Hairly There

Sweary

I sent some of my fucktion to great friend wise accomplice artistic soul Kevin today, and was most pleased when he mentioned that I write well from a man’s point of view.

“I was born a man,” I joked, because I’m a witty motherfucker. And naturally he ignored it like the wan slice of dead humour it was.

But, y’know, I wasn’t far off, if I’m to be honest. I was a fella there, for a while.

Interest piqued? It shouldn’t be. I wasn’t ever a proper bloke, with the reproductive bits and facial hair and compete lack of empathy for anything without perky tits. I was a mock-bloke. A fraud-fella. A pseudo-dude-o. And through no fault of my own.

I had long, blonde hair as a child, down to me arse it was. It was absolutely adorable. I used to get tangled in branches regularly; I looked like fucking Aslan (no, not the band, for Jaysus sake). And one day, my family got fed up of me looking like something from a Calvita ad, or maybe they got fed up of me attracting the odd homeless albatross, or maybe they didn’t want me looking anywhere near beguiling going into my teens. For whatever twisted reason, I was marched to the hairdresser, and they lopped all my hair off.

Oh yes. I looked like Harry fucking Potter from the age of eleven up to sixteen, when I became strong enough to wrestle my scissor sisters off when they came a’cackling with the shears.

Harry fucking Potter. I’m not joking. I was the ugliest twelve-year-old girl in existence, and no amount of xworx jeans, East17 tickets, or dexterous Scatman John impersonations could save me from social disaster and romatic doom. I looked like a boy. I looked like a geeky boy, with glasses and pink socks and a mumbling SoCoGaw accent. I was about as sexy as a Vauxhall Cavalier. I hung out with my male cousins, and so obviously I looked male and all – their version of Millhouse, not strong enough to join in their scrapes, not feminine enough not to be clattered alongside them when it all went horribly wrong. I became George from the Famous Five, except Timmyless, because I wasn’t even allowed a dog for comforting companionship. I was the family dog. Not even Aslan could have saved me (no, not the band, for Jaysus sake).

My mother thinks I’m insane. Whenever I bring up my tortured adolescence (for superficiality seeps well below skin-level when you’re a teenager), she tuts and tells me that I looked “lovely” during my shaved ape years.

“It really suited you,” she says.

“What? Looking like I belonged in a Magdalene Laundry?”

*long, Mammy sigh* “You have the right shaped face for short hair. Look at your sisters! They have short hair!”

“They were all married before they went for the chop, though. They had nothing to lose. They didn’t have to worry about butch wimmin chatting them up outside Supermacs! THEY’RE IN THEIR FORTIES, MAMMY!”

It wasn’t just me, either. The matriarchal tide of uglification swallowed up my cousins, leaving them dazed and confused and awfully cold around the ears. Balls was the only one of us who escaped the shearing, and only because her mother took her a hundred miles away. To this day, I’ve received no compensation for my victimisation, no official apology. And it bothers me. Nearly as much as the fact my mother has my Potterish school portrait in the sitting room, pride of place and as blatant as genocide.

I’m still very, very bitter about it, as anyone with a fashion disaster foisted upon them should be.