I Will Tell You About My Childhood Forced Haircuts

Anyone else have the experience of an angry parent forcing you to get a really ugly short haircut?

Happened to me when I was nine years old. My mother was helping me comb out the knots in my long blond hair and she got frustrated. She yanked and I cried and then she glared at me and announced I would soon be getting a very short haircut. Still crying, I pleaded with her. I didn't like much in my mostly abused life (my mother and the school bully were a tough team), and did not see myself as pretty, but I liked my pretty blond hair. Now I was losing that. But no matter my tears and pleas, my mother got on the phone and made an appointment for a haircut for me the next morning.

My mother ordered the stylist to cut my hair in a "pixie cut," and she did and I looked like someone newly released from a POW camp. I knew what hell I was in for in school on Monday morning. To keep the teasing down, I pretended that I liked my new cut but I fooled no one. My mother was the only mother at my school who hit me in public and all the kids knew she must've ordered it. They knew about all the public humiliations my mother had put me through and rightly concluded this was another one. The teasing went on for weeks. One more lesson in how destructive my mother could be in my life when she felt the urge to hurt me. It took her until I was in my 40s before she totally controlled my life; I had yet to learn that my mother was fully capable of much worse things and I learned that over the years. Eventually, I learned that my worst, most horrible suspicions were true about my mother. If I wanted to live, and also wanted my friends to live, I had to do whatever she wanted. Murder was not out of consideration with Mom.

Eventually, I learned that my hair was not all she could take from me or destroy. Now it seems minor abuse compared to many other things she did. But back then, looking like a POW crushed my spirit pretty thoroughly.