By now, the exciting news has leaked out – that I have red hair. Well, I have always had red hair, but now it is REALLY RED HAIR.

For most women, the choice of hair color is not a piddling concern, but likely not life-changing. For me, it is very likely to be.

I was looking for a little change. Perhaps it was foolish not to realize the import of what I was doing, but it caught me completely by surprise.

History

Long ago, when I started growing my hair, my first big step was to go to a salon and ask the stylist to do my hair so that I could wear it as either male or female. That approach lasted exactly one time – as I found I always looked more like a man than anything else.

So, I resolved to go in and ask for a female hairdo, and trust that I could manage to look like a guy when necessary. So, I found an accommodating salon – where I felt I could come in as a guy and make that request – and that is what I did. That worked swimmingly, and over time, I started coming in as Janie and dispensing with the pretense of masculinity altogether.

The next step was coloring my hair, as it was looking tired and grey. At first, we approximated my own hair color, then added highlights, until one time, she did me very strawberry blond. I was sure that people would be all over me about that, but no one said a word, and as far as I know, only a handful of people even noticed.  All along, I was pretty safe just putting my hair in a low pony tail in order to pass as a guy.

Until now.

Cut off

What I realized as I sat in the chair looking at my bright red hair and new cut was that not only was my hair almost too short for a pony tail, but the color meant that pulling my hair back made me look like Jim Carrey’s interpretation of the Riddler in one of the Batman movies. Not a good look.

All of a sudden, I realized that I was, in a sense, cut off from being a man altogether. I didn’t really know what to feel. In a way, I had been feeling for a long time that my long hair made a mockery of the type of guy I see myself as, and that I was really going to have to choose – or at least explain to people why I looked like such a strange guy. In some ways, I was feeling like it was better that they knew about my female self than to think I had become some corrupted version of a man.

But, until I tell those people who know me as a guy, I will have to avoid contact with them – or risk looking like I have completely lost any sense of masculine decorum.

Of course, there are a number of those people whom I cannot avoid for any length of time. So, as is my way, I got that overwith as quickly as possible by going to see them the very next day. Where my other evolutionary femininity had elicited no reaction from anyone, this hair tends to incite a pronounced response. (I will not pronounce what some people said. LOL)  Only one person did not react – my oldest friend; I am completely unsure what to make of that. Time will tell.