4 — The Statement // Wednesday, April 12, 2023

Snip, snip, snip.
I’ve always hated the sound 
of scissors snipping. The metallic 
snip, snip, snip reminds me of im-
minent change, and it terrifies me. 
Ironically, though, as I sat on 
a spinning beauty salon chair last 
June and longingly stared back at 
my reflection, the sound of scissors 
snipping through my long, brown 
hair thrilled me. The thick brown 
locks that defined my identity for 
the past two years were about to 

be chopped off. In a matter of min-
utes, with the snip of a slim pair of 
scissors, I would be an entirely new 
person. And I was so excited. 
I observed as locks of long, 
brown hair fell fearlessly from my 
head to the floor, signaling at the new 
self I was about to become. But when 
the hairdresser removed the large, 
black, bib-like cloth from around 
my neck, announcing that she had 
finished, I became paralyzed, unable 
to elicit any reaction except for a shy, 
nearly inaudible, gasp. 

I hated the haircut. I’d been so 
sure that this was just the change I 
needed right before I left for col-
lege, one that would render me 
an entirely different person. I had 
thought it would make me look ma-
ture and beautiful. How had it man-
aged to do exactly the opposite?
I lied straight through my 
teeth. I told the hairdresser I loved 
the cut and thanked her for a job 
well done. But as soon as I flipped 
my car on, ready to drive home, I 
burst into tears. I kept pulling at 
the edges of my hair, as if tugging 
at them would make my long-gone 

brown locks grow back. The first 
thing I did when I got home was 
tell my mom how much I hated my 
hair. I incessantly repeated just 
how much I despised it. She, on the 
other hand, thought I looked lovely 
— like an adult. She insisted that I 
looked different, but in a good way. 
Unfortunately, her motherly insis-
tence that it was exactly the change 
I needed did little to change my 
mind. 
For the first time in months, I 
felt ugly. I had attached the percep-

tion of my own beauty to my long 
brown hair — convincing myself 
that without it, I was unattractive. 
Without it, I wasn’t pretty. 
Snip, snip, snip.
The summer before my first 
year of college consisted of one 
too many orientation sessions and 
an endless process of packing up 
my entire life into two large suit-
cases. It was already a very stressful 
time, so blaming everything that 
went wrong on a collection of dead 
cells on my head that were acciden-
tally cut too short didn’t do me any 
good. But I was in a vicious cycle of 

anxious self-loathing, and I saw no 
way out. 
I wasn’t able to enroll in one 
of the classes I most wanted to 
take, and instead of attributing the 
event to the fact that I was simply a 
freshman looking at class options 
months after every other student 
at the University of Michigan had 
already done so, I blamed it on 
my short hair. I lost my favorite 
pair of leggings the week before 
leaving for college, and although 
I eventually found them, I blamed 

their loss on my ugly, chopped 
hair. My long-haired self would’ve 
been able to enroll in that class I 
so coveted. My long-haired self 
would never have lost my favorite 
pair of leggings. In this twisted re-
ality, she was perfect — and I was 
the mess she left behind.
As I autopiloted my way 
through my last summer at home 
in Puerto Rico, I became my own 
villain, blaming every little thing 
that happened to me on an arbitrary 
belief that the strands of hair on my 
head were responsible for every un-
precedented mishap in my life. But 

what I didn’t understand was that 
under that layer of short hair, the 
same being still lived on, and while 
she was connected to that long-
haired girl from the past, she wasn’t 
attached to her. She just wasn’t al-
lowing herself to grow. 
Snip, snip, snip.
As late August neared, my 
days and nights filled with teary-
eyed goodbyes to friends and fam-
ily, and draining last-minute ar-
rangements before putting the lock 
on the luggage that secured the past 

18 years of my life in their entirety. 
Change loomed inevitably over me, 
and although I initially thought that 
chopping off an entire head of hair 
would help with this dreadful tran-
sition, it only made it worse.
In my mind, long-haired me 
would’ve been able to valiantly bid 
her friends adieu without bursting 
into tears and feeling like her life 
was ending. She would’ve empa-
thetically smiled and said, “See 
you in a few months! This isn’t a 
goodbye, but a see you later,” but 
the actual moment was too emo-
tional not to cause me to come 
undone in my friends’ arms as we 
hugged goodbye. 
Trekking the 2,111 miles 
from home with my parents by my 
side, I believed my long-haired 
self would’ve felt prepared for 
what was to come and excited for 
her new life in college. I, in com-
parison, felt a permanent pit in 
my stomach that deepened by the 
minute. What if my short-haired 
self was too insecure, too boring 
or too awkward to make friends? 
What if she wasn’t smart enough 
to excel in her classes like she had 
in high school? What if everything 
she did went wrong?
Snip, snip, snip.
My first week of college 
consisted of awkward and repeti-
tive icebreakers that led me into 
further self-deprecation. When 
I opened my mouth to introduce 
myself, I would have to clear my 
throat every single time I spoke a 
single word because the voice that 
kept creeping out of my throat 
wasn’t mine. I knew it wasn’t my 
long-haired self’s voice, at least. 
My long-haired self had been 
secure in the track she came to 
college to pursue. With an intend-
ed double major in english and 
political science, she felt like she 
would garner just the necessary 
skills to thrive at the University, 
and go on to apply to law school 
after four years of undergraduate 
education. Now, my short hair 
and I were lost. With so many 
programs and majors to choose 
from, I didn’t know exactly what 
I was searching for anymore. 

 GRACIELA BATLLE CESTERO
Statement Contributor

Design by Hailey Kim

Embracing the sound of change

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

