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Dyeing My Hair Rebuilt My Confidence
A bold hair transformation helped me shake my insecurities
For centuries, hair has been a form of self-expression. Hair styles even have a firm place in pop culture, associated with a time, a place, a movement, even specific people. The mohawk, the mullet, the Farrah Fawcett. Songs have been devoted to hair. “Livin’ just as free as my hair,” Lady Gaga sang, and decades before her, an entire musical was named for it. “My hair like Jesus wore it, Hallelujah, I adore it.” People have dyed, cut, and styled their hair to let their personality shine.
Except for me. As a child, my hair was long, blonde, and straight. For special occasions, my mother would curl it the way she curled hers, making me look like even more like a tiny version of her than I already did, but otherwise, it was unstyled and unremarkable.
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“You should do that,” my grandfather said after a television segment on Locks of Love, an organization which collects donated hair and makes wigs for cancer patients. I loved my own long locks, but once he planted the idea in my head, I couldn’t get it out. I went with my mom to her hair stylist, and instead of trimming split ends or giving me a French braid like usual, I had several inches cut. My hair, once long and flowing to the middle of my back, was now…