The Hair Beneath the Baseball Cap
I distinctly remember looking down at my hands in middle school and thinking, these are my hands; if I were black, they’d be a different color. I don’t know what it was about that thought because it seemed so simple and obvious yet it shook me a little. It was almost like I was saying, hey these are my tools. They’d work the same if they were a different color. I often wondered if my mind, too, would work the same if I were a different color. I decided not. I can’t think of a time in my life when I was in a room just with people who were like me. I know I probably have been, it just doesn’t stick out in my mind. And I like that—I would feel boring if I could, I would feel vanilla.
Looking in the mirror I see fair skin and an ever-changing hair color. My hair is long, but when I’m at home it’s tied up: that’s important. I have freckles in the summer. I like to wear sweats and jeans and dresses and heels—in my closet, an A’s jersey hangs right next to an expensive, high-wasted pencil skirt. Let’s just say it like this: that’s how I roll. I obsess over make-up. I like jewelry but I don’t really do the whole perfume thing. There are tons of rainbow colored items dotted about my room. They came from Pride Weekend. There is a bottle of soy sauce and a pair of chop sticks on my desk which my Asian friends make fun of me for: it was a gift from a camper at the theatre camp I worked a couple years ago; a Japanese play, she was the Sushi Girl. But all these things are just tiny clues that I’ve placed (or that have been placed) on the outside to help explain the inside. There are a lot of things that can’t be known by simply looking.
My largest chunk of nationality is from my mom: I’m a quarter French. The remaining three quarters are scrambled nationalities and races, only a few of which I actually know. I was never told that I was white; not even in casual conversation. White was a word I learned at school, in the fourth or fifth grade. I never thought about it before then, but my brother definitely did. His realization of his color and the colors of the world around him dictated innocence in my mind. When Alex was six, he started playing tee-ball. I was two at the time. We live in Oakland, so naturally my parents placed him in Oakland Babe Ruth, an intercity league for kids, mostly lower-class and almost all minorities, who just wanted to play ball. On my brother’s first day of practice, he started running out to the field. Upon seeing the other kids, he stopped half way, turned around and ran back to my mom. “They’re all black,” he said. This, by the way, is my mom’s favorite story. She bent down and asked him if it mattered. Alex said no and ran off to play.
Every weekend for the next ten years, I would be lugged to Greenman: a set of land with three city baseball fields primarily for the Babe Ruth kids. I guess you could say it was in the ghetto. I suppose you could also say that it was in the backyard of a lot of these kids’ homes. It was worlds away from what would be assumed a middle class, white life, but Greenman became another home and the people, family. This really rooted a pure foundation in my young mind regarding race and class (gender and disability, too). There were kids playing whose parents were doctors and there were kids who we drove home nearly every day because their parents didn’t come to their games. Some girls played. There was even a deaf kid. Hispanic, Black, White, Asian kids—they all were there because they wanted to play ball. I realized at a very early age that race had little significance in the game. Practice. Baseball. Friendship. Family. Life.
I often forget that most privileged white kids have not had the same exposure my family has had. I often forget about Babe Ruth as a whole because it seems so fundamental, almost like how I don’t remember my first steps or my first homework assignment. I mean, of course I remember it, but it’s the race thing: the integration that frequently slips my mind. How wonderful it was. How what the coaches taught (‘at the end of the day, it’s not whether we win or lose that matters…did we have fun?!’) is not only true in baseball.
So my hair is tied up and it’s long, but not as long as I want it to be. My hair and I have an interesting story to tell. If a photo montage could be easily shown in this paper, my gender development process could be mostly established simply with pictures of my head from the ages three to seventeen. I’ll do my best to describe the evolution. When I was about three, my mom took me and Alex for a hair cut. I had been wearing his hand-me-downs and had been playing with his toys, watching his shows… I idolized my big brother. So when I knew I was getting my hair cut, I told my mom that I wanted it to look like Alex’s. Our hair cutter made the decision to listen to my innocent request but keep my hair long and girly. It was a compromise: a half Alex, half Kelsi do that ended up being business in the front, party in the back (I still tease my parents for giving me a mullet; it was so white trash, everything that wasn’t who we were). The result of my gender ideals and my hair cutter’s soon grew out and was touched up with shoulder-length blonde hair and a set of bangs but by that time, Alex’s hair had grown and from the front, we still looked ridiculously similar.
When I was in the first grade, I decided to grow my bangs out. I wanted to because it looked more girly, more like Barbie. By the third grade the bangs were fully grown out and my hair was longer but I relapsed in the quest for femininity. I was playing basketball, like my brother, and (as it had always been) most of my buddies were male. My hair was tied back everyday: scrunchies became my best friends. I never combed my hair and a giant knot in the back of my head formed every time between baths. Baths. I used to dread them because I knew what followed. After each bath, I’d make my mom pay me a quarter for every time she hit a tangle. She agreed, but never paid up. It was so painful but I liked my tom-boy look: I sported the Airwalk sneakers just like my brother; I wore pants and tee-shirts. I loved my hair in a pony tail. I couldn’t believe my mom used to put me in dresses. Late in the fifth grade, my favorite, baggy cargo pants ripped really high up the leg in the middle of class. The girls laughed at me, I cried. Soon after that, my dad and I were at Beauty Center where I saw this beautiful brush, fifteen dollars. I looked up at him, my hair in a frizzy pony tail with knots galore, and asked him if he would buy it for me. “I will buy this brush for you if you promise you’ll use it every day.” Now I can’t imagine waking up and not using a brush.
Through middle school, I experimented with color and rarely tied my hair up because I didn’t like how masculine my shadow looked when my hair was in a pony tail or a bun. A couple of days before high school began, I took a pen and paper and drew out probably twelve different hair styles because I vowed to do a different hair style every day. That’s what high school girls do, I told myself. I wasn’t able to keep up with changing it every day and I felt like a failure. Now, at seventeen, my hair is down most of the time. When it’s not down, it’s up—simple as that. I don’t fret about my silhouette or the clothes that I wear: one of my favorite shirts has a T-Rex on it and the other one is a pretty, girly top.
I feel as if I’ve hopped back and fourth so many times that I just got tired and found equilibrium. Most of my friends are still guys. I like trucks and dinosaurs. Dresses. Flowers. Baseball. But I love the mix. I think it’s charming. When I was four, I told my mom I wanted to be Aladdin for Halloween. She asked me if I wanted to be Jasmine. I was Aladdin. I had an Abu. It has been hard for me, though, through high school to be free in my gender identity. I am female. I love being female; I am woman, hear me roar… all that good stuff. But my humor is crude and I deal with situations up front. I identify with men mostly because I appreciate the honesty and the humor. Yet in high school it’s hard to be that girl without being a lesbian or easy. Why can’t I just get along with guys? Senior year: people are not so uptight about it anymore and I think every one is beginning to show their true colors, mine being green or yellow, by baby shower standards.
I am white and I am middle class or “well off.” I have never been to public school. I suppose my statistics suit the cultural norm but I know my heart doesn’t. It never did. I am female, yes. I find comfort in the company of men and select women. I guess my appearance may meet the cultural standards but my mind is far from them. I think it’s wonderful that everyone has a story. I am excited to see how mine will evolve. My heart will change. My mind will change. But as for my hands, they’ll always be white.
Looking in the mirror I see fair skin and an ever-changing hair color. My hair is long, but when I’m at home it’s tied up: that’s important. I have freckles in the summer. I like to wear sweats and jeans and dresses and heels—in my closet, an A’s jersey hangs right next to an expensive, high-wasted pencil skirt. Let’s just say it like this: that’s how I roll. I obsess over make-up. I like jewelry but I don’t really do the whole perfume thing. There are tons of rainbow colored items dotted about my room. They came from Pride Weekend. There is a bottle of soy sauce and a pair of chop sticks on my desk which my Asian friends make fun of me for: it was a gift from a camper at the theatre camp I worked a couple years ago; a Japanese play, she was the Sushi Girl. But all these things are just tiny clues that I’ve placed (or that have been placed) on the outside to help explain the inside. There are a lot of things that can’t be known by simply looking.
My largest chunk of nationality is from my mom: I’m a quarter French. The remaining three quarters are scrambled nationalities and races, only a few of which I actually know. I was never told that I was white; not even in casual conversation. White was a word I learned at school, in the fourth or fifth grade. I never thought about it before then, but my brother definitely did. His realization of his color and the colors of the world around him dictated innocence in my mind. When Alex was six, he started playing tee-ball. I was two at the time. We live in Oakland, so naturally my parents placed him in Oakland Babe Ruth, an intercity league for kids, mostly lower-class and almost all minorities, who just wanted to play ball. On my brother’s first day of practice, he started running out to the field. Upon seeing the other kids, he stopped half way, turned around and ran back to my mom. “They’re all black,” he said. This, by the way, is my mom’s favorite story. She bent down and asked him if it mattered. Alex said no and ran off to play.
Every weekend for the next ten years, I would be lugged to Greenman: a set of land with three city baseball fields primarily for the Babe Ruth kids. I guess you could say it was in the ghetto. I suppose you could also say that it was in the backyard of a lot of these kids’ homes. It was worlds away from what would be assumed a middle class, white life, but Greenman became another home and the people, family. This really rooted a pure foundation in my young mind regarding race and class (gender and disability, too). There were kids playing whose parents were doctors and there were kids who we drove home nearly every day because their parents didn’t come to their games. Some girls played. There was even a deaf kid. Hispanic, Black, White, Asian kids—they all were there because they wanted to play ball. I realized at a very early age that race had little significance in the game. Practice. Baseball. Friendship. Family. Life.
I often forget that most privileged white kids have not had the same exposure my family has had. I often forget about Babe Ruth as a whole because it seems so fundamental, almost like how I don’t remember my first steps or my first homework assignment. I mean, of course I remember it, but it’s the race thing: the integration that frequently slips my mind. How wonderful it was. How what the coaches taught (‘at the end of the day, it’s not whether we win or lose that matters…did we have fun?!’) is not only true in baseball.
So my hair is tied up and it’s long, but not as long as I want it to be. My hair and I have an interesting story to tell. If a photo montage could be easily shown in this paper, my gender development process could be mostly established simply with pictures of my head from the ages three to seventeen. I’ll do my best to describe the evolution. When I was about three, my mom took me and Alex for a hair cut. I had been wearing his hand-me-downs and had been playing with his toys, watching his shows… I idolized my big brother. So when I knew I was getting my hair cut, I told my mom that I wanted it to look like Alex’s. Our hair cutter made the decision to listen to my innocent request but keep my hair long and girly. It was a compromise: a half Alex, half Kelsi do that ended up being business in the front, party in the back (I still tease my parents for giving me a mullet; it was so white trash, everything that wasn’t who we were). The result of my gender ideals and my hair cutter’s soon grew out and was touched up with shoulder-length blonde hair and a set of bangs but by that time, Alex’s hair had grown and from the front, we still looked ridiculously similar.
When I was in the first grade, I decided to grow my bangs out. I wanted to because it looked more girly, more like Barbie. By the third grade the bangs were fully grown out and my hair was longer but I relapsed in the quest for femininity. I was playing basketball, like my brother, and (as it had always been) most of my buddies were male. My hair was tied back everyday: scrunchies became my best friends. I never combed my hair and a giant knot in the back of my head formed every time between baths. Baths. I used to dread them because I knew what followed. After each bath, I’d make my mom pay me a quarter for every time she hit a tangle. She agreed, but never paid up. It was so painful but I liked my tom-boy look: I sported the Airwalk sneakers just like my brother; I wore pants and tee-shirts. I loved my hair in a pony tail. I couldn’t believe my mom used to put me in dresses. Late in the fifth grade, my favorite, baggy cargo pants ripped really high up the leg in the middle of class. The girls laughed at me, I cried. Soon after that, my dad and I were at Beauty Center where I saw this beautiful brush, fifteen dollars. I looked up at him, my hair in a frizzy pony tail with knots galore, and asked him if he would buy it for me. “I will buy this brush for you if you promise you’ll use it every day.” Now I can’t imagine waking up and not using a brush.
Through middle school, I experimented with color and rarely tied my hair up because I didn’t like how masculine my shadow looked when my hair was in a pony tail or a bun. A couple of days before high school began, I took a pen and paper and drew out probably twelve different hair styles because I vowed to do a different hair style every day. That’s what high school girls do, I told myself. I wasn’t able to keep up with changing it every day and I felt like a failure. Now, at seventeen, my hair is down most of the time. When it’s not down, it’s up—simple as that. I don’t fret about my silhouette or the clothes that I wear: one of my favorite shirts has a T-Rex on it and the other one is a pretty, girly top.
I feel as if I’ve hopped back and fourth so many times that I just got tired and found equilibrium. Most of my friends are still guys. I like trucks and dinosaurs. Dresses. Flowers. Baseball. But I love the mix. I think it’s charming. When I was four, I told my mom I wanted to be Aladdin for Halloween. She asked me if I wanted to be Jasmine. I was Aladdin. I had an Abu. It has been hard for me, though, through high school to be free in my gender identity. I am female. I love being female; I am woman, hear me roar… all that good stuff. But my humor is crude and I deal with situations up front. I identify with men mostly because I appreciate the honesty and the humor. Yet in high school it’s hard to be that girl without being a lesbian or easy. Why can’t I just get along with guys? Senior year: people are not so uptight about it anymore and I think every one is beginning to show their true colors, mine being green or yellow, by baby shower standards.
I am white and I am middle class or “well off.” I have never been to public school. I suppose my statistics suit the cultural norm but I know my heart doesn’t. It never did. I am female, yes. I find comfort in the company of men and select women. I guess my appearance may meet the cultural standards but my mind is far from them. I think it’s wonderful that everyone has a story. I am excited to see how mine will evolve. My heart will change. My mind will change. But as for my hands, they’ll always be white.
posted by Kelsi Jensen | 6:02 PM
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