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I had shoulder-length hair. We went to get our hair cut, my sister and I went to a Great Clips. I'm from Kentucky. So we go into this Great Clips in this part of town that's really white and the lady didn't know how to cut curly hair. And so she overshot the cut. I wanted it to my neck. She cut my hair all the way up to my ears. I was like, wow, this is horrible. It really, like. unlocked something in me. And I loved it. I mean, I hated the haircut, but I loved the length. And from that point on, I was obsessed with short hair. And so when I was growing up, that really made my mom uncomfortable.
There was one time I completely shaved my head and my mom’s reaction to it was to hyper-feminized me. I spent so much of my life trying to meet this standard of performance of not only femininity, but also Christianity and this Southern… I don't know how to describe it. There's just like this expectation, you know? And as I got older, I was actually, “I don't care about any of these things." And, "None of this is really real. The only thing that actually feels accurate is the length of my hair.” And I tried to grow my hair out all the time because I love my curls.
The testosterone makes you change, but like it's it's not just like body changes. It's also like mental changes as well. And these intangible, like, spirit shifts that I can't describe. Like the whole fat redistribution thing is so weird, and it’s not a joke. Not that anyone thought it was a joke, but it's really not a joke. I never had hips, really, but my fat did collect in my butt and in my breasts and now it's all in my belly, which is interesting.
And I've always had a belly. Like when I look at pictures of me when I was smaller, there was a belly there. But that belly and the belly that I have now are so different. It's not the weight that I'm referring to, but just the placement of where the fat and where the skin lies.
And that is really interesting. I'm not a fan, but I'm not not a fan.
Literally every day something is changing and my like constant changes can be overwhelming. It makes me feel like I can't trust myself because I don't. How I feel today may not be how I feel tomorrow and neither of them are wrong. But then if I'm changing so rapidly, how can I know I'm making decisions that are like seeded, and what is actually mine, what is real to me?
I think I know, this is it. Okay, we're done. And then like a week later, it looks totally different. It's interesting and it's hard to really get a gauge on what I enjoy and what I don't enjoy because, you know, I have agency, I can change parts, but it's hard to tell what I want to change when everything is changing on its own.
Ultimately your body knows where it must be and that's where it's going to live and that's where it's going to be.
Jadyn
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