Well, it happened. I was mistaken for a boy. To be fair, the guy was kind of far off and I was turned around. You see short hair and a custodian, I guess sometimes you could make the mistake that I was a man. I knew that it was going to happen when I chopped off my hair. One of the top things that websites warned me of was that you WILL be mistaken for a male when you get a pixie cut. It’s inevitable that someone will make that small slip up. But, it was still a small punch to the gut and a ruiner of my day. It’s a growing process and I wanted to tell you about why I decided to chop off all of my hair.
I have told a lot of people that I cut my hair to make it easier to manage while I was on the field. That wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth. At training camp, my short hair was a huge blessing and easy to keep out of my face. It amazed me that even just shampooing my hair in the bucket shower made me feel clean even if I hadn’t fully showered in days. Plus, if I got super sweaty one day and I couldn’t deal with my hair, I would just throw a hat on. No one would even know that my hair was gross. Only if they smelled my hat, then they would know for sure. Too much information? Anyways, I found many benefits to cutting my hair for World Race so far just at training camp, but there was a whole other reason to doing the big chop. I have written on this before on the blog that I had while in Korea. The post is called Security Blanket and it still is relevant to how I feel about my hair now. In Korea, you needed long hair to be considered beautiful. When men talked about their ideal woman, the first thing they said was long straight hair. When I wrote that post, I had only cut a few inches off of my hair. I went from hair that went to the middle of my back to shoulder length hair. I have to laugh today because I struggled so much with how I looked with that short of hair. Then, go to January 2015 when I chopped off my hair to chin length. This was the shortest I had ever cut my hair. I had broken things off with a guy, moved into a new apartment, and was ready for a new cut for the new year. When I walked in to my usual hairdresser and showed him what I wanted, he tried to talk me out of it for a solid 15 minutes. Like most Koreans, he loved my hair. I on the other hand, was ready to see it go like 2014. I just remember my kids in class asking why I cut off my hair and I told them I broke up with my boyfriend. They didn’t ask anymore questions after that. Cutting my hair that short was fun at the time but I was ready to grow my long hair again. So to recap: I went from middle of the back length, to shoulder length, to chin length, and back to middle of the back length when I moved to Seattle.
The security I found in my hair was that I knew my hair was my favorite part about me. I loved the color of it. I loved that it was super soft. And I knew that if I didn’t wear make up, I could just do my hair and feel pretty again. Probably not the most healthy relationship. I relied on my hair a lot when it came to feeling comfortable in my own skin. So, then I started to think about cutting my hair again. At first it was shoulder length again. I thought that that was about as short as I could go and still feel confident. A huge change came one morning when I was just sitting in a café.
I was sitting in a café doing my quiet time. I started to people watch as I often do when I’m sitting in a café by myself. I was watching people walk in and out, honestly I don’t know what I was thinking about at the time anymore. But, one woman caught my eye. She was just coming from the yoga shop next door carrying her yoga mat through the door. She caught my eye because she had a really cute pixie cut. It was very short, like Emma Watson short, but she pulled it off so well. I thought, “Wow, she is so beautiful with a that pixie cut, I could never pull that off.” Then I started to think to myself, ”Who told you that? Who told you that you don’t look pretty with a pixie cut? That’s right, no one, because you have never had a pixie cut before.“ During my quiet time, I went from journaling to looking up pixie cuts. I have never in my life thought about getting a pixie cut. Short hair was one thing that I was sure was going to make me not like myself even more. And that was exactly why I chopped it all off. Even when I told some people that I was thinking of chopping my hair off, they told me not to. That gave me even more fuel to want to do it. They were saying things like,”hmmm I don’t know, I don’t know how you would look with short hair.” THAT IS EXACTLY WHY I NEEDED TO DO IT. All people could do was look at me with long hair and not see what could actually be possible. So I stopped telling people that I was going to chop it off. The first time I went to get my hair cut, I had a short cut in mind but ended up going longer because I started to remember what people were saying. I kept thinking of what people said and second guessing myself. Don’t get me wrong, I know that it was all out of a good place that people were telling me to be careful with chopping my hair that short. I loved the haircut I had gotten but, I regretted not doing what I actually wanted. I was mad that I was listening so closely to what other people were telling me and not focusing on what I knew I needed to do. I feel like that is something that we all struggle with in some capacity. I think I know what I want, but people tell me otherwise and I’m out. But then I decided to do World Race.
I applied for World Race without asking anyone if I should do it or without even telling my mom at first. I knew that this was something that I needed to do. I told a total of 2 people when I applied. It wasn’t until I was accepted, that I started to tell more people in confidence. I knew that I was called to do this and I didn’t need to wait any longer. Telling people I was going to do the race would have led to a lot of, “maybe you should think about it more” or “that’s a lot to money.” Neither of these things matter when you know that God is calling you to do something. Nothing is holding you back but you. After getting my hair cut not as short as I wanted to, I let it grow out a little bit more before I couldn’t stand it. I made an appointment and told no one. I knew what I wanted and I knew that it was something that I needed to do. I told the hairstylist,”I want to chop off my hair.” She originally tried to talk me out of it, like a good hairdresser should do, but I told her I had been plotting this for 2 months and it was happening.
I wish I could tell you that the shift to a pixie cut was easy but it isn’t. It is honestly, a big but needed challenge. I am about to travel the world out of a backpack with 30 other people that I have only met in person once. I am about to be put in cultures that I may struggle to understand. I will be put in situations that will bring my anxiety to a whole other levels. Cutting my hair is a tiny challenge in comparison to what challenges lay ahead. It took me chopping off my hair to see the beauty in who I really am rather than hiding behind the curtain of what I think should be beautiful. This was my stretch from what I knew was comfortable in my life to a small step to the uncomfortable. And uncomfortable is where you are pushed to a new comfort level.
I want to encourage you to step out of that comfort zone. I will be the first to admit that even if you think you have a limit to something, you are totally able to push past it. Your life is not about going to your limit. You life is about pushing past that limit and finding more limits to pass. I thought chin length hair was my limit, and here I am with a very short pixie cut. This doesn’t mean I will buzz off the rest of my hair, not yet anyways, but I have pushed past the limit of what I thought was pretty. Limits are meant to be passed. Whatever you think is impossible in your life, make it possible. I thought I was sent to Seattle to start a life of comfortability. Here I am being sent out on the adventure of a life time that I would have never taken advantage of a year ago. If you know in your heart that you are meant to do something, the only person holding you back is you. See that limit line and take one step over it. After you take that one step, take another. It is amazing the path your life can take when you start by just taking small steps past thone restrictions you have put on your life.
