Any 90's kid will tell you that parents had this strange idea that cutting your hair short at a young age made it grow out thicker. Old wives tale. When I was a baby, apparently I had really thin hair. My mother thought it would never grow out thick. So from a young age, she gave me this typical "1990's baby" boyish haircut. So I go to elementary school, granted I went to a private school, so we wore uniforms, and I wore a tunic, a sort of dress thing with a tie, so I wore the girl's outfit, but my hair looked like a boy's. I was never really a "girly girl" to begin with. I wasn't into Barbie dolls. I was into LEGO and K'nex and Creepy Creepy Crawlers, and Battleship, and Street Fighter II Turbo and Donkey Kong Country.... I was a bit of a Tom Boy. By the age of 10, I rebelled and grew my hair out, very very long in fact, dyed it blonde and dyed the tips black (I don't know, thats how I expressed control over my appearance). And I went full on combat fatigues. EVERYTHING I wore was army olive green. Camouflage patterns. Fishnets. That sort of thing, into my high school years. I joined cadets, and my hair was pulled back in a bun all the time, but from the front we all pretty much looked the same, and a "developed" relatively slower compared to my peers so amidst all the layers of my uniform, I looked rather flat-chested. So I could pass as a guy. I guess there was JUST enough femininity to my face or voice to pass as a woman to be called Ma'am instead of Sir when I became drill commander.... I am not sure.... But in university I chopped off my hair, once to an A-cut, then grew it out, then again to a pixie cut to what it is now. Both times I haven't been mistaken for a guy, because there is enough femininity in the style to pass as a woman. But I HAVE been mistaken for a Lesbian MANY, MANY times, and hit on by many lesbians. So perhaps by short hair is misleading. I dress in tank tops or T-shirts and jeans or cargos, so that doesn't help for the same reason I cut my hair short: PRACTICALITY. What is comfortable and easy to maintain. So I feel bad that I send the wrong message to women of the opposite sexual orientation as me, because I know they are a minority and having lesbian friends myself, I know it is hard for them to find love. So when they see me, and then get turned down with, "Sorry, I am heterosexual, I am in a 7-year relationship with a man. I am not a lesbian." it sucks for them, and I feel I have wronged them in some way.
