FEATURE: Transitioning with Sugar: Hair today – gone tomorrow

I have had a life long battle with hair. It is something that has either made me very upset, or very happy.

I remember a time in the late 1980’s when I was in school and my hair was long and my mother said I needed it cut for the school photographs. Obviously, being a little trans girl I didn’t want my hair cut, so, in an act of defiance, whilst my father who took me to the barbers was outside having a cigar, I asked for all my hair to be shaved off. – Fast forward to one unhappy mother with “ruined” school photos and one win for me as if I wasn’t allowed to present with the hair I wanted at school, there would be none whatsoever.

I remember getting in so much trouble for this, from both the school and my parents, but of all the school photos that exist of me somewhere deep down in a drawer somewhere in the family home, there is one where I have a smile that outshines the rest, the one where I stood up for myself and would not be told how I should look.

Being born at the very beginning of the 1980’s and growing up through the 1990’s it was very common place for boys to grow curtains. I was no exception, except I used to keep my curtains slightly longer than the other boys and I usually had them bleach blonde.

I used to touch up my roots as often as once a week and I loved being a blonde bombshell until the unthinkable happened. My hormones started playing tricks on me and I went through male menopause, my Testosterone levels decreased and I started going through Female puberty and my breasts started to come in.

By 18 years old I was wearing a sports bra to hold them flat and my lovely long hair had started to recede. I tried many a hairstyle to make the most of my thinning hair but by 20 it was too late. I had lost the hair on the top of my head and I was resigned to clean shaving my head as it made me look younger to have no hair rather than some.

At the same time I grew in a big full beard to hide my face and to adhere to normative standards of beauty. I started covering myself in tattoo’s, going to the gym, building chest muscle and generally disguising my female looking face with a beard, my breast tissue with muscle and having a shaved head and tattoos to boot deemed me attractive.

“I tried many a hairstyle to make the most of my thinning hair but by age 20 it was too late”

When I came out in January 2016 I knew that I had very advanced hair loss and I didn’t want to lose the hair on my face as that would leave me with none. As a gender non conforming (GNC) Non Binary (NB) (Enby) person I started to experiment with female coded clothing and make up but I kept my beard and continued to shave my head.

I saw no point in trying to grow my hair out as only having hair around the back and sides of my head would age me drastically. I continued to wear a long beard, a shaved head and present female in my clothing and breast forms and shoes etc. By this point we were in August of last year and I was starting to get depressed, I was not happy. I wanted to look like other women, I wanted to be seen as other women are seen, to be equal to other women.

I was encouraged by so many a friend that artists such as Sinéad O’Connor and Grace Jones were able to rock the bald-headed look so why couldn’t I? But, I knew deep down inside that I would never be read as female by the general public if I continued to shave my head and keep my beard. So it had to go, my last bit of masculinity that I was holding onto, probably for sentimental reasons came off and I got myself some wigs.

Having wigs meant that I was able to grow my hair out and see where we were at. If I wasn’t in a wig, I was in a hat so nobody got to see my hair. My wonderful friend Matt who is responsible for the fabulous wigs I wear came up with some gym friendly hair and I was presenting full-time as my female self by November, even at work.

I am now five months into having laser treatment to remove hair from my face and I love the way I look now with a smooth face, make up and a wig. I have no regrets about my decisions, but I do have one thing which is haunting me – my hair.

After four months of growing my hair under my wigs and hats it had become apparent that no amount of clip in bangs, hair extensions, hair pieces would work with the little hair I have left so it looked like I was stuck with wigs.

Wigs that are painful to wear, give you headaches and rashes, are sweaty, uncomfortable and itchy and worst of all they are not mine. I still have to come home and take them off at night. So, after a huge amount of research, by the time this edition of Gscene goes to print, I will be in Riga, Latvia having a hair transplant.

The clinic is at the top of its field and I am staying in a 5* hotel, but I am somewhat concerned for my safety over the 4 days I am there as I have been told not to leave the confines of the hotel unless when escorted to the clinic by one of the clinics representatives.

A lot of clinics wouldn’t touch me for one reason or another, many because I am trans *wtf!* mostly that I am just so “far advanced” as one of their Dr’s told me on multiple Skype consultations, but this clinic is specialist in cases like mine and I will be in theatre for 2 consecutive days painstakingly having hair follicles removed from the back of my head one by one and transplanted into the bald areas.

I will be awake during the procedure under the same kind of local anesthetic as dentistry which will be injected straight into my head. I can be expected to be in theatre for up to 10-12 hours a day. I am so so desperate to have hair that travelling alone to a country that isn’t particularly nice to transgender people, undergoing 2 x 12 hour operations with only local anesthetic and being warned not to leave the hotel don’t actually phase me. What I will mourn for is my femininity and my wigs.

It will be two-three months before the grafts have fully rooted and up to twelve months before I have hair growth. During the early stages of healing I will not be able to wear a wig as it will rub and put pressure on the grafts meaning that they may not take and I can’t risk that.

I know I am going to hate how I look once more and become terribly depressed, but I have to always look at the bigger picture here, as I do with my hormones and my breast growth, although sometimes that is bloody hard!