Growing up is beautiful and terrible at the same time. Discovering and experiencing flaws, pain, love, sexuality, and disappointment. I’m interested in the brilliant naivety and innocence that young girls have, and the remarkable changes as they grow and leave adolescence in mind and in body.
Hair has become a representative for these ideas, as girls use hair as a trademark of their identity, cutting it off or dying it after a life-changing event or to alter their image drastically. Hair is tedious and feels heavy on your back; you wake up after a sleepless night with the evidence in your hair. That heaviness is relatable to the feelings of guilt and grief, which are feelings one cannot easily shake. A close friend mentioned to me once that hair is just dead thoughts. Traditionally, long hair is a physical representation of femininity. Society associates long beautiful hair with sensitivity and beauty. People cry when they get bad haircuts, even though it grows back.
Hair is important. It is an easy way to represent one’s identity. The act of cutting one’s hair feels final because it is a drastic change, but at the same time, hair grows back. I asked friends and strangers to donate their hair to my thesis knowing that I wanted to use real human hair, but using it helped me to understand my own work. Hair is an individual’s identity, and I’m interested in how it is used to represent their identity. An older family member sent me a package full of her red hair before it turned white. Several friends donated entire ponytails. Some friends told me that with regret, they were too attached to their hair and could not give me some. I became intimate with smells, split ends. I got to know strangers.
Bodies in turn are also awkward. Trying to live up to one’s own expectations versus living up to society’s expectations; wanting to let go of skin and fat and body weight, imperfections, the way one can change hair colors and lengths. I’m trying to understand my own issues with self-esteem and high expectations by remembering adolescence, awkward stages, and experimentation. The relationships that we’ve encountered that have brought us to where we are today are always bittersweet and intangible.
Finally, the September 2010 death of a friend and strong feminist role model shook my foundations and changed everything. Jasmine Valentina Herron was a remarkable person and artist who sparked my interest in feminist art and what it meant to be a feminist. Her death caused me to address these concepts in a real and violent way, and hair began to embody the concepts of burdens and letting go. I feel the guilt and the pettiness of my own mistakes and worries, and mourn the loss of a strong woman who lost her life far too soon, who wanted to make changes for the better. This work not only represents all anxieties, insecurities, confusion, and sadness that women and girls face, but a reminder that women and girls can empower themselves, and have the power to commit change, even with something as simple as a haircut.
