Hair – part 1
I write this in July 2020, four months into shelter-in-place due to COVID-19. The hair salon I patronized closed a few days before my long-overdue appointment. My hair length is now below my breast. I think of donating my hair as it has few split ends or grey. I take pleasure in doing good, but something holds me back. I wonder if it is vanity or fear. My hair length has never been above shoulders in the past 20 years.
There is a saying in Japan, “Long hair covers seven flaws.” I have shiny black hair I inherited from my grandmother’s lineage. My grandmother and her tea friends praised it often. When I went to a barber as a child, she’d cut it with heavy bangs and proclaim I looked like a (Japanese) doll. I didn’t want to become a Japanese doll as I knew that was not the desired aesthetic in modern Japan. I had a large, Homebase-shaped face, the major flaw in my appearance that only my long hair could cover. The other parts of my face were undesirable as well – monolid eyes, flat nose, acne skin. Therefore, I depended solely on my hair in minimizing the ill-fortunes of my looks.