'Beautiful, Beautiful,' on Literary Hub

There is heat at the back of my neck, a spot of heat that gets hotter and hotter. I take the combs out, swirl my hair up, stick the combs in, wear my hair up until my nape cools down. After years of this, I came to understand why women of a certain age cut their hair short, why even the most revolutionary of 19th-century feminists acquiesced to the requirements of modesty and wore their hair up. It’s hormones! I have been told that the dance of my hands twisting and lifting my thick curtain of hair is an act of kinetic sculpture. Once when I was in my late forties, a student hit on me: “I couldn’t take my eyes off of you, how you kept putting your hair up and taking it down.” The kinetic sculpture has by now become a comedy, hair up, hair down, hair up, hair down. And the combs—what a collection I have! Made in Paris of plastic by Medusa’s Heirlooms, the size of a calling card, ivory, malachite, zebra-striped or azure, with teeth that hold… But my subject is my hair, the greatest gift bestowed on me by my ancestors, my gene pool, my biology.

Read the rest of Honor’s essay on Literary Hub.