Late last week, my nine year-old daughter went from this:

To this:

Locks of Love requires the ponytail be a minimum of ten inches long for donation. To be on the safe side, my daughter had eleven inches taken off.

I can’t say it was a decision made entirely out of altruism. She wanted to make a donation for quite some time, but whenever we measured what would be cut off, she chickened out because what would be left on her head would be too short. But, last week she decided the long hair was interfering with her martial arts. In the end, comfort trumped vanity. She had tried all manner of hair restraint techniques, but each ponytail, bun and braid had some unforgivable flaw–it flops in my face when I do this, mom (picture her doing some bizarre thing that nobody actually goes around doing), or—look, when I bend back like this, then see, it pokes me in the back of the neck and that hurts. So, when she committed to the decision to cut it off, we ran straight to the salon before she lost her nerve.

The end result is adorable. She looks a lot like that girl in Because of Winn Dixie now. She was thrilled with it, primping it and putting it in different barrettes and ribbons when we got home. We knew she’d get a reaction from people the next day, but we weren’t prepared for what kind of reaction she’d get.

It started with my father (henceforward known as “traitor dad”).

“It’s kind of bittersweet, isn’t it?” He asked on the phone after looking at the pictures I e-mailed him. “I mean, it was very nice of her to give away her hair like that, and I’m sure she’ll be more comfortable, but, it was beautiful hair.”

I told him it will grow back. It’s only hair for Heaven’s sake. Keratinized epithelial tissue, and all it does is grow. It’s not like having a kidney removed, or an eye plucked out. Long hair serves no more function than short hair. If hair serves any function at all for humans anymore.

Then, my strong, beautiful, kind and brilliant daughter came home from school in tears.

“People made fun of me,” she said. “They laughed at me and said I look ugly. I want my hair back. I don’t feel like myself without it.”

I didn’t believe her, I told her that I’m sure people were shocked at her new appearance, but probably weren’t mean about it. She must’ve misunderstood their reaction and mistakenly internalized it. So, she elaborated. She said her best friend shrieked “No! You’re just not YOU without your hair!” Another good friend said, “Oh my gosh, you look horrible! Why would you do that?” And, there were a couple of other examples she gave that seemed to prove that people were indeed mean to her. Granted, these are other nine year-olds, and their sense of tact is mostly unformed.

Maybe this seems harsh, but I had very little sympathy for my daughter. I didn’t think what the kids said was nice, but I think they were just being insensitive with expressing their surprise, rather than setting out to be cruel. I pointed out to her that if she felt so insecure with having a shorter, but very cute haircut, then could she try to imagine how those kids without hair due to illness might feel? If she feels so stared at and ridiculed by her friends’ (perhaps rude) reaction, then imagine how she’d feel with no hair. That was a lesson in itself—to keep things in perspective. I also told her not to worry, that when she saw those kids again her hair would be old news and nobody would pay it any mind. I was right, the next time they saw her (at a party over the weekend), there was no mention of the hair. Also, she received nothing but positive reactions from the people at her martial arts school. They apparently understood the practicality of the decision.

I’m grateful that all of this happened. I didn’t realize that her hair was becoming a part of how she identified herself—reinforced subconsciously by people around her. I thought that it would be fun and exciting to get her hair cut. It didn’t occur to me that she’d feel like her entire being would be altered because of it. That she’d see herself as a lesser person afterward. My daughter is strong, beautiful, kind and brilliant and I don’t want her to feel that any of that is dependent upon her hair. I can appreciate having a preference for a hairstyle, but I can’t understand relying on one in order to fulfill an idea of who you are.

I also don’t want her to be enslaved by what others think of her appearance. I know, we all are to some extent, so that might be too much to ask. But, she was all right with the results until she heard what her friends had to say about it. I’m not a proponent of bullying or teasing, but I do think there’s something to be said for having to cope with a little bit of unpleasantness directed towards you every once in a while. You can’t please everyone, and that’s a necessary thing to learn. She got mixed responses—a good balance of positives and negatives from people she respects. What she takes away from it will likely be her own opinion about what she sees in the mirror, and that’s the way it should be.

I feel like we were lucky to have caught this now, before it maybe took a turn for the pathological. Like by cutting her hair, we accidentally amputated something festering and threatening to become fully septic. We shook up her self-perception a little, gave her a taste of empathy, forced an appreciation for the important things, and her friends supplied a nice lesson in character building. All that happened as a result of a haircut. See, it’s these tiny childhood battles, fought and won in the span of a day, that might seem insignificant but really have the biggest impact.

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