I love to tell the story of how liberating it was to cut off my hair before my senior year of high school. If you’re one of the few who hasn’t heard the story, it goes something like this:

The summer before senior year, I was thinking about getting a pixie cut. My hair fell midway down my back at that point. I was tired of being told that I had “princess hair” and that I should never cut it because it was so beautiful. I was also feeling like my peers were always telling me what to do, in general, and I was sick of it.

From my senior photo shoot, the longest hair I've ever had.

My family spent a week at a camp where a lot of the female counselors happened to have pixie cuts, and that sealed the deal: I was going to chop my hair off. I had my school picture taken and had my senior photo shoot before the haircut, just in case it looked bad on me. I warned only those of my close friends who’d never pressured me about my hair, and the day before school started, I went to the salon. At the last minute, I chickened out and asked for a short bob instead of a pixie.

Soon after getting the bob (sideways because the photo is low resolution)

I’d never felt more free. My long hair had been a shackle binding me and my self-worth to my peers’ standards of beauty and popularity. Once it was gone, I was able to see myself outside of that context, and I loved it. Over the next year, I let it grow out again. The bob was a public, one-time act of defiance and self-definition. I didn’t need to maintain it once I’d done it, because I’d made my statement.

Flash forward to November of my first year of college. Christmas was life for my choir, so I was tied down with rehearsals and TV tapings and practice and stress. Lots of stress. On top of that, finals were just a short time away. I felt as if I wasn’t in control of anything in my life anymore. A haircut, I reasoned, would be an impermanent way to alter my appearance and thus regain some control over something in my life. After initially talking to an acquaintance (who had a pixie cut herself) about the prospect of getting a pixie and getting lots of encouragement from the women around me in choir who also had the hairstyle, I decided to get one over Christmas break.

There I was, December 23, in the hair salon. This time I didn’t chicken out. And I loved my pixie cut. It was cute and spunky and everything I’d hoped for. All the people at church oohed and ahhed over it the next two days, and it got rave reviews when I got back to school. I didn’t really feel the need to maintain it because the cut had once again been more of a statement (to myself) than an actual matter of aesthetics.

The day I got my pixie cut. I was in love!

This hairstyle, though, was not without its hardships. Styling it was out of the question on most mornings, as I’d roll out of bed 25 minutes before class. This, coupled with the fact that my wardrobe consisted mostly of t-shirts and jeans, meant that the vibe I got when I looked in the mirror some days was somewhat masculine. I did not feel comfortable with that vibe at all. Some girls can pull it off, some girls prefer it, even.

I quickly found that I am not one of those girls.

I became dependent on makeup; if I didn’t put on makeup in the morning, I felt very un-feminine. I suddenly hated all the baggy clothes that I used to love.

Three months after getting the haircut, using a ton of makeup to compensate for feeling like I looked un-feminine. I took a total of three selfies between December and May because I rarely felt pretty enough to photograph.

I felt like I had to be very conscious of what my day was going to be like. For example, if I was giving a tour that day, I’d wear big earrings and more makeup than usual just in an effort to appear “more professional” and present a “more appealing” image to my tour group. On those days, I couldn’t wait for my hair to grow out again.

This isn’t to say that it was all bad. My feelings about my hair changed on a day-to-day basis. I liked it most of the time. Sometimes, my hair was super cute in a way that was very feminine, and on those days, I loved it.

It wasn’t until this summer that I finally began to feel comfortable with it no matter what. I feel beautiful with and without makeup, in t-shirts and in dresses. Perhaps that’s because there aren’t very many people around to see me, or because my hair’s grown out a little bit. Or perhaps it’s because I’m finally accepting that I don’t have to look any certain way to be able to love myself.

I hadn’t realized that my hair was so tied to my femininity and that my femininity was so important to my identity and my self-esteem. Now that my femininity hair is gone, I’m learning to love my body, no matter what it looks like. I’ve begun to detach my hair and my femininity from my identity and self-esteem and I couldn’t be happier about it.