Riff on Hair

I have three daughters, all of whom were born with a lot of hair. They have beautiful hair, unique each in their own way. And yet I can (and will) complain: the styles, the clips, the products, the ponies, the knots, the haircuts, the mommy-cuts, the bangs, the growing out of the bangs, the lost brushes and clips and hairbands, the washing and conditioning and brushing, her wishing her hair was longer or shorter or curlier or straighter or just any way other than how it is. So it is to be a girl with hair.

Man, I look at little boys and just see hours of reclaimed time, not thinking about or doing hair.

Of course, it's not all bad. I love braiding Ruby's wet, clean hair, as she sometimes asks me to do. I don't mind helping them take care of their hair and I do my best to help them look presentable.

But people fetishize hair. Because we are redheads, everywhere we go, people talk about our hair. Usually people are say nice things and we say thank you, and I whisper in the kids' ears: you're smart, too. I have--no shit--been asked if my kids' hair is real. (Um, no, we just spent hours in the salon having my three-year-old's hair dyed to look like this. Of course...) I've also been insulted by so-called compliments ("Did your hair used to look as lovely as hers?") Red hair is a curiosity, and in literature it's always been a curse (Anne of Green Gables hates hers). So it's a strange thing: the attention we redheads receive.

Once, when Josh and I were in our childless early twenties, we were walking briskly down upper Broadway when one of those street salespeople blocked our way. He pitched us with a loud declaration: "Look at this. A couple with terrific hair!"

"Aw, thanks stranger trying to sell me some expensive haircut that I don't want. You're so kind."

Annoying, sure, but perhaps less so than the street heckler who, a couple days ago, said, "Smile for me, Red," as I was coming out of the dentist, numb and grumpy from having had two fillings replaced (um, yes, as you may know, it's been a super week here). I didn't respond, but if I had, it would have been unfit for family media consumption.

As annoying as it is, to have an identifiable feature that gets noticed and remembered becomes inextricable from one's sense of self. I can't imagine losing my hair, as a friend with alopecia has. Who would I be? We want our daughters, and our selves, to be about so much more than how we look, and yet we are physical beings. Our bodies do matter. I found this out first-hand when I couldn't take the underhanded comments anymore, as Bella's bright, young tresses increasingly served as a painful contrast against my greying, dulling locks. I did something about it, and it made all the difference.

So it is to be a girl with hair.

What I've Learned From Lena Dunham

Have you noticed the photo at the top of this blog? The belly shot. That belly is huge, right? It's headless. It could be anyone. But it's not: it's me.

I've been watching the second season of Girls, and I often think of Lena Dunham when I catch a glimpse of that photo. I think about the scene where she plays ping pong in nothing but her undies. How calm she looks. She's of a younger generation than me -- the generation that lets everything hang out on Facebook, and that doesn't seem to put much value in privacy. But, even so, her bravery is palpable. She is not a simple exhibitionist. She's a bit of a radical. She's daring the world to judge her: her body, her comfort with that body, and her commitment to realism. 

My belly shot was taken at the end of my pregnancy with Ruby by Julia Smith, a talented photographer and a good friend. She offered to do a shoot of me with Bella, who was 18 or 19 months at the time. Julia usually points her camera at my kids, not at me. Her photos are displayed in frames all around my home. But the pictures from that particular photo shoot never made it beyond contact sheets, which to this day are sitting in a box.

I wasn't comfortable with how I looked in them. Being pregnant didn't make me feel beautiful. It made me feel huge (and as you can see, I was). I've never been an exhibitionist, and I've never been one to enjoy my own image in photos. (At our wedding, we didn't have a videographer: I've never liked seeing myself on film, either.) Also, I would never normally let myself be photographed without a shirt on. The result, Julia's talents notwithstanding, was something I wanted to keep in a box.

And yet, that belly photo graces the top of my blog. I've been feeling more sensitive about that as my blog has attracted attention this past week from people well beyond the confines of the pregnancy-and-birth community. (And lots of rabbis!)

I chose the picture because I couldn't think of a more apt image to illustrate the reality of becoming a parent: the physical enormity of growing a baby, of waiting forty weeks (or, like me, 41) to meet the person whom you made. But instead of choosing a picture of a baby, I chose a picture of me, the mother. Because this blog is really about her. It is personal, and it's real. It's about the way life is, not the way I might want it to be. It takes bravery to write that way, and I am trying to be brave.

Thank you, Julia, for capturing a moment in time that I can never get back.

And thank you, Lena, for getting me to take the photos out of the box.