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A friend compared me to Charizard – the dragon-like Pokémon – in that I had evolved into my final form. I would run my hands through it in the shower and smile. Once my hair was cut, I felt revitalised. My then girlfriend was encouraging and, due to the pandemic, I wouldn’t see many people for months.
![hair cut hair cut](https://content.latest-hairstyles.com/wp-content/uploads/mens-short-fade-haircuts.jpg)
By 2020, it was approaching a decade since I had booked that first haircut and I promised myself I would have it done before the year was out. I bought suits for formal events such as weddings, having caved in to dresses until then. Conversely, they have been a massive source of strength to me, particularly in terms of living authentically.īy my mid-20s, I was wearing more menswear and less makeup. I disagree with claims that transgender and non-binary people erase or threaten my identity as a butch lesbian and a cisgender woman. I found inspiration in transgender and non-binary people, too, including several drag kings in London, where I now live. I idolised the 2012 pompadour of Alex Turner, lead singer of the Arctic Monkeys. I bowed to what I perceived as overwhelming societal pressure to appear physically palatable to the heterosexual majority, but repeatedly looked online at people whose style I wanted to copy for example, the actor Lea DeLaria and, more recently, Harry Styles – my lesbian icon.
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I was happier after I came out, but felt repressed by my appearance and the stigma against looking butch. That was then … Ella Braidwood before her haircut. It took time, but my mum is now one of my biggest supporters. My friends and most of my family got behind me. I actually came out about a year later: I was with my first girlfriend and couldn’t hide our relationship. Looking back, I’m glad she said that – I wasn’t ready. I had come out to a friend in the village, and she wondered whether it might be too much for me rather than coming out gradually, then doing the hair later on. The day after booking, I cancelled the appointment. I felt completely alone, trapped in a nightmare from which I couldn’t wake up. I seemed quite calm with the receptionist as I made the booking but, back in the car, I cried violently, my head pressed to the steering wheel. I drove to the nearby town of Brampton and made an appointment with a hairdresser for the following week. I felt so much shame when they did.įinally, in 2011, when I was 17, I gathered up the courage to come out as a lesbian by having my hair cut: a fierce short back and sides with a quiff on top. School kids would snigger about angry, men-hating, leather-faced dykes. But they were laughed at for their men’s clothes and mohawks. I connected with more masculine-presenting and butch lesbians, such as Ellen DeGeneres or friends on my football team. I felt sordid, ashamed and wrong: I had been told that people like me were wrong. I realised I liked girls by the time I was 13. She presented herself in quite a masculine way, and had short hair. A PE teacher was rumoured to be a lesbian and students gossiped about the way she looked. At secondary school, I learned that words such as “gay” and “lesbian” were to be used negatively – as insults or jokes. She had raised me as a Christian and homosexuality conflicted with her faith. My mum now loves me for who I am, but as a teenager growing up in Cumbria I knew she wouldn’t accept my sexuality. I was horrified, one birthday, to be given a Barbie. Around the age of four, I staged a protest against wearing a dress at Christmas. I’ve been gender non-conforming for as long as I can remember. I got mine because I wanted to embrace how I felt as a butch lesbian. People often get radical haircuts in response to life-changing events, such as a breakup or the loss of a loved one. Within 45 minutes, my shoulder-length mop was down to a couple of inches. In December 2020, another lockdown loomed, and nearly 12 months earlier I had made it a New Year’s resolution to get short hair that year. T he hairdresser steadied my head as I sat in the swivel chair, face mask on, staring into the mirror.