“Hair is everything,”, declares Phoebe Waller-Bridge in her iconic show ‘Fleabag’. In the scene, the character’s sister Claire had just gotten a ridiculous haircut that in her own words, made her “look like a pencil”. I laugh at how dramatic the scene is but then remember how my own relatives reacted when I, as a curly-haired girl, cut her hair a tad too short. I remember how for an entire month I got unsolicited opinions from people who thought that curly hair was elegant but not when it was as curly as mine, and that short hair was cute but not when it was as short as mine. Indian culture was never chill when it came to hair.

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According to a popular Hindu legend, when Lord Vishnu was once meditating on a mountain, a cow used to go up the mountain to feed him milk. The cow’s shepherd noticed this and wasn’t happy. Out of rage, he hit Lord Vishnu on the head causing a bald spot. But when a Gandharva princess Neela Devi noticed this, she plucked some of her own hair to cover his head. When Lord Vishnu came back to consciousness from his meditation and found the princess’ hair on his head, he offered it back to her. She declined, despite bleeding from where her hair was torn off. Lord Vishnu was pleased with her sacrifice. After all, hair is the most divine part of a woman’s body. Today, in that spot atop the mountain of Neeladri lies the Tirupati Lord Venkateswara Temple, where pilgrims arrive every day to give up their hair to Lord Vishnu as their own way of submitting their ego in front of divinity.

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In a country where donating hair to the Gods is a widely-revered practice, to say that the local culture and moral codes are intricately tied to hair would be an understatement. One of the 5 K’s of Sikh philosophy, ‘Kesh’, explains how uncut hair is proof of a man’s faith. In many religions, including Islam, covering one’s hair during prayer is thought to be a gesture of modesty. So what shifts when natural hair, often placed as a symbol of humility and virtue for Indians, gets altered?

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For Shivisha (she/her), a college student from Pune, the length of her hair has led to horrifying encounters. She recounts how, as a child, she had been touched inappropriately by her male classmates, who justified it on accounts of her ‘looking like a guy’. Once, when she was entering the washroom, her teacher detained her outside, thinking that she was a boy and only let her go when another female student vouched for her. “I even started to wear bigger earrings so that people know I’m a girl. But even then they assumed I’m just a boy who wears earrings.”

For someone like Shivisha, who used to play sports, cutting her hair was a convenient way to maintain it. Unfortunately, in a culture where the primary beauty standard for girls is long, lustrous hair, there is very little space for those who cut their hair short, for whatever reason.

When the queer community comes into the picture, the story gets increasingly complicated.

In a scene from Lucian’s ‘Dialogue between Courtesans’, a book of Greek literature, a courtesan named Leaina describes her sexual encounter with Megilla, a person from the island of Lesbos. Leaina recounts being seduced by Megilla who revealed that under the wig they were bald, ‘like a warrior’. They also preferred to go by the name of Megillus, when they were without it.  Megillus’ wig forms an integral part of his identity in the story.

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Clearly, hair has played a crucial role in queer history and has especially helped those who want to express themselves beyond the cis-norm. Princess Seraphina, an 18th-century English drag queen, used to wear elaborate wigs and visit ‘mollies’, which were the 18th-century English equivalent of gay bars, where queer folx would go to socialize and commune. She was widely beloved by even those beyond the clandestine queer circles of England.

Then, of course, there were David Bowie and Lady Gaga, who created entire personas around their eccentric fashion, many of which, dare I say, revolved around their hairstyle. But in a country that associates beauty and virtue with how long and lustrous her hair is, women and queer folks’ self-expression doesn’t have a space to exist. Often hair becomes a way to enforce traditional gender roles, with anybody who deviates from it being considered as ‘the other’.

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For Earth, (they/them) who identifies as non-binary, hair has played a central role in their gender identity. They used to sport longer hair as a child, mostly because they used to attend Bharatanatyam lessons. As they grew older, Earth began to feel increasingly out of touch with their assigned gender role. “Over the years, I didn’t realize but I grew more and more depressed about my looks. Gradually I started feeling disgust towards my gender expression altogether, but I didn’t know what to do to ease it.” When the pandemic hit, they were able to find online creators and communities that were outspoken about being trans. When Earth realized that they were non-binary, the first step to grow into their gender identity was to chop off their hair. “I cut my hair as the first step towards my transition journey. I still have a long way to go, but for now, cutting my hair has been my biggest sigh of relief and my proudest achievement.”

But choosing to go against the norm hasn’t been without challenges. Earth explains how their mother was worried about them choosing to forego their femininity by trimming their hair to a buzzcut and wearing clothes that weren’t cinched at the waist. Their sister, too, was worried about the threat of Earth being harmed or discriminated against because of their presentation.

Unlike Earth, 18-year-old N (they/them) wore shorter hair as a child. As they grew older, the length of their hair fluctuated depending on how they felt about their gender identity. “Sometimes I grow it long. Sometimes I cut it short. When I feel more feminine I grow it longer and when I’m more unsure, I keep it shorter.” They say that when they had longer hair it was easier to pass as straight, recounting a harrowing story about how one of their male friends once tried to ‘turn them straight’ despite knowing they were dating a girl at the time. But keeping short hair also means judgemental looks from relatives and burrowing remarks of how they ‘look like a boy’. But for N, whose gender identity is fluid, being called a boy feels more like a blessing than an insult. And thanks to their immediate family and friends being supportive of them, N feels like they have a community to rely on.

Skye (name changed – she/her), a 20-year-old from Bangalore, tells me that she experiments with her hair in lieu of coming out to her parents for now. “Breaking barriers one at a time.” she laughs. She describes her style as “femme grunge and tomboy femme”, adding, “I haven’t always been someone who experimented with anything—not clothing, not hair. But as I grew older, I became more curious about my identity. Initially, I loved cutting my hair and later progressed to colouring it.”

But ultimately Skye feels that her hair colour is, at best, adjacent to her sexuality. It does not concretely define who she is as a person.

If something seemingly at the surface, like hair, is only a part of and not the entirety of someone’s identity, why should hair be policed so stringently? Maybe sometime in the future, the religious and moral fervour surrounding hair could be married to more bolder forms of self-expression. After all, doesn’t the greatest form of respect for hair lie in the owner’s willingness to use it as a form of their truest expression?