Me, Me, and Me, Hyunyoung Cho, photograph
It cost hundreds of dollars each time, discounting the one experiment in the basement of a piss-poor renthouse. My hair was one of the things she could control. It was one of the things, among very few, that she could give me—something which she could never have. It was sometime in late middle school, I think, when I stopped letting my mother take me to hair salons. Instead, I made my first appointment at Great Clips. I wanted my hair short. Shorter than it had ever been. Soft, caressing hands brushed across my scalp as the hairdresser rinsed the soap from my hair. This hairdresser liked to chat, I noticed, but I simply wanted to listen.
After washing up, they set me up in a chair and began to cut and we passed into a gentle quiet. To myself, I began to wonder. What would my mother’s reaction be when she saw my hair? She’d been the one to give me the money and send me off, but she hadn’t been the one to raise the idea. Would she dislike my new hair? Would she think it ugly? Would she be ashamed of this daughter of hers, whose hair was untamable? I can’t say I ever liked her tyranny over my hair. But for a moment, I thought bittersweetly as the hairdresser finished up and brushed off the loose hair from the cape and presented myself in the mirror—it looked alright; not good, not bad, just alright—it didn’t even matter. Because I was 87
