HIGHLIGHT

I'm in second grade. I miss picture day and have to get retakes. My mother dresses me up in a white shirt with "Love" written on it in pink and green. I beg my mother to give me something complicated, intricate, and beautiful, but instead, my mother looked at me, looked at her watch, and said, "how about pigtails?" and I happily agreed. I walk into class with a white shirt that said "love", and two handlebar pigtails. They touch my shoulders, they poof out and in, exactly the way I could never get my barbie's hair to. My dad gets the pictures later, and tells me that my hair is beautiful, that I look "like a beautiful young lady." I frown. It's a cute photo, but something about it is all wrong.
I am not a lady.

I'm a sophomore in high school. I came home from the haircut, and, lying through my teeth, I tell them, I didn't expect the cut to turn out like this. I described it wrong. That this cut is my fault, not the hairdressers, but I didn't want it, honest. I'm red-faced and pretending I'm embarrassed. "You have sideburns!" my sister cackles, ever so helpfully. "I know," I fake groan. I should be in the high school's theater program. "I look like Wolverine!" My mother is appalled at my words, Grace is cackling, and my father shakes his head, ticked with the haircut, but laughing at the dread in my voice. "Well, kid. Live and learn." He tells me.

My mother looks me in the eyes, "You know this means you've got to dress more feminine, right?" I shrink in on myself, scared to talk back. This cut was all the rebellion I could handle for now. I go to school the next day in a flower crown and sundress. I tell my art teacher what my parents said, with a nervous laugh.
She doesn't laugh. She tells me, "I don't think you need to dress more feminine, it's a nice haircut." I look down at my desk, staring intently at the drawing I was working on as tears blur my vision. I quietly ask if I can stay in the art room during my study hall. She says yes, and the rest of the class leaves at the bell. She leaves too, telling me to be a responsible young lady. I don't hold it against her, she doesn't know yet, I haven't told her yet. I take off my flower crown, and I cry.
I am not a lady.

It's the spring semester of my freshman year of college. I walk to Meijer in the dark, sprinting across the highway out front, cursing under my breath with the veracity of prayer. Every time I tell my friends I crossed it on foot, they say my name in an "I'm not mad, I'm just worried" tone. I buy a beard trimmer, it's fifteen dollars less expensive than the next cheapest option, and it'll do. I think it will, at least. I hope it will. When I get back, I put down a towel, covering my sink. I turn on the trimmers.

Deep breath, refocus, and I make the first cut. I watch the hair fall into the towel. I go too short on one side, and panic as I even it out. I can't see the back, so I take the mirror that sits on the back of my door and some sewing scissors. I hack at my hair, remembering how intently I used to stare at the hairdresser's hands, and I tried to mimic what they did, but my emotions, my mania at how close freedom is makes my hands shake, my chops are blunt. I nip a finger or two. I don't care.
I wake up the next morning terrified of what I did. I feel like such an idiot, but as I run my hands frantically across where my hair used to be, I catch a glimpse at how I look in the mirror, and the relief upon seeing who I am makes the fear and shame melt away. I see what approximately looks like a guy with a mohawk, and he looks scared at first too, but it melts away in pace with my own. My face is no longer framed in femininity, I have rid myself of all that has clung to me against my will. For the first time in my life, I don't look like a lady.
I am not a lady.