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# Growing my hair
- URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/article-970jsp/
- Published: 2003-02-19T00:02:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-04-17T11:13:34.000Z
- Author: Sally Roe
- Tags: #en, #Migrated, #Import 2026-04-09 19:08, #ImagesUploaded

growing my hair

after years of cheap hair-dye - purple, pink and red,  
of slightly sucked-in breath from my parents’ friends  
of clippers in the back garden, scissors in drunken hands  
and just before the coalescence  
of being grownup  
i’ve decided to wear my hair long at last  
the wind spinning it in pale nets across my face.

i had always craved the animal feel  
of short hair that hands raked through, longing  
for the bone-thin limbs to match  
the body that would make them whisper ‘gamine…’  
in the drafts of their love letters  
i spent years perfecting  
that artful tousle, my fingers dipped in wax.

my limbs are settled, though  
my heavy breasts won’t ever sit proud  
and barely bound by a smear  
of Givenchy chiffon  
so i am letting my hair find its measure too  
(or perhaps i’m still relying  
on the natural propensities of the eye  
to draw your gaze to mine…)

but i wear my hair longer now  
long enough to comb, to find knots in  
long enough to be complicated  
to require things like pins.  
perhaps i am growing my hair to replace you  
perhaps, shorthaired, i was always trying  
to be more simple  
than was good for me.

![tzotzil_woman_combing_hair_2.jpg](https://www.opendemocracy.net/content/files/2026/04/tzotzil_woman_combing_hair_2_J45T6EG-1776424233682.jpg)

tzotzil\_woman\_combing\_hair\_2.jpg

Tzotzil woman combing her hair. Photographed by Allan Barnes.