At first glance, many people thought he was a girl. With soft, curly hair that fell around his face and framed his eyes, his look often led to confused smiles and polite questions.
His name was Ethan, and while he never minded how he looked, he grew accustomed to the jokes and misunderstandings. His family found it funny, but it was always a bit awkward when strangers couldn’t tell whether he was a boy or a girl. He often found himself explaining, with a smile, that his parents had always said he was “born to stand out.”
The curls gave him a gentle appearance, and while he never thought much of it, over time, it became a part of his identity. It wasn’t a defining trait, but it was a familiar one. His hair was thick, unruly, and almost magical in its ability to frame his face in ways that seemed to shift with his moods.
Ethan had always been comfortable with it, but as he entered his late teens, a strange desire began to grow inside him. It wasn’t that he hated the curls, but he felt as though they hid a part of him—an expression of who he truly was beneath the surface. It became a quiet question he couldn’t ignore: Who would he be if he no longer wore those curls?
One sunny afternoon, with the weight of that question on his mind, he finally decided to take the plunge. After years of going back and forth, he walked into the barbershop with a sense of excitement that both thrilled and terrified him.
He sat in the chair, unsure at first, watching as the stylist gently touched the scissors to his hair. With every snip, the curls slowly fell to the floor, and a different version of Ethan began to emerge. Gone were the soft, bouncy locks.
For a moment, he saw a stranger staring back at him in the mirror. But then, as the stylist finished, Ethan saw it—the face he had always known was there, one that felt more honest, more himself. The boy who had once shied away from being seen was now standing tall, his reflection clearer than ever.
He didn’t know what it meant, this transformation, but one thing was certain: he was finally ready to face the world as who he truly was—no longer hiding behind curls or questions.