I was sitting at the hair salon, dreading it, and thinking, this is a weird thing to have a problem with, but at the same time, it's something that's so ever present, literally on my head.

Why not figure out whatever hangups I have about it?

Welcome to how to. I'm Courtney Martin.

Hair. It's the feature that perhaps says the most about us, right? It's connected to culture, heritage, gender, personality. Before you even speak, your hair communicates something crucial about who you are. When you take all of that out of sprinkler beauty standards and a dash of social anxiety,

suddenly there's a lot of pressure to get your hair right.

Which is why today's listener want some help.

Hi, I'm Nick.

I'm a Philadelphia theater maker.

I'm 28.

And I think men my age are at the point where often they've sort of figured out a hairstyle, and they go to their barber and say, give me whichever buzzer and cut it this way.

And I've just personally never settled on anything. Right now, I wear my hair long. It's about shoulder length, a little bit of wave or curl to it.

I've also spent a lot of time with short, high and tight, like standard man haircut type deal.

So that's sort of been my rhythm the past 10 years or so. Let it grow out and then cut it all off.

I love how you said the standard man haircut.

Has that been externally motivated at times?

Like you have particular jobs where you felt like you needed to show up in a certain way?

Or has it always been sort of internally you've flowed and ebbed with all this stuff?

I've had my hair at various lengths and style my whole life. When I was in elementary school for at least a year or two, I had shoulder length straight, still blonde at that time before it

turned more brown hair. I work in theater, so there's really not too much stricter on what I need

to be looking like presentably. But I think just being in the world,

there's definitely categories in terms of gendered styling of hair

that as a gay man, I'm not necessarily feeling like I need to fit into those.

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