My son has long hair. It’s beautiful hair – golden brown with a slight curl at the end. His hair is thick and glorious and (when brushed properly) very, very smooth. And it has grown past his shoulders. His fringe is non-existent – the front of his hair hangs to just below chin level.
He’s always
had a lot of hair. His sisters were both
essentially bald as babies – they both had their first haircut at almost
three. He had so much hair that he
genuinely needed a haircut at nine months, but his temperament did not allow
for that – he had his first haircut at one.
I’ve cut his hair myself a couple of times, using the clippers that I
cut his dad’s hair with.
When he was
younger, he didn’t really have an opinion on his hair. I kept it short, clipped to the number 3
setting on my clippers. My husband has a
zero (almost completely shaved), so I didn’t really think that the 3 was
particularly short. For the longest
time, he was happy with that. Then
lockdown happened, and he didn’t want me to cut his hair. And then he didn’t want to have a haircut at
all. And then he was immensely pleased
with the beautiful, long hair that resulted.
He is less pleased about brushing said hair, mind you, but I have made
that a condition of the long hair – to keep it, it must be brushed daily.
My other
requirement is that it needs to be tied back off his face. He’d wander around with it hanging in his
eyes, but I don’t like that, plus he is forever running into stuff (or getting
his hair into his mouth or his food) if it’s not tied back. He likes his ears covered, so we have arrived
at a compromise – the front “fringe” of his hair is pulled back into a small
pony tail on the top of his head, the rest is left down.
Over the
last few months, we have been discussing school and what we’ll do with his
hair. Although the school he’ll be going
to has no official hair policy, I have an official I-despise-nits policy, so
long hair will be tied back in a proper pony tail to limit the chances of him bringing those nasty
little suckers home (as a sidebar, I made it through my entire childhood
without ever having nits. The first year
that both my daughters picked them up, I managed to acquire them from the same
girl-child TWICE. I have almost
waist-length hair. It’s fine, but there
is lots and lots of it. Getting a nit
comb through my hair is an absolute epic drama.
Nits suck). We have talked about
having all his hair tied back in a pony tail at school. He seemed
cool with it.
So, cut to
his Prep step-up day. This is the day
where he goes to school, meets his teacher, sees his classroom, gets to meet a
few of his classmates. He was super
excited. In school uniform by 6am. Kept asking if we could leave now (our
step-up time was 10am). About 20 minutes
before we were going to leave, I told him I wanted to put his hair in a
pony tail. He lost his mind about it,
insisted that everyone would think he was a girl with a pony tail. Cried and cried and begged to have his hair
down. In the end I said that the front
had to be tied back. He requested a
jaunty pony tail on top of his head, with the rest of his hair brushed down.
We got to
school and were talking to another family, a mum and her daughter who’d arrived
at the same time as us. The teacher
arrived and announced, “Oh, we’ve got two girls here first!” My son, who had
spent ages telling me a pony tail would make them think he was a girl and how he
didn’t like that, just grinned at her and did not care at all. I said he was a boy. We moved on.
Compounding
the long-hair-means-girl issue is the fact that my son has a gender-neutral
name. It’s not even one of those names
with different male/female spelling (like Peter/Peta), so it can be a little
confusing for others sometimes.
Entertainingly, my eldest daughter (who has relatively short hair and
has been mistaken for a boy on many occasions) also has a gender-neutral name.
Unlike her brother, her name has male and female spelling, so when it’s written
down, it’s clear she’s a girl. My middle
kid has a very definitely female name. I
don’t believe there is even a male equivalent to her name (like Julian/Juliette
or Andrew/Andrea). There is not even a
nickname possible that could even hint at being male. And she has waist-length blonde hair, loves a
dress and sparkles and favours hair clips and bands (the more the merrier).
As an
aside, two days after his Step-Up day, it was ridiculously hot and humid
here. I told my son I was tying his hair
in a ponytail to keep his hair off his back and neck and maybe let him cool
down somewhat. He moaned and whined all
the way through the hair-tying process.
Once I’d managed to get it all tied back (it took four times longer than
necessary because of the whining), he looked at himself in the mirror and
announced rather smugly, “You know, I do look pretty cool.” And ran around with
a ponytail for the next three hours, happy as a bird.
