The Physical Change I Made for Myself and Then Had to Defend to Everyone

I had worn my hair long my entire adult life in Sao Paulo, partly from genuine preference and partly from the ambient understanding that long hair was what was expected of someone who looked like me in the social and professional contexts I moved in.

At 27, for no particularly dramatic reason, I cut it very short. The decision was mine, made after about three months of consideration, driven by a combination of genuine curiosity about what I would look like and a quieter desire to do something to my appearance that was entirely on my own terms rather than in response to any external expectation.

The reaction was more intense and more sustained than I had expected. Not uniformly negative - many people said it looked good and meant it. But the volume and persistence of opinion was itself striking. Family members expressed concern in the specific way of people who are worried a decision means something it does not.

Colleagues made comments that ranged from supportive to backhanded in a way that revealed the degree to which my appearance had been part of a social expectation I had not consciously known was operating. Men whose opinion I had not solicited offered it.

People who had never previously commented on how I looked suddenly had strong views. The most instructive part of the experience was not the comments themselves but what they revealed about the relationship between other people and my body - the degree to which my physical appearance had been operating as a social object with expectations attached that I had not agreed to and had not known were there until I deviated from them.

I had cut my hair. I had not done anything to anyone. The volume of response suggested otherwise. At 30, my hair is still short. I have not reverted in response to opinion and I do not intend to.

What the experience gave me was a much clearer understanding of how many of my previous appearance choices had been made in response to implicit social pressure rather than my own preference, and a more explicit relationship with my own body and what I choose to do with it.