All I wanted was an Ariana Grande pre-superstardom look, but what I got instead was mixed signals from the people around me. Somehow my reputation went from “bland high school junior” to “gay and trashy wannabe outcast” just from a change in my hair color. Let’s start from the beginning.

I am on the dark side of olive skin toned and a naturally black haired sixteen year old girl attending a prestigious college prep boarding school. Did I mention that it is single sex?

I started upperclass womanhood this year which comes with many privileges, but also one overwhelmingly heavy boulder weighing above my head called ‘College pre.’ You might be thinking to yourself, “Well what did you expect? I mean after all, you chose to go to college prep school!” Or you might be thinking, “What an overprivileged brat! You go to a good school and your main complaint is being forced to get a great education and have success in your life?” Of course I know that there was going to be a college process and I am aware that people think they are having my best interests at heart, but sometimes it feels like I am not being treated like a human with individual thoughts. My mother told me that I would major in Engineering, even though I tried to make it quite clear to her that I have no interest in that field not would I be any good in that field- I don’t even know how to change my Apple ID password. I told her that I wanted to be a writer and I have goals already figured out for myself and in that moment she looked at me like I was an idiot. Like I could have no idea what life was like or that I could plan it myself.

I understand where she is coming from, though. Her life was planned out for her in a way. She was born and raised in India where she and her nine siblings were not treated like individual thought creators, but instead just a collective group of objects that needed to get through the hoops of grade school, college, and marriage. My mother was placed into an arranged marriage with an older man while she was still quite young so in that sense, she was not given much freedom. Now we are in the United States so of course that comes with some more liberty for me.

Now, I love my mother, I really do, but it agonizes me when she treats me like an idiotic object. She constantly criticizes my appearance and makes me feel like I have no control over my body, which insults me, but at the same time I know that it is just her background fueling this. She judges everything about me: when my eyebrows are too thick or thin, how short I am (even though I have no control over that), my skin (sometimes she does not even let me go outside when I have lots of acne), and especially my hair. She waxed all the hair of my legs and arms when I was only a mere second grader. I thought at the time that she was doing me a favor, but in all honesty, it has made me more insecure about my body. She did not let me get my first haircut until I was thirteen, even though I had been begging her to let me cut it for years. Off the record, there are on religious ties to my hair as my family is not associated with a faith that prohibits hair removal. My mother always cuts her hair. She told me that she liked my hair long, even though I hated it and I had to spend almost an hour a day washing it, drying it, and combing through it until my throat was full of tears. My mother would force me to be more feminine than I am comfortable with, like masking my face in foundation for special events even though I told her that I did not want to. “You need to look nice for this event, so you need to have nice skin.” She told me that I should stay inside and cook while my brothers were allowed to go outside and play. She told me that I would be grounded if I ever went outside alone even though I live in a very safe neighborhood of families. Keep in mind that I am sixteen years old and still not allowed to go outside (when I am at home and not at boarding school) even though my brothers have been allowed to go outside alone since they were seven.

Once I started attending my current boarding school last year, I felt freedom rush into my pores and detox out all the boundaries that I had once known. I learned about things that I did not even know existed, and something fascinated me the most- feminism. I learned what it meant to have control over my own body and thoughts, and I was inspired by people my own age around me. I have seen girls with piercings in every body part viable, every hair color of the rainbow, and every talent that this magnificent world can hold! I was overwhelmed to say the least, but it wasn’t the magical colors and styles that fascinated me the most- it was the confidence these girls breathe. They know what they want and when they don’t know what that is, they are not afraid to search for it. I started to step away from being forced to like science and math, and started to develop my own interests and styles. Boarding school is where I first started to become passionate about writing, activism, and everything that makes me me.

This year specifically, junior year, has forced me to really dive into my interests free range and begin to craft, discover, and exhibit my personality. It is letting me find a way to be me and who I want to be. For the longest time, I have been wanting to dye my full head of hair bright red. my guilty pleasure has been scrolling through pictures on Pinterest of mermaid esque hair. A few weeks ago, I dived right into it with a friend. I purchased a box of Splat, got my friend to saturate my hair, and rinsed it out to reveal something so wonderful. I was beaming with confidence and pride in myself for finally taking this leap. I was a little bit overwhelmed as well because this has probably been the most control that I have ever felt over my body.

However, this ball of excitement within me was soon deflated by society’s disparaging needle. The first person that I showed my fiery fresh look to was my best friend from home; the look on her face showed that she was masking her disgust. “Oh um...what made you decide to dye it?” she asked. It was flagrant that she did not like it, which was fine because that was her own personal opinion and I did not expect everyone to be a fan of my style. What was not fine with me was her statement a few seconds later to my response. “Oh I just wanted a fresh new look I guess,” I said, which was true. “Look Farha, you can’t just do something whenever you are trying to find yourself or else you will end up with a damaged body and lots of regrets. You are just trying to find yourself because you don’t know who you are yet but doing crazy things is not going to help you,” she said with an annoyingly therapeutic voice that made my blood boil. I did not appreciate being psychoanalyzed by my friend. When I had subtle brown highlights in the past, the same friend said that it was “cute” but now since I did something less natural, I suppose that makes her and others think that I have no sense of who I am. The other girl who I mentioned previously that dyed my hair, dyed hers a metallic blonde color, but she did not face the same judgements and assumptions that I received. This girl is white and while the metallic blonde color is still unnatural to her, it looks more natural to her race than red hair to an Indian like me. I guess that makes her not as crazy as me since hers could be possible with her skin color.

Besides the notions of insanity and recklessness, another thing society assumes about you when you are a brown girl with bright red hair is that you are queer. Before dying my hair, people would ask me “Do you have a boyfriend?” 100% of the time. Now people ask, “Do you have a boyfriend or girlfriend?” Let me just say, that I frown upon heteronormativity (assuming that being straight is the default), even though I am straight, so I do not think people should ask “Boyfriend” nor should they ask “Boyfriend or girlfriend” since that is binary (assuming there are no genders between male and female.) The appropriate question is “Are you dating someone?” or “Who are they?” because it makes no assumptions.

Another assumption society made about me? Apparently I do not eat meat...even though I eat meat. I was sitting at lunch with a friend while chucking down a chicken sandwich. “Aren’t you a vegetarian?” She asked, wide eyed. “No, why’d you think that?” I laughed. “I don’t know, I guess you just seem like one,” She replied before getting back to her sandwich. There is no definitiveness to whether there is a correlation between this assumption and my hair, but I had a feeling that my Ariel hair definitely helped her internal bias and assumption that I was a vegetarian.

Something else I fake found out about myself from dying my hair? I am an attention seeker. Actually, no I am not, but to someone else, I am. A classmate and I were studying for a psych test and reading over a psychologist’s analyzation of children. “Middle children usually seek attention,” I read to her from the textbook. “Are you a middle child” She asked me, deadpan. “Um no haha, I am the youngest child. Why do I seem like I seek attention?” I asked, confused. “Well I mean you dyed your hair bright red.” What I wanted to say was: “Let’s get one thing clear. I do not care about your opinion of me and also, why would I dye my hair for attention? Do you think that I expected people to notice me more if my head was a more noticeable color? Do you think I bleached my head out of a fear that people would think I am bland?” Instead, I just shook my head to her and went back to studying.

Lastly, I learned that people assumed that I am a rebellious academic slacker/ Some of my classmates were quite surprised when they found out that I aced a test...something that no one was surprised by when I was a brunette...I guess the more traditional and Indian I look, the smarter I appear. They also thought of me as someone who was a rebel, which I guess is somewhat true because I do not like to conform to the norms. However before having red hair, I was called a “prude,” as in someone who would not do anything against the rules...I was considered “vanilla.”

In all raw truthfulness, I dyed my hair because I like the way it looks and because I like to have control over my body. I just want to live my life, like who I want, and make my own decisions without people making them for me. I want to eat ice cream, learn stuff in school, do volunteer work, travel, roast marshmallows, ride elephants, sleep, laugh, and live. I don’t want to be analyzed as someone who does not know they are just because of my hair- in fact. when I dyed my hair, I had a stronger sense of who I was instead of the shy girl who did what others thought was a good idea. But I am not perfect. I still do not know everything that will happen in my life, nor do I really care. I just want to know who I am but still be able to discover more about myself and be happy with that. I am not saying that you need to dye your hair or change anything about yourself in order to be confident in your own skin and mind, but if it helps, go for it.

I don’t want to be known as someone who does not care about her education. I don’t want to be labelled as a wannabe. I don’t want to be assumed to be a lesbian. I don’t want to be assumed to be rebellious. I don’t want to be assumed to be bland. I don’t want to be assumed to be boring. I don’t want to be assumed to have a particular diet. I don’t want to be assumed. And when others make those assumptions about me, it feels like I am being stripped of my personality and instead having others cover me up with lying stickers that represent stereotypes. Get to know a person instead of judging them. Be who you want to be and let others do the same. Live freely with your magnificently raw soul.