I have platinum hair, eleven piercings, three tattoos, and go to a liberal arts college—almost an embarrassing cliche. But I am from a suburb of Dallas and my style was always judged by people who tried too hard to fit in. 

From a young age, I was perceived as a “bad girl”, despite my straight A’s. I convinced my mom to bleach a section of my dark Italian hair so I could play around with different colors. I thought I was the moment.

I was a chubby third-grader with a lisp but I thought I was a rockstar. The PTA moms were enraged, but their daughters admired my style since much of my inspiration came from Hannah Montana. I would walk into elementary school wearing leather pants, a sequined shirt with a matching scarf, and fingerless gloves, and if my classmates were lucky, my knee-high converse. Somehow, a group of moms coined me as the “bad girl” and they feared I would influence their daughters, barring me from any group activity I once would’ve been a part of.

Once I exited my rocker-with-a-lisp phase, I entered what I like to call my “assimilate to middle school bible culture” phase. I made friends with the heir to the Oscar Mayer Hot Dog throne and managed to please the country club moms, by pretending to like Fox News, country music, and church. 

The Oscar Mayer heiress eventually left me behind, but freshman year, I met my best friend who introduced me to better music, and I morphed into a version of the girl I am today. I abandoned my skinny jeans and opted for what I wore most of high school—platform Docs, baggy jeans, and whatever shirt I felt comfortable in that day. My best friend and I were the hipsters. We listened to Mac DeMarco and watched Lady Bird nearly every other day. 

It wasn’t until my parents got divorced at the end of my junior year, that I made the ballsy decision to bleach my hair to platinum, a style choice that has now become my identity. My hair was falling out as my home life was falling apart but I was so invested in getting my hair to a shade that a hairstylist probably would’ve refused to do. 

Senior year, I met a boy who went to private school and presented himself as a preppy politician. I was almost eighteen years old and hadn’t had my first kiss yet. So, I dedicated my time to making this boy like me, despite him not even being my type. 

To get this boy to like me, I decided that I needed to abandon my “bad-girl image” that had followed me since third grade and go back to brunette. The day after we met, I stumbled into Sally Beauty Supply and within a few hours, I was back to the “regular” me. Two days after that, we had our first official date, and a week later, I had my first kiss. The boy became my boyfriend.

It wasn’t until my boyfriend showed up to winter formal wearing “Trump 2020” socks that I began to question why I was in the relationship in the first place. I was pretending to be someone I wasn't and had literally changed my appearance for him. 

To my benefit, he broke up with me a month later during my 18th birthday party (yeah, harsh). I later found out he had been cheating on me the whole time. Soon after the breakup, I rushed to the store, got bleach, and my hair was platinum again. No one was shocked.

The judgy suburban moms that stereotyped me when I was young affected me more than I gave them credit for. I concealed myself because I never thought my style was valid enough for my Texas town. Although I may have had to sacrifice invites from the big high school house parties, now as a liberal arts student studying in a big city, my identity has become my hair and fashion. 

Maybe it is something having to do with control or maybe even a bit of rebellion, but for me, dictating a part of my appearance is liberating. It gives me the power to project an image of the person I want to be. And right now, that is a girl with platinum hair that will never-and I mean never- dye my hair for a boy again.