So Much Hair!

 As a child of the 80’s/90’s I have always loved long hair and aspired to the lushes locks of the grunge rock superstars I grew up watching on MTV. Yes, remember MTV used to actually play music videos? It was an MTV music video that first brought my awareness to hair. It must have been ‘92 or ‘93 which would have made me about eight years old. The video was the ubiquitous “Under the Bridge” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. If you are not familiar with the video or you are feeling nostalgic you can check it out here -  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwlogyj7nFE. I was enamored with the gorgeous Anthony Kiedis and his shiny waist length hair. I was eight so we are not really talking about sexual attraction – that wouldn’t come until high school. I was drawn to Kiedis’ nonchalant confidence as he walked through the streets of L.A. greeting people. This man was pretty in a feminine sort of way, yet he knew who he was and loved who he was. I wanted to be him and I wanted to be beautiful, too.

Oh Anthony K-- be still my hear!

Little did I know at the age of eight that I was existing in a culture that equated long hair with sin --- and potential Satanism, apparently.  To this day, I am stunned by just how intensely interested the world has been with my hair and indeed the hair of those around me. Growing up, I continually tried to grow my hair out, which was actually appropriate and fashionable at the time. Everyone was trying to look like Brad Pit or Leonardo DiCaprio. Secretly, I was trying to look like Eddie Vedder.  This met with a great deal of resistance from my parents who insisted that a seminary teacher’s child had to be an example of moral uprightness. Somehow for reasons so far beyond me at this point in life, the length one’s hair is connected to righteousness when you are LDS; men with long hair are vagrants and sinners. So I did what I could at home but my hair never grew beyond the awkward phase where it hung in my face. I did take some small solace in the fact my parents also made my younger brother stop frosting his tips – when that was the style. Apparently being stylish was also a sin.

I left home to attend BYU which as an LDS school shared these unfounded anti-hair ideologies. They boast a dress code that any branch of the military would be proud of.  Hair must be off the ears and collar and no facial hair excepting mustaches which do not protrude below the upper lip. So it is that I was 23 and a college graduate before I was independent enough to grow my hair out the way I wanted to. Growing my hair out was liberating. It was so nice to be able to determine my own style and look how I wanted. I came to experience my hair as a protection against my dysphoria; which was probably at its worst when I was at BYU. Looking back on my life, I can identify college as one of my first major depressive episodes. It was the first time I remember clearly experiencing suicidal ideation. The long hair made me feel beautiful – I believe that my hair is one of my most attractive traits and I have always loved it. The beard was both literally and metaphorically my beard (a beard is a woman or some object that a queer man uses to pass as cis-het) and it made me feel a little more settled into the “Man” role that I never felt comfortable in. “Grunt see manly beard – me manly man.” Something like that.  

As a young college educated “Man,” one would imagine that I would be free to dress exactly as I wanted. Certainly not though. Between the time I was 23 and 34 I was specifically asked to meet with a Bishop so that Bishop could “strongly encourage” me to cut my hair and shave my beard. At one point in life this led to a rather unfortunate mustache as a sort of compromise (see below). Apparently I was some sort of reverse Sampson whose spiritual powers were dependent on having a BYU honor code approved look. I want to clarify how discouraging this was to me at the time and how frustrating it is to me now. It wasn’t enough that Jesus wouldn’t let me transition and be the woman I knew I was. His servants would not allow me to wear my hair in the way that made me feel ok with myself. Apparently, God wanted my life on this earth to be a dysphoric hell. It is my experience that the LDS faith doesn’t just ask its adherents to do hard things, it expects them to do those things in the hardest way possible. Allow me a side note to mention that most academic definitions of “Cult” include something along the lines of “the religious organization dictating how members dress and/or groom”. At this point in life, I see Bishops intervening in my dress and grooming as the egregious overstepping of boundaries that it was and is. 

This is what happens when "Gods Servants" tell you how to look

I first started practicing Kundalini Yoga in graduate school. It was my way of managing stress and trying to stay healthy. Years later when I was leaving the LDS church, I grew more and more interested in the spiritual/religious aspects of Yoga. Kundalini Yoga is closely aligned with the Sikh faith – many practitioners join the 3HO branch of Sikhi. I have never fully converted to Sikhi but have adopted several of the practices. This served as a soft landing during my exodus from “The Church” (someday I may share that story here). In many ways Yoga and Sikhi felt more natural with who I was and who I wanted to be. One of the first practices I adopted is known as Kesh. The practice of Kesh regard the body as a sacred creation of Waheguru (God) and demands that a faithful Sikh never cut any of the hair on their body. Sometime in 2017, a few months before my last child was born, I stopped shaving and cutting my hair. At last I had found a spiritual tradition that equated long hair with righteousness. Now like Sampson my spiritual power was related to the length of my hair not its brevity. I looked at keeping Kesh as a practice in self-acceptance – loving who I was and the body I was in just the way they were made by the creator. This was an amazing gift of self-love after years of the LDS faith’s crushing dictates that I conform to something that felt profoundly uncomfortable.

Look ma no "manly" jawline 

This is a masculine turban you'll note I wrap it different now

My hair became a huge part of my identity and how I experienced myself. I loved my long luxurious locks of hair and took great pleasure in oiling and combing them. This was the beginning of taking care of myself and healing my relationship with my body. My beard became a substitute for my face.  I had my big bushy beard and that is what I saw when I looked in the mirror. Honestly, it was a relief to not look at my face. Looking back now, after my dysphoria has reduced, I am surprised at how bad it was and how much I allowed myself to get used to. Like they say, a fish doesn’t know it’s in water. Dysphoria was all I knew. Hiding behind all that hair worked for me, for a few years. It was the most comfortable I felt with myself up to that point in life.

Then COVID struck. I left the VA clinic I was working in and brought all my government issued computer equipment home, to my closet where I started doing teletherapy. COVID brought on what I consider to be the worst depressive episode of my life. There was so much going on at that time, including an incredible case of seasonal allergies that was suspected to be COVID for a while. One of the most uncomfortable and depressing experiences I had to deal with was having to watch myself on a computer screen for more or less eight hours a day. I was confronted with my masculinity and could not avoid it. This was a significant part of the series of events that pushed me to come to terms with my dysphoria and embrace the fact that I was Trans and needed to transition. Coming to myself was actually a very gradual process. I did decide to transition while living in Texas – but also knew that I had to ditch the Trump flag waving-Bible thumping Texans before I could safely do anything. It would take an additional year of gender therapy and little outings in dresses before I was ready to begin my public transition.

As you can imagine, the decision to shave my beard was monumental for me. My youngest daughter had never known me without it – she still asks me to grow it back. At this point, the decision had spiritual implications for me.  It took me a while to make peace with it. In my mind, shaving my beard was when my public transition started in earnest. You would have thought I would have written the date down, sometimes October-ish 2021. I carefully trimmed and shaved my beard and when I finished I did some yoga and meditation. Specifically, I chanted Akal – the special prayer chanted for the dead. Akal means “deathless” it is one of the attributes of Waheguru. This prayer is believed to guide the spirit of the deceased back to the divine and to prepare them for their next life/incarnation.  It is a very beautiful prayer – If you are interested you can listen to it right now. This is my favorite rendition of the prayer and the one I used that night https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw0GB11PFww. Most Sikh prayers are sung and a Sikh service tends to be very musical. I felt that I was setting to rest an old life and ushering in a new one. Death mirrors life and life mirrors death the two are sides of the same coin. While the ultimate reincarnation is experienced at the end of one life and the beginning of the next, we each die and are reborn several times in one lifetime. Life is a series of deaths and rebirths intentional and mindful use of this processes can make it a refining process.

Flirty and confident after 10 months of HRT

Seeing my face was a real shocker at first. Knowing that I was shaving as a part of transition helped it feel a lot less dysphoric. I did feel fairly insecure. Am I pretty? Do I look feminine? Ugh, you can still see my 5 o’clock shadow. That’s when the dysphoria hit, and I’m still dysphoric about my shadow. Slowly over time, I have come to love my face. I have to say the single biggest factor in that has been my hormone therapy. Since starting hormones about a year ago, my face has grown softer and rounder. I started catching myself in the mirror and thinking “hold on, I kind of look pretty now.” For the first time in my life, I love to look in the mirror and not only do I not recoil from my image, I enjoy it now. Night and day difference from my telehealth experience. It’s sad to say but the truth is I was 38 before I stopped feeling deeply unsettled by what I saw in the mirror. Now I embrace it with love. Another interesting change has been my self-talk.  As a “Mormon”, my self-talk was always incredibly anxious and critical; I was always falling short of what was expected. Even as a Post-Mormon I struggled to find a happy relationship with myself. Now that my outside feels congruent with my inside, I am so much more compassionate and caring for myself. I call myself “sweetie” and “hun” and say the most reassuring and supportive things to myself. Changing my appearance did more to change my relationship with myself and my internal dialogue than all the years of therapy I have had. I know the slogan “gender affirming care is lifesaving care” feel’s melodramatic. Yet I have to say it has been for me. One of the hardest things about being Trans is that very few people can actually relate to or understand your experience, even among fellow Trans people – we are all very different. I feel at a loss of words to communicate my experience and how life changing my gender affirming care has been.  What I can say is that I know deep in my bones that nothing alleviates the pain of dysphoria and brings healing to ones relationships (both self and other) like those three little pills I take every morning. “Gender Affirming Care is Lifesaving care” and that’s frankly not hyperbole – if you don’t believe my personal experience go read some since it’ll tell you the data and the Trans community concur. 

The little blue ones are estrogen the tan one is my androgen blocker spironolactone (spiro for short) 

I’ve always resented the idea of “coming out” – like somehow queer people have an undue burden to explain their identity to people. So I largely avoided the task. Everyone did notice that my giant bushy beard was gone. I told most people that I was trying out something new. Sure it was an equivocation, but a completely factual one. I had some colleges and friends who knew me and knew about my practice of kesh who I felt safe being vulnerable with. I told those folks – this is a part of the gender journey I’m on. Those folks got it and were quite cool and supportive. There did come a time that I felt like I needed to tell my direct manager. Hey Sandy – I’m going to start wearing skirts and asking people to call me Marcy – do you know if I will get fired for that? I asked if I could schedule a face to face chat with her. I was nervous as hell. She was very excited and very supportive in the way only she could be. She did mention that one of the founding members of the psychology department at the hospital was a Trans woman who transitioned while Sandy was a junior college. So with my boss’s blessing, I went ahead and showed up to work in a dress. At that point in time it was not a surprise to anyone. The truth is, I am a very slow and deliberate person and I transitioned very gradually. I’m still doing so. I had been using they/them pronouns for myself on anything written and wearing nail polish since I had returned from Texas. I also adopted the name Marcy shortly after shaving but a few months before the dress. What really happened when my coworkers noticed the changes and they were like --- “hey [deadname] do you want us to start using a different name for you?” At the time I was working at a remote location and figured I’d just change my name upon moving back up to the main hospital; But if they were asking – “ I’d love it if you called me Marcy.” I am very lucky to work in a very progressive and supportive environment. The vast majority of people just took my transition in stride and defended it to patients or co-workers who took issue with it.

As my gender presentation has changed so has the way people treat me. It took me a while to get used to being talked over and interrupted in meetings. It’s odd to feel both annoyed and affirmed at once. That is typically the exact feeling when I am confronted with the loss of my male privilege. I don’t feel like people intentionally changed how they treated me. I think/assume that gendering people and operating by the “gender rules” is generally an unconscious process in Cis folk. I’ll never really know because the funny thing is I can’t wrap my head around being cis. Over time they/them pronouns started to really grate on me. My poor wife was so incredibly amazing at adopting my they/them pronouns. I dreaded telling her about wanting to change to she/her. I even discussed it with my therapist, who was like – “um it’s really not a big deal and it is your decision it should be about your comfort not hers.” My wife was amazing again and picked up the new pronouns. The new change the entire family is working on at the moment is calling me “mom”; that one will take a lot of getting used to for everyone – me included. It still takes me a while to recognize that they are talking to me. All this is to say that over time my identity has shifted from non-binary to – yeah so I’m defiantly a witchy psychologist lady. This is not the way it happens for everyone and I know lots of very wonderful non-binary humans that are very settled in their identity and just as valid as any binary person.

Now in my new life as a woman, I am confronted by a whole new set of rules about my hair and a whole new crew of people who would police my personal grooming. For some reason, mainstream American culture would have all its women be miraculously hairless – like a bunch of sphynx cats. Indeed there seems to be disgust for women’s natural hair. Now I know that if I were born with a cute body (read that as AFAB) endowed with light and fluffy hair I would refuse to shave it as a way of fighting the patriarchy and the unrealistic and unfair beauty standards it imposes. Now the body I do inhabit has thick dark black hair all over it and I am aware that I would be more “passable” were I to do something about that.

I still keep kesh in my own way.  I shave my face nearly every morning and wax my chest about once a month. The rest of my hair remains untouched – just ask my split ends about it.  Basically what this amounts to is that I eliminate the dysphoria generating hairs and leave the rest alone. The honest truth is that my hairy arms, legs and tummy don’t bother me. Many cis women are hairy – just ask Frida Kahlo who made a career out of painting women with hairy arms, mustaches and uni-brows.

This issue of hair highlights some of the intersectional pressures Trans feminine people face. 1) Traditional (You may read “Traditional” as “Patriarchal” if you’d like – in most cases the words are interchangeable) beauty standards dictate the absence of female hair from everywhere but one’s head 2)  Because of said beauty standards transfeminine people will pass better if they remove the vast majority of their body hair. 3) many trans-women experience dysphoria about their hair. Put another way 1) is the same image pressure all women in our culture face 2)is the pressure trans people experience to conform to some “ideal” so that others will gender them properly 3)is the dictates of one’s own inner experience.

For me 1 & 2 are at play and to a much smaller extent 3. There is a thought experiment I use to help me ferret out these different types of dysphoria. It goes like this: How would I want to exist if I lived on a desert island away from everyone. This differentiates between what I really want and what is conformity to outside pressures. When I play this game about my hair I find that I am quite happy as I am and that I really do not want to get in a fight with my leg and arm hair – I suspect that this is a fight I would lose.

This means that I must confront how I navigate a social world in which I violate standards and expectations. Something my therapist has been working hard to convince my emotional mind of is “there are as many different ways to be a women as there are women.” Being a Trans-Queer woman is just as valid as being any other type of woman --- despite what your local fox news fanatic may say. So my hair stays and Down with The Patriarchy!!! After all, the real purpose of my transition is authenticity, not the adoption of another set of equally restricting gender rules. As my therapist likes to put it, the goal of transition is authenticity, not “passability”. I have a good friend who is transfeminine non-binary and they try to be as overtly Trans as they can. The way they explained themselves, “Trans is beautiful and I want to be beautiful”.  So keeping Kesh remains an act of radical self-acceptance in defiance of the expectations others would place on me. When I look at my hairy legs and arms I think to myself, “damn straight I am a bad ass hairy queer woman. My mere existence threatens the patriarchy!”

 

See you all soon

  -MJ