I MISS MY EYEBROWS....

Since shaving my head, I have had a little self esteem trouble. After the initial head shaving, the "Bald is Beautiful" kick wore off and I began to feel like less of a girl. I grew up with society teaching me that girls should have pretty, long hair. It's thrown in our faces almost every day that women have hair. Shampoo commercials are filled with women that have long, luxurious, thick hair. Makeup commercials have models with long hair. Even Pinterest conveys the same idea. I have yet to see a picture there of a girl with a pixie cut that people long for. I'm just as guilty for feeding this idea that women have hair. When I see the picture of the Disney princesses without hair it gives me the creeps and  I certainly haven't pinned a picture of a short haircut with the title "MUST HAVE." We are taught that hair is what makes us girls. I didn't realize this until after I lost my hair. Children were constantly asking me if I was a girl or a boy. One girl had even referred to me as He like fifty times after talking to me the whole weekend. (I found this surprising because I think my voice is pretty girly. It's sort of high for a boy voice.) After a few times (like 15) that ended in tears on my half, I learned to shrug it off. They're kids, they don't know. I came to accept that I can be pretty without hair, that was until my last round of chemo. This time it made me lose my eyebrows and most of the eyelashes on my right eye. I was left feeling like more of an alien than a girl.

I played the feeling off as a joke, but I guess it mattered to me more than I thought. Last Wednesday when I went to church someone who I hadn't seen since my eyebrows went MIA shouted "You shaved your eyebrows!" I didn't think anything of it at the time but it took a toll on my self esteem. Later that week I found myself drawing on eyebrows and thinking I was pretty again even though I looked like a clown. (I have never been, nor will I ever be, a makeup artist. One of my eyebrows was darker and higher that the other. I looked like Jenna Marbles in her video My Boyfriend Does My Makeup.) My mom and stepsister had the decency to not let me leave the house that way so I took them off.
Later that night at a party, my friend Leah asked if I wanted my hair back. At first I was like DUH! It's not my life dream to be bald. But then she explained that she thought I looked really pretty with no hair. She thought I rocked the look and didn't really think I needed hair to look good. I have to admit that made me feel really good. It's nice to know that people have different ideas of beauty. You don't have to have a certain kind of hair, or any hair, to be beautiful. So thank you, Leah, for the GIANT confidence boost. I feel like a girl again. I mean I still want my eyebrows back, but I can wait a little while for my hair.

I guess the point of this post is that there are different ideas of beauty when it comes to hair. And that words can make a huge impact on people, even if they don't realize it. So be careful what you say because it can affect someone greatly.