It should not come as a surprise to me at nearly 28 years of age that I have curly hair, but let me be the first to tell you, it has.
It might surprise readers to know though that I have for the record, gone for the longest single period without a haircut that I can remember from the past said 28 years. And thus, despite the fact that my revelatory waves do not even come close to grazing my shoulders, my tresses (dare I use such a word for such short, albeit thick hair?) are the longest they have ever been.
Admittedly, I’ve given my bangs a few snips here and there over the past six months, but the rest I have, in a word, let go (or rather, grow). For women who have braided, scrunchied, and French-twisted their hair for decades, this would hardly seem noteworthy, but for me, someone who decided long ago that she looks best with a chin-length (at most!) bob, this is nothing short of mind-blowing.
So forgive me if vanity is seeping through every sentence on this page. I strike each letter on this keyboard not out of a need to spell out my own self-admiration, but rather, a newfound freedom: to let my hair just be.
Ever since I was old enough to care about my own hair, I’ve fought its predisposition to be anything but perfectly straight, especially in climates with high humidity. Every morning I would wash, brush, and blow out.
And now? I’m embracing my curls.
“The stories I continue to write call for big, bold imagery and pages filled not with pointillist-precision, but bold strokes of color. ”
But I’m not only embracing a less is more attitude in front of my mirror, but in my art studio as well. As an illustrator, I revel in the details, the mortar between each brick, the hairs on a character’s head, the seam of a dress. But the stories I continue to write call for big, bold imagery and pages filled not with pointillist-precision, but bold strokes of color.
As I systematically move through my list of revisions to my current dummy book, this practice of subtraction is both fearsome and freeing. Just as my hairbrush wishes to straighten a stray lock, my pencil itches to make yet another mark on paper. And that’s when I remind myself: let it be.