I recently changed my hair color without consulting anyone beforehand. I didn’t want to be talked out of it, I just wanted to do it. I got so bored and tired of looking at my hair. My trips to the hairdresser started to feel more like a mission to try stay the same rather than embracing a new change. Then one day I was staring at myself in the mirror and felt indifferent. I wondered what I’d look like with brown hair or red hair. I laughed at the thought of me with red hair. I couldn’t be that sort of person.

When I was a kid, I loved experimenting. I spent a lot of time singing into the mirror, trying on new hairstyles and imagining I was a famous popstar. I loved going into Claire’s Accessories buying earrings and hair clips to reinvent myself as soon as I got home. I went through a punk rocker Avril Lavigne phase, a High School Musical Sharpay phase and even a Lucy from Narnia phase. I used to watch Step Up and learn off the dance routines, then included my dog as my dance partner in them since my brother refused to take part. When my friends came over to my house, we’d play dress up and pretend to be various characters. We’d try on outfits and act out situations. I got so excited when I bought a Hannah Montana wig until I accidentally set it on fire when trying to straighten it. I flung the wig out the bedroom window in a panic and probably gave my granny a heart attack at the sight of blonde hair falling from the sky passed her kitchen window.

Whenever I wasn’t trying on sparkly dresses and belting out Westlife, I was wrestling with my brother and boy cousins. We’d fight with sticks pretending we were in gangs running around with pitchforks and hurls like mad men through the fields, then we’d crawl around the grass and climb up trees spying on one another. We’d drive around the house in toy cars and bikes then crash into each other laughing like lunatics until someone ended up falling and crying.

I loved imaging and dressing up as a kid, but somewhere along the way dressing up became less about having fun and more about fitting in. When choosing an outfit, I was no longer getting excited about it but I was feeling more confined by it and questioning what it meant about me. How I’d be perceived. The decisions started to make me anxious because I was also wondering what would a boy think of it. The outfits and styles I chose had to get the seal of approval from my friends before I went ahead with them. “Do I look okay?” became more of a common question than “What do you think?” The amount of times my stomach sunk with disappointment when my friends shook their head and said “no, not that”.

When did dressing up stop being about creative expression and start being about social acceptance? When did performing and playing become about being good enough instead of having fun? Somewhere along the way, I started to believe looking in the mirror for too long made me stuck-up, but also if I didn’t take time to focus on my appearance it meant I was never enough. Wearing clothes different from the crowd meant you were weird. Hanging out with a group of boys meant you were a whore. Dressing like boys meant you were a lesbian. Singing and dancing (unless drunk) was embarassing. Being loud and laughing a lot meant you were attention-seeking. Spending time alone meant you were strange.

I used to burst out crying leaving the hairdressers as a teenager, worried that the change would be ‘too much’, wondering what people would say. Last month, I burst out laughing when I saw the hairdresser blow drying my red hair in the mirror, Afterwards, I wasn’t asking people ‘do you like it?’ or ‘what do you think of it?’ I wasn’t wondering would boys like it. I was just filled with joy and surprise that I actually did it.

For me.