’ve learnt that ‘pretty’ takes a lot of effort, a lot of tears, a lot of shame. So when you call my hair pretty, I’m happy because I’m human, but I’m upset because that spring in my step, the uplifting of my heart – it means that your opinion still matters to me. And my years of insecurity, well, they’ve taught me how dangerous that is.