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By Natalie Cinelli

“You should cut her hair. That’s why she’s not growing. It’s stunting her growth.” 

This was the unsolicited advice my aunts and uncles would offer my mother when I was a child. I’ll admit it. I was petite. The second shortest in my class at school. I knew I would never be a stunning tall person. Both of my grandmothers were under five feet. But was my hair really keeping me from growing? My mother must have believed it.

She finally succumbed to family pressure when I was nine years old. That’s when I got my first haircut. Gone were the long, bouncy curls that my mother used to wrap around her finger with a brush. Gone was the bow that I always wore on the top of my head. A bow to match the dress I was wearing.

Now my hair was a short, bushy uncontrollable mess. Rain and humidity became my arch enemies.

I had an arsenal of head gear to help mitigate the effects on my hair. I wore a bathing cap to the beach. I had a rain cap to wear under my umbrella. And on windy days I wore a kerchief.

I survived. Until I became a teenager. Then I was taunted and teased because of my frizzy tresses. I was called “brillo head” or “pooch” because I looked like a poodle, they said.

I couldn’t keep up with the fashionable hairstyles. The bouffant, bubble cut was all the rage when I was in high school. I had to endure sleeping with tortuous giant rollers on my head. My hair was teased and back combed. I used an endless supply of hairspray trying to tame my tresses. But it was a futile battle.

Forget the straight, parted down the middle hippie look of the '60s. I gave up and threw in the towel. I cut all of my hair off just like Mia Farrow did. She had a cute, blonde pixie-ish cut in “Rosemary’s Baby.” I, on the other hand, looked like an adolescent boy. One time a ski lift operator actually called me “young man” and asked me to move along to the chair lift when I was skiing with my boyfriend.

By the time I got married I was wearing the Carol Brady shag cut. You know? "The Brady Bunch" mother?

It wasn’t easy to emulate. I used up jars of Dippity Do and rolls of tape to hold down my bangs. Thank goodness my wedding day was a beautiful sunny day with no humidity.

Fast forward past years and years of monthly haircuts, gels, sleek and shine creams, and texturizers. Fast forward past globs and globs of hair dye.

Fast forward to 2020.

Because of the historic pandemic and quarantine my hair salon was shut down for months. My hair kept growing. And my curls came back. And guess what? It’s natural and I like it.

I am at peace finally. We are in “hairmony.

— Natalie Cinelli

Natalie Cinelli is a freelance writer who has had articles published in the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, American Baby magazine and on Boston's NorthEndWaterfront.com. She wrote a humor column, "In a Nutshell," for the Suburban News in Reading, Massachusetts. She also worked as a lifestyle editor and columnist for the Lawrence Eagle Tribune in Lawrence, Massachusetts.