the most masculine thing i can do is grow my hair out
i've had a spotty draft sitting in here titled, "the most masculine thing a man can do is grow his hair out." it felt spotty, despite the edits and additions and revisions, and i could not finish it for some reason. but i didn't want to scrap it, no. there was something missing to it. it came to me one day in the shower, as many lightbulb moments tend to: this is the most masculine thing i can do.
so, hair. i have a lot of it on my head. hair is a pathologized thing. depending on the culture you're a part of, long hair could mean a lot or nothing at all. sometimes short hair is as feminine as long hair. the same could be said through the lens of masculinity but, at least with the men i hang around, i see short hair more than long on their heads. still, i wondered, why couldn't i see "me" reflected in the men i saw?
much of my models of masculinity tended to have cropped haircuts. and the ones with long hair, well, the length didn't go past their shoulders. i spent a long time keeping my hair short because of this. and, honestly? i hated it. i felt most "me" with long hair, but still danced with conceptions of "masculine hair."
i felt like having long hair was a betrayal to something i couldn't name. i fought my hair throughout my life with pixies, shags, mullets, undercuts, layers upon layers. i thought if i kept manipulating it through haircuts, i'd unlock the arcane masculinity i've been searching for. many appointments and regrowth later, i've plateaued on that front. maybe it doesn't exist after all. it bugged me, a lot, until i looked inward.
one day in 2022, i stop fighting and get a french bob to "start over." i've been growing it out since. it's about waist-length now. the cut is somewhere in between jane birkin, victoria legrand, and françoise hardy--or aggressively french, in other words. i'm trying to see how far my biology will let me. it's work, what with shower haircare and regular search-and-destroy-split-ends trimmings. it's something i take pride in, though. and that's it, right, the esoteric answer i'm looking for is my own hair.
so, yes, i actually feel most masculine with obnoxiously long hair. gender is funny. i'm as much of a pretty boy with robust locks, regally draping over his shoulder, as much as i'm a fair maiden with flowers woven into silken tresses, lines blurring between foliage and tendrils.
masculinity is more sensual and evocative for me than not. femininity is visceral and feral. being gender non-conforming at my core, i oscillate or amalgamate between the two, depending on the day. (or, to be tongue-in-cheek, it depends on how well my hair is cooperating.)