Chef-activist Sophia Roe opens up about why she felt ready to cut off her hair, and how it felt to go through with it.
Why I Decided to Cut My Hair Short for the First Time Ever
There’s a lot of trauma stored in one’s hair. It’s something that’s on your head for a long time; it’s seen it all—especially if you’ve never cut it before, like me. There’s also a certain trauma and scariness attached to the idea of starting over.
In addition to that fear, part of the reason why my hair is so long in the first place is because I’m kind of lazy and too comfortable. But I learned that comfortable does not necessarily mean confident. I got so used to my routines (which weren’t much, save for my daily braiding ritual and occasional bang maintenance). I wasn’t ready to explore how my maintenance would change if I cut it all off. Long hair is praised in our society. I think it’s beautiful, too, but the notion that length is tied to femininity is dated.
Doing a drastic change didn’t really occur to me until recently. I started to feel like people weren’t listening to what was important to me, partially because they were distracted by my hair. I might be doing a livestream where I’m talking about how oyster farming can better the environment, and then I see people in the comments making Rick James or George Washington hair jokes. But I can’t control what kind of hair I have. And the reason I have bangs is because I’m a chef and I need my hair to be out of my face while I’m cooking. But I think sometimes the internet doesn’t really care about things like that. It’s too often a violent place for a lot of people. People want to hire Black, pay Black and center Black, but not protect Black people, even if just on the internet. My whole life has been filled with people telling me what they think I should or shouldn’t do, be it with my face or my hair. Black women are constantly being policed in this way: from what we wear and who we’re with, to how we say something, etc. There are so many opinions.
I think for me, cutting my hair is an act of resistance as well, in the truest sense. It’s me saying, ‘This is how little I care about it. I’ll chop this shit off.’ I want Black women to understand, too, that we can do whatever we want with our hair and still be beautiful. We are beautiful when we have it or when we don’t. We’re beautiful with wigs on and we’re beautiful with extensions. We’re beautiful when it’s natural, or when it’s not. It doesn’t matter. I guess that’s what motivated me to do this, too. I’m showing up with hair… or not. Aside from that, it’s just too long. Like, I get shoulder pain when I wash it.
Having a hairstylist that I trust was helpful for me during this process. Renee Gader, Aveda's Global Artistic Director for Textured Hair, is incredible. She really knows curls. She’s all about reframing the experience that Black women have when we go into the salon. We all know too well those visits where we put our trust in the wrong stylists, just to pay a ton of money to find out they don’t know how to do Black hair or they have this idea that every Black woman’s hair is the same.
This story originally appeared on: Vogue - Author:Sophia Roe
