Hair
Earlier today, my supervisor in the bakery at work told me with amusement that someone left a negative review of the store because they didn’t like somebody’s hair color. They wrote “[store name] should not be hiring people with purple hair. It makes them look unprofessional.” He thought it was funny that someone got so worked up over something so stupid.
Wow, I wonder who they could be talking about?? Who’s the only person working in the entire store with a well-maintained purple dye job? ME!!!!!!!!!!!! You wanna call me a slur while you’re at it? Say the line about pronouns! I know you want to! 🤪
If some rando has such a problem with joy and whimsy that they wanna go on a review site and whine about it, they can go ahead and do it. The company I work for will continue to let me labor over pastries full time as long as I can tolerate it. I’m not going away. You will say thank you to the purple haired dyke wearing a Guy Fieri-style flame shirt as they hand you your son’s Pokemon birthday cake.
Being alternative is no longer enough to stop managers from hiring people. The winds of change are a-blowing. First the crotchety old people said “no one will hire you if you have dyed hair and tattoos” and then they said “people with dyed hair and tattoos should not be allowed to work.” Those goalposts sure do get moved a lot.
My purple hair is so important to my personal identity that I keep it meticulously maintained. I keep it extremely short and I get it trimmed every three weeks. I use color depositing shampoo to keep the purple from fading between bleach and dye jobs, which I do myself every four months or so. I will never go back to being blond.
My hair gives me intense gender euphoria because it makes me look the way I feel on the inside. I remember when the concept of expressing my individuality by altering my physical appearance was so distant as to be unattainable; something that I’d never be allowed to achieve. Every once in awhile I have dreams where I look at myself in the mirror and watch in horror as my hair grows back into the He-Man bob cut I was forced to wear until I moved out of my childhood home.