I've spent the last two posts explaining different aspects of 'why this blog'. Shaking the Tree was originally meant to be itself plus this post rolled into one, but I realized halfway through that the idea of shaking myself clean was important enough to own itself. This will attempt to explain some backstory of 'why'.
To make a long story short (because I know that if I let myself get into the whole story, this post will be ten pages long): I am beginning to take an active interest in my (slight) Cherokee heritage, and how my gender identity can intertwine with it. Though it may seem strange, it started with needing a haircut.
The first year of university is generally understood as a period of self-discovery, and mine has been no exception (although being already 22, out, and partnered saved a lot of it!). I was awash in many modes of self-expression, and found my lack thereof to be becoming a problem. I should, I felt, find a way to wear my heart on my sleeve - finally pick a dressing and hairstyle, and dive into it headlong. The issue, however, I quickly found to be bound up intricately with my surprisingly fuzzy sense of self - especially my future self.
I'd thought I knew who I was and what I was going to do (well enough, anyway). It turned out that there are maybe about a dozen of me in here, all largely unexplored potential selves - and they all want to dress differently. No wonder I've been going around in t-shirts and the same two pairs of pants! In order to pick a style, I have to pick a life... and I wasn't sure, in October, that I was nearly ready to do that yet. So my hair just grew for a while.
But the question remained. Should I colour it and be hardcore - commit to the fringe? Should I lop it short and go back to where I'd been a year before - trying to live the straight male dream? Get a tidy cut and go straight to being a 35-year-old teacher? Should I grow it out - make it obvious that I'm trying to bend the rules? Or would I keep waffling, and grow up to be an indecisive welfare bum that never accomplishes anything?
I had to decide. My first bright idea was to check out what other people with my hair type have done. I'm partly Sicilian, so going back to the part of my heritage that seems to have produced my thick, dark, curly hair seemed pretty legit. So I looked up Italian, even Roman hairstyles - and guess what they've generally done? Lop it all off. There were a ridiculous number of barbers at the height of the Roman Empire. Somehow I felt that would be a cop-out. I mean, I liked some of the short haircuts I've gotten, but most of them were kind of.... underwhelming. Western culture's idea of men's hair is freaking boring for the most part. So... My hair continued unchecked.
It was around this point that another (largely) online friend of mine started posting about the 'two-spirit' tradition. This is not the time to discuss it in detail (this post is long enough already!) but basically, I found myself drawn more and more to what I was finding. The tradition is Native American, and in the process of looking deeper, I've found a whole... thing. A network of linkages. Many ideas that intrigue me, that all tie in with Cherokee culture. For the purpose of this post, it suddenly seemed like growing my hair out long in a Native American/First Nations style could both a) express my interest in and solidarity with the culture of my great-great-grandmother, and b) help me express my WHOLE gender identity (rather than re-caging myself as fully masculine).
I think I end here for the night. <3
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